Recently I was looking for webhosting. I was surfing Digitalpoint for the offers of the fine members here. I found several places of interest, but I found the packages and prices at webhosting.uk.com fit my needs. I search this site and google to see if I could find any complaints, but did not find anything of consequence. Great I thought, and signed up, it was 2/18/2007. I only needed their smallest plan to start with, but I was happy to see they offered packages all the way up to dedicated servers so I could grow with them. I spent about $40 for 1 year of hosting. I paid and got my sign up information in short order. I switched my nameserver and uploaded my content. I noticed the upload was rather slow, and the website was very slow loading when I navigated to it. The next day, 2/19/2007, I noticed my website was much quicker to load. I was relived, I didn't want to get a new host. Everything was looking good, and I placed another add on domain in the account and started to build a site for it. I go to bed, and all is well! Tuesday, 2/20/2007, I wake up and check my email. Uh Oh, I have an upset advertiser wondering why my site has been down all day (my night, but his day). I immediately surf to my site, yep it is down. It not just down, it is the suspended message. Knowing this is some mistake I use the live chat feature at webhosting.uk.com to find out what the problem is. I get on live chat, and ask my question. Basically 'why is my account suspended', Sean, the live chat representative, gets my information and looks to find the problem. In a short while he gives me my answer, he tells me I have a 'FRAUD ACCOUNT'. I don't like the sounds of this, 'is my credit card safe?' 'is all my private information on the loose?' 'What do I need to cancel?', my mind is really racing. But I am still in live chat with 'Sean', and now he just typed 'and ILLEGAL CONTENT'. Now I am freaking out! What does this mean 'illegal content', what has happened. Has me webhosting account bean hacked by a criminal? Did he upload some sort of illegal content onto the server? Do I need a lawyer?. I tell Sean I am speechless, because I was. I then ask what needs to be done, and he tells me I need to contact support. He gives me the support email address, after reassuring me there is nothing he can do. So I fire off an email to support. I need to know what is going on. I wait 10-15 agonizing min. Then I realize I sent my email to billing. So I write another one and send it to support. About an hour without help, I am surfing their site, reading every word wrote on it, I find a form to fill out to send to support. I wonder if this is the right way to get a hold of them, so I fill out the form. I am now getting a little embarrassed that I have sent them 3 messages about the same thing, but I am really uneasy about what I was told in live chat. As the day goes on I continue to be very concerned with this issue. I post in a few private forums about my situation. The range of advise is huge, but I still don't know the whole story so I can't actually accurately describe the situation. It becomes increasingly clear I will be needing a new webhost. I mean, no matter what if my account is a 'Fraud account' and contains 'illegal content' I can be assured I will not be hosting there anytime soon. Again I search digitalpoint for some of the other hosts I liked when I was looking just a couple of days ago. I find what was my second choice and PM him some questions. They are all answered quickly and to my satisfaction. I open an account, pay for it and set up my website on his server. If nothing else, at least now my advertisers will be happy. The day goes on with no response from webhosting.uk.co. I am very upset to still not know what is going on. The next day I wake up to find an email from support. It alerts me that: What? A phone number? They shut down my account for a day, called mine a fraud account, with illegal content, because I gave them a bad phone number? This can't be. Why would live support not tell me this? Why would they not just email me and say they need me to fix my phone number? So I respond: I actually figured this would be the end. I really thought they would refund my money, perhaps apoligize for the way they handled the situation. I was of course wrong! The next day i get a responce to a differant email I sent (remember I sent 3). This one is from billing: OK, so she knows about my email back to Steven. She knows I am unhappy. But she doesn't mention the refund I requested. She tells me how I can get my account unsuspended. I am not intersted, I have a new host. So, short and sweat: I am rather sick of this now. I am very relieved to find out that my account isn't a 'Fraud account' and didn't contain 'illegal content. I don't really wan't to deal with webhosting.uk.com anymore. Today I wake up to this email: OK, I believe this is saying I will get my money back, but they want to hold it for a while. I am OK with that. I don't want to rip them off. I don't feel they should take any unnecessary risks with their money. But wait, there is one more mail from them: OMG, what is with these people and phone numbers? Can I not have a webhost if I don't have a phone? They took my money with no problem, they set up my account with no problem, but they can't go on without a phone number. I have had many hosting accounts, and I have never provided a phone number. I have never had a phone conversation with any of the 5-6 hosts I have delt with. I don't give out my phone number. It is only for a few people in case of emergency. Perhaps if this would have started with an email kindly asking for my phone number for verification I would have provided it, but perhaps not. I am here to advise all not to use webhosting.uk.com . I do not feel they handle things well. I am sure I will get my money back, even if it means I have to do a charge back from my credit card. But, no one needs this kind of hassle, and this kind of service. My site was down for many hours, MSN showed cached pages of the suspended page for a day. Google noticed the downed site as well.
I wonder I know Sean Rxxxxxx and Mark Sxxxxxxx They have a bad history for their companies which arent anymore(shut down) Get some free telephone number or a std/pco and ask them to call that time....I hope so
You gave incorrect information due too which the payment was rejected by our payment gateway. We could no contact you too verify your signup and your payment was already rejected by or payment gateway so there's no question of refund. If you had no contact number then you should have mentioned same thing at the time of signup but giving fraudulent information is not justified. If you find any other hosting company which allows you too signup with fraudulent information and they continue to give service even after the payment gets declined then let me know. We will try to learn how they run their business.
I understand your situation completely and the inconvinience that was caused to you by the particular web hosting company. But honestly if you ask me bieng a web hosting provider for more than eight years now, we come accross many unverified situations, where clients make payments of dedicated servers of more than $20000 a month, but we do not get through to the customers and speak about his requirements and how we can assist him better. As far as BODHost is concerned, we have to mark him as fraud client leaving us in no situation, , this annoys the situations for us sometimes and a straight-back hindrance to the quality hosting that we would have been providing to him. I suppose you must speak to one of their Tech support department and sought it out completely with a definite solution. Regards
They may have rejected paying you, but they got the money from me just fine. Perhaps you need a new merchent account. The phone number was a required field, I used 5555555555. In the US the 555 is a block of fake numbers reserved for movies and television. I don't feel it was fraud, or I would have tried a little harder. I do not know if you got paid by your payment gateway, but I can see in my account that they got paid. In any case, it looks like a refund has been initiated (without a phone number), so Thank You!
Its good to see that you are happy now but for your information I would like to mention that our company s a UK based company and we have no knowledge of what numbers are used in US for what purpose. Our verification department tries to verify every non European signups and if we don't get a response from the customer or the phone number given is invalid then the account of respective customer is deactivated immediately. Its not you fault that you are from US but our company is UK based and it becomes easy for us to verify UK signups. Most of the signups we get from US are fraud as those are placed by people using proxies with stolen CC information of US customers. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience you had bu there was no way for us to trust +1.5555555555 number.
Are we talking about the £19.99/Years plan ? p.s* (visa or mastercard doesnt verify the phone number)