I moved my hosting to positive internet” because my previous hosts, fasthosts, are money-grabbing, censorous bullies. There’s a long story to this, but the advice you need to know is this:
If you have a fasthosts contract, cancel it immediately. Of course, you can always renew it as the expiry date approaches, but if you don’t cancel then you risk stupid fines if — like me — you lose you credit card and forget to update you details with them
There’s details about this which I won’t bore you with. Basically, I got a reminder email a week before they were due to take a year’s payment for hosting, and it took me a week to get round to answering it. By then, it was too late and they’d charged me an additional 30 quid for being late to paying them for the privilage of another year’s hosting. 30 quid for a week delay after a single reminder email is too much, and I complained bitterly but just met an immoveable wall. So I posted about it on my blog , including the advice to cancel any existing contracts, and that’s where the second take home message comes in:
Fasthosts retain the right to take down your site without warning, and without appeal, if you post anything that they don’t like. With me they refused to discuss the matter, refused to show how what I’d posted was against their terms of service, refused to discuss what part of my complaint post against them was ‘unsuitable’. Conclusion: fasthosts have no respect for freedom of expression, especially when it comes to criticism of them and possibly on other topics too
I had a long and futile email correspondence with them about this. I didn’t make a big fuss about it, partly because they had all the cards, and partly because I was busy with more important things, which I wanted my website to be operational for. Now fasthosts weren’t a bad host, technically, as far as these things go, but their complete lack of respect for me as a customer, and for some of the values I think hosting should be about (freedom of speech), mean that I couldn’t risk keeping my hosting with them. I knew that when the next thing went wrong I would meet exactly the same response from them: “lump it and shut up.”
I moved to Positive mostly because they offered free hosting to badscience, but so far I have found their service reliable and their support excellent — both competant and friendly.
11 replies on “Fasthosts are money-grabbing censorous bullies”
Hello,
I’m one of the Directors of Positive, and I’d like to thank you for your kind comments. This sort of feedback is really appreciated by the team; as corny as it might sound, we try to be the opposite of the call-centre droidery that infests the industry, and it makes us beam when people say nice things about us.
If we ever do give you anything less than good service, please send me a mail or call me immediately: I will personally make sure that the team works really hard to be worthy once again of your above kind words.
Thanks,
Nick
Fasthosts are a class A nightmare. Check out the blog at http://fasthostshell.blogspot.com/
I am trying to organise collective action against Fasthosts. Would anybody like to join in the fun?
Never be tempted to use Fasthosts.
They are rubbish in everything they do.
Whether it is just for one basic site, or like us a reseller with many, do not go near them.
They will be more trouble than they are worth, with slow servers, bad idiotic support and terrible attitude to customer retention. Don’t do it
FASTHOSTS URGENT ADVICE
Hello, I have been having some extensive discussions with the Office Of Fair Trading and Trading Standards who are looking at this company, however the OFT say that if enough people contact them about this company they will take it on as a case and quote –
Enterprise Act 2002 – Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations 1999 (the UTCCRs)
So if you really want to do something about this company then dont wait do it now, contact the Office of Fair Trading at http://www.oft.gov.uk/contactus and specify FASTHOSTS COMPLAINT in the subject line, copy yourself in on the email too. You can also contact Gloucestershire Trading Standards at http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk/glos/
The ONLY way to bring this matter to a resolution is for everyone to complain directly.
Let BBC Watchdog know too: http://www.bbc.co.uk/watchdog/gotastory/
and YES class / group action tell me more…
All over the internet there are complaints about Fasthosts. I will be complaining to the above links. I will also be posting this all over the internet.
I will be contacting the authorities as well. This company’s business practices border on scandalous. AVOID
I have three areas of complaint for this company.
1. The first is their insistence on having up-to-date credit card details for your account (if they don’t have them, they lock you out of your account – this includes already paid for services!).
2. Their annual renewal system for their TrafficDriver service. Basically you cannot set the service not to renew for the following year without cancelling the current years’ service that you have already paid for!
3. Their contemptible customer support on these matters. Basically once they’ve got your money they refuse to give you a refund. And when you contact them, they either direct you to an offshore call-centre or give you bogus email addresses that just bounce back!!
email not provided, as FH are the kind of people to be more angry at bad comments than their own terrible service.
Any decent host is welcome to offer an easy way for a reseller with 50 to 100 sites and hundreds of domains to leave Fasthosts with the minimum amount of time and labour.
Almost every long term re-seller is with them as a prisoner of the effort to leave!
Sites go down consistently during a bad period of time, every few months and whilst the support is now fast, it is just as rubbish as it always was. Buck passing and the almost evil ability never to answer a straight question. They are cheap(ish) but truly awful, costing many times more in the end.
BEWARE BEWARE BEWARE!!!!! They will lie to you, steal from you, rude to you. If you sadly are reading this while having problems with them do not bother to call them, email simon.yeoman@fasthosts.co.uk he will email you back and if you demand your case as fraud – when taking money from you, he should refund you, he is the only guy there i have spoke to – who has helped – you also need to request from him an email stating your details have been removed from Fasthosts Ltd under The Data Protection Act failure to provide this request should be kept as your proof of request can be given to your bank and you can use to instruct your bank of fraud procedure to STOP any further payments made to this Scam company.
I have just read from another site…….. their direct telephone line 01452 541499….. save yourself 50p per min! after 20 mins this starts adding up !!!!