UK2.net Autorenewal

Robertomac

I will certainly contact the bank to dispute the transaction, but whether it can be called 'fraudulent' is another matter. In all honesty, if the bank can get the money back, I don't really care what heading it goes under.

I also just noticed, that it was £311+VAT, so in total is £373. I am not impressed.

darkpool

nomoneytoday wrote: »

But it's not fraudulent. The T&Cs were agreed to, and created a contract IMHO.
It may be considered an unfair contract by the OP, but that doesn't make it fraud..

but a court can set aside a contract if it's unreasonable. courts know that in real life people don't read the t and cs of a contract, if the company is being unfair the contract can be set aside.

david39

But so many other, quite reputable, household names use this method of auto-renewal that if there was a case against it, it would surely have been challenged by now.

ivavoucher

With domain names and hosting auto renew is common practise and helpful.
However I think its disgusting that UK2 know before the new 12 month term starts that you no longer need the service but refuse to allow cancellation.
To put it bluntly its just a con.
The whole setup is designed to con their own customers and the sad thing is it obviously pays to do business like this.
They have thousands of customers so this policy must make them a not so small fortune.

You no longer need the service but we have your money so tough.

One way to hit back is to let people know just how bad this company treats its customers by posting your experience on review sites and hosting directories.

I would also write to the SEO with your complaint.

UK2 & easyspace yuck!


UK2 take payments via worldpay, I would contact your bank and worldpay and inform them that the payment was taken without your consent,
State, at no time when making the initial payment was it clearly displayed that future payments would be taken without further instruction from you.
That you no longer use UK2 services and did not authorise the recent payment and you want refunding in full.

I am not saying this will result in a refund but it may.

Worldpay will then contact UK2 with an email very similar to this:

We have received the following Request for Information:

Transaction reference number: XXXXXXXXXX Generated at: 2011-04-20 16:48:01 Transaction amount: GBP 373.00

The cardholder has contacted their Card Issuer and disputed this transaction. This amount will be considered when we next calculate your disputes reserve.

The following reason was given for this RFI:
Non Possession of Card

To avoid the dispute ending in a charge back, logon to the Merchant Interface at http://www.rbsworldpay.com/support/admin, select Dispute Management and use the page to submit information in defence of this dispute: if you are unfamiliar with disputes and chargebacks select the Help button to open the Dispute Management Guide.

Good luck

Also if you want web hosting in future try easyhosting.co.uk

peter_the_piper

As the t&c say you have to let them know within 14 days if end and they auto renewed 7 days before end you could not have cancelled as it was too late. Suggest you consider this if Visa Debit. http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/sale-of-goods/your-rights-when-paying-by-credit-card/chargeback-on-credit-and-debit-cards

DarrenTSO

The first thing to say about this is that by nature, web hosting is a recurring service, like your phone, internet or TV. It is generally more useful to most people that the service auto renews and their website and email (and livelihood, in some cases) stays online, than someone accidentally auto-renews a website or domain that they don't want.

That said, UK2's policy regarding cancelling a service that isn't required seems most unfair. Not only "unfair" in the colloquial sense - but IMO (and IANAL) it could be construed as to be Unfair under the 'unfair terms in consumer contracts' regulations, because it has basically created a large imbalance in the rights of the two parties in the agreement. UK2 are allowed to debit your card seven days prior to the contract renewal date, but you must cancel fourteen days prior to the contract renewal date.

The fact that the service hasn't each reached the actual renewal date yet and UK2 haven't incurred any costs by way of processing the renewal should really mean that you can cancel right up until the day before. I wouldn't take this lying down - continue to have a look at a chargeback (but *don't* lie about losing your card, that is fraud) if your debit card is Visa, you are still protected under the Visa chargeback scheme, if you can persuade Visa/your bank that there has been a breach of contract by UK2.

Robertomac

Thought I'd better update this thread.

I did some searching in Google and found a thread here on MSE where the CEO of UK2 had replied to a thread (visit /showthread.php?t=395663). On first glance I wondered if this was a publicity stunt, but thought I would try dropping him an email as the UK2 customer support was exceptionally unhelpful.

He replied almost immediately to say he no longer has a great deal to do with UK2 but gave me the direct email of the MD and told me to email him and CC him into it. I did so and within 2 hours I received an email from customer support to say my money had been refunded - fantastic! What was even more satisfying is the customer 'support' operative who had previously refused to process the refund was the one who had to email me to let me know the refund had gone through :rotfl:.

If anyone in the future has a problem with UK2, I would suggest following the same steps. I am still convinced their terms for the auto-renewal are unfair and that their customer service operatives are unhelpful, but cannot fault the management for intervening so quickly and acting without question.

Just to comment on some of the posts above, I do understand the reason why a webhosting firm has auto-renewal as I am sure it would cause more complaints from customers if it did not. However, if this is the motivation for the auto-renewal, the terms should represent that, whereas at the moment, the terms look stacked towards ripping clients off.

Anyway, I am really pleased with the outcome and to get my hard-earned back. Thanks to all on here for your input and helpful comments.

rmwebs

Would it be possible for you to PM me the email address Robertomac? I'm not getting anywhere with their customer support department

123-Bow

I too would very much love to have the MD's contact details for UK2.

I have hit a brick wall with the customer support. I have basically gone through the ticket cancellation process months before it was time to renew and it has not worked for some reason, I have found that around the time I tried to submit my ticket with the cancelling service the whole ticket support system was down.

I have been charged £167.58 and UK2 support will not pass me details of the complaints department (if they have one)

Any ideas and MD's contact details would be great!

footboy

I have just moved 2 domains a .com and a .co.uk to UK2 to test the water and their services.

Sadly, the transfer itself seems to have accrued costs already and has gone through as hosting.. meaning I pay another fee to do what I thought I'd done in the first place.

Web forwarding is free and bannerless with fasthosts.co.uk (no association) with UK2 I'd have to pay £11.99 per domain to have it that way.

I can transfer domains names out free of charge at fasthosts but have to pay UK2.net £12.99 if transferring out within 2 years according to their T&Cs.

So far the cheapest service I have found for Domain Names is with fasthosts.co.uk £5.99 1yr .com £5.90 2yrs .co.uk (without ads, with full control of your domain and no on costs)

I'm slowly moving .coms away from 123-reg as they also auto-renewed my services. 123 actually give you a good set of reminders but insist you call their 0845 number (there is a saynoto0870.com alternative) so they decided to ignore my online message not to renew despite me having said I was going to be abroad and couldn't get through.

fasthosts.co.uk also autorenew but are UPFRONT about everything they do and say you can turn that off anytime too. With 123-reg on the hosting I couldn't actually turn off auto-renew (although this is an option on their domains - also all domains were set to auto-renew without my permission)

I also do not like that these services keep your credit card details without your consent and spend on your card without your express consent or despite the opposite.

UK2 btw would charge you £100 for a chargeback transaction which again would really sting if you never wanted to (auto)renew in the first place.

Anyway, research suggests that fasthosts.co.uk is a good place to start and if it were not for the UK2 £12.99 transfer out/cancellation (free on fasthosts) I'd be transferring out immediately.

I've got a .com set to transfer to fasthosts.co.uk in October '11 so I'll let you know how that goes.

Once again I'm no affiliate of fasthosts.co.uk but it seems wise to hold up what seems to be good practice.

Steve
:beer: