DreamHost, the company that automatically charges my credit card every month for hosting the files and database information for this website, accidentally charged all its customers for the entire year.  Whoops.  I, as well as several thousand other customers, was greeted by an email Tuesday morning that said my credit card was automatically charged for the next 12 months, which is exactly 12 times the amount I'm normally charged (I pay month-to-month).  I immediately contacted the billing team and calmly, though firmly, described my problem.  Several hours later I found out it was a system wide event, and then all the big guys wrote about it.  It turns out it was a simple, honest mistake, and it's being taken care of as I write this. 

First things first, I like DreamHost.  They provide great features at fairly good prices.  There's no way my website would ever come close to outgrowing my storage space and bandwidth allocations.  Plus, they have lots of smart, active users, so there's plenty of troubleshooting information available online.  I've been with DreamHost for over a year and a half, so I know how some things work, and I'm comfortable with them. 

However, I'm looking into a new host.  To be honest, I was thinking about it before this fiasco.  But now that this happened, I decided to actually try out a new host.  The thing is, DreamHost made a simple mistake.  It's January, and they made a mistake with the date.  They wrote '08 instead of '07.  It's an honest mistake and everybody does it.  But since my credit card is involved, I'm not ok with it.  If it only affected my website and its functionality, I probably wouldn't care.  But since it's a billing issue, it affects my personal finances, and that's just too close for comfort. 

So as much as I like DreamHost and don't want to do this, I'm saying goodbye.