1 - Over Selling
I hate over selling host that sell ‘unmetered’ hosting for the price of cheese burger! There is nothing unlimited in these world. If a host says, “Sir, You need our Mega World Class Deluxe Enterprise plan with UNLIMITED Disk Space and Bandwidth which costs only $4.95 a month” it won’t last for longer than a few months or their service is probably a dud!

2 - No Cpanel
If a web host doesn’t offer Cpanel – Its not a web host!

3 - Long Term Contracts
This is my personal opinion; I do not like hosts that charge yearly or semi yearly. I would like to try their hosting by paying monthly for a month or two and then decide if I would like to go ahead and pay for a year!

4 - Slow/Bad Support
A good web host will always reply to your ticket within 2 hours, A better one within 30 minutes and the best one asap! The web host must have a support staff which has basic knowledge of PHP/SQL so that he can help the customer better :)

5 - False Claims
This includes claims like 100% uptime, 1000 mbit speed, 27/7 support etc. Many web hosts do what they claim to (like BlueFur), but many are just BSing!

6 - Sick Policies
I don’t like policies which restrict a client from transferring their domain to another registrar/web host only after 6 months of service. Some of their policies are really sick! So read their policies before you sign up. (This is the case with many web hosts these days)

7 - No Refund
The client has the right to have a refund if he has used the service for less than 7 days and is unhappy. Web Hosts should offer a refund if the client is not happy.

8 - Not offering an affiliate program
My personal opinion; Web hosts which offer an affiliate program are better than the ones which don’t. Reason: They allow their clients to make money with them ;)

9 - Ordinary Promotions
An ordinary promotion benefits you, an extra ordinary promotion benefits your pocket! A host charging $100/year for 10 GB Space/100 GB Bandwidth and giving a free domain/$50 Ad words/$50 Yahoo Credits blah blah would be an ordinary promotion; A web host giving you a 50% recurring discount with quality service – Priceless! ;)

10 - If its not…
To be honest, I couldn’t think of another one.(I know there are many more reasons why people hate web hosts). So my last one would be: A web host that doesn’t have “BlueFur” in their name ;)

This post was guest blogged by Monty from WebHostingOffers.org. To find reviews on web hosts and much more visit WebHostingOffers.org.

Would you like to guest post on the BlueFur Blog? Send me a tweet on twitter if your interested.

Congratulations to this weeks geek Marilyn. This weeks questions are…

1. What year was podcasting invented?

2. How do you get your podcast added to iTunes?

3. What format do podcasts need to be in?

4. Who owns the trademark for podcasts?

5. What 3 methods of syndaction is used for podcasts?

At one time business was only done through a shop and customers had to go into your shop to do business with you. Face to face contact was the only method of doing business. Today there are many business who never meet there customers face to face at all. Technology has changed the way people do business and the way customers interact with a business. Everyone today has there own personal preference for how they like to interact with a company. Some like to phone, others like to email and then are a few who like to use online chat.

For those customers that like to use online chat you can make it easier for them to add you on MSN or Yahoo by doing the adding the following code…

[code='html']Add me to your MSN

Add me to your yahoo[/code]

Like us you can use an image or any text you want. Be sure to add this code to your page and upload it.

If you get stuck leave a note in the comments or catch me on twitter.

This week on twitter I asked, what is your favorite twitter application?

Here is what was said…

hummingbird604 @bluefur I *love* TweetDeck
flagusco @bluefur I like Twitterific (free version) on the ipod touch when i travel and twitter itself at home.
mikemichelle @bluefur My favorite Twitter application is quite possibly the TwitterCounter :)
amatecha @bluefur Fave twitter clients: iPhone -TwitterFon (altho dislike usage of TwitPic.com). PC – TweetDeck, fully featured, intgrtd URL shorten
SunFinancial @bluefur TwitterFox

The_Weakonomist @bluefur twitterific!
Henaway @bluefur I really like the Twitbin extension for Firefox. Especially after this week’s update. It’s a great fit for me. No extra app!
JohnChow @bluefur TweetDeck is the best.
anothersamchan @bluefur tweetie / twitterfon is a tossup, but i use tweetie more to get my money’s worth.
michaelkwan @bluefur Currently Tweetdeck.
Thinkreferrals @bluefur TweetDeck rocks!
stephenfung @bluefur TweetDeck on OSX and Windows.
stephenfung @bluefur On BB, TwitterBerry. On WinMo, CeTwit.
KhensU @bluefur twhirl
Yurechko @bluefur Tweetie.
Shadowz @bluefur tweetdeck then twitterrific for desktop. TwitterFon for iPhone
iphoneincanada @bluefur TweetDeck and TwitterFon (this might change to Tweetie soon)
danudey @bluefur Twitterfon
MubinAhmed @bluefur it has tp be tweetdeck

What application is your favorite for twitter?

A cartoon created by artist Rob Cottingham.

If you have an idea for a future comic or would like to submit your own BlueFur cartoon let us know in a comment.

I have heard complaints that there is not enough ways to get a hold of our staff. Well there are now more ways to get a hold of us and yes actually speak to a human being.

You can see from our contact us page that we have now added some online options for chatting live online.

Also we now have a live person answering the phone 24/7 for sales questions. That means that if you get the urge to ask a question at 3AM in the morning then go ahead and give them a call.

I know a lot of people want to be able to call billing and talk directly with them. For legal reason we do not allow any calls to billing so that your personal details are only ever shared with the account owner. Everything can be documented and stored appropriately. If you have a credit card or something to submit to billing then the best way to get a hold of them is through email where they can provide you  a secure method of updating your payment.

What contact method do you prefer?