Can a company degrade a service I paid for in advance without offering a pro-rata refund?

olliebean

I have two domain names registered with 123-reg, and pretty much the only thing I use it for is to forward all email sent to those domains to my Gmail. Now they are telling me that in order to retain the mail forwarding feature, I will have to pay a further £23.88/year + VAT for each domain for a mailbox on their site. Furthermore, the catch-all mail forwarding feature will no longer be available.

The mailbox will be provided free for the first 12 months, but since a feature I regard as essential is being removed, I consider this a degradation of the service to the extent that I will have to switch my domains to a different registrar very soon - i.e., before this change is implemented. I paid for a year's renewal less than 3 months ago, and they are telling me outright that they don't give pro-rata refunds.

Is this legal? If not, and surely it shouldn't be, I would like to know what consumer law to quote to them the next time I contact them.

eskbanker

olliebean said:

The mailbox will be provided free for the first 12 months

[...]

I paid for a year's renewal less than 3 months ago

So there are no extra charges for the duration of the agreement you currently have with them?  Aren't they effectively giving you notice that it'll be more expensive next time you renew?

powerful_Rogue

What do the T&C's state?

E-mail forwarding and mailbox are two different features at 123-reg.

https://www.123-reg.co.uk/support/email/email-forwarding-explained/

Email forwarding is free, mailbox is a paid for service. However as above, if they are giving you notice that next time you renew you'll have to pay for a mailbox, then just move elsewhere. No requirement to give a partial refund if the change doesn't affect this years service.

DullGreyGuy

olliebean said:

I have two domain names registered with 123-reg, and pretty much the only thing I use it for is to forward all email sent to those domains to my Gmail. Now they are telling me that in order to retain the mail forwarding feature, I will have to pay a further £23.88/year + VAT for each domain for a mailbox on their site. Furthermore, the catch-all mail forwarding feature will no longer be available.

The mailbox will be provided free for the first 12 months, but since a feature I regard as essential is being removed, I consider this a degradation of the service to the extent that I will have to switch my domains to a different registrar very soon - i.e., before this change is implemented. I paid for a year's renewal less than 3 months ago, and they are telling me outright that they don't give pro-rata refunds.

Is this legal? If not, and surely it shouldn't be, I would like to know what consumer law to quote to them the next time I contact them.

Sounds like you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater 

There are places like freehosting.com that inc a mailbox for free so just sign up for an account, update the MX record to point at Freehosting and you have your free service back.

Alternatively upgrade your Gmail so that you can point the MX directly at GMail rather than bouncing it through an intermediary. 

olliebean

powerful_Rogue said:

What do the T&C's state?

E-mail forwarding and mailbox are two different features at 123-reg.

https://www.123-reg.co.uk/support/email/email-forwarding-explained/

Email forwarding is free, mailbox is a paid for service. However as above, if they are giving you notice that next time you renew you'll have to pay for a mailbox, then just move elsewhere. No requirement to give a partial refund if the change doesn't affect this years service.

They told me on a web chat that I will have to pay for a mailbox to retain the email forwarding (currently free with my domains). It's possible they misinformed me about this, but if true, it does affect this year's service: when the email forwarding is moved to the new mailbox I will no longer have access to the catch-all forwarding that I currently use. The only catch-all option will be to send all emails that don't match a forwarding rule to a catch-all mailbox on their website, which is not what I want (and it's not clear if I'd have to pay extra for that as an extra mailbox).

I'm inclined to believe, since they sent me an email about "your scheduled migration" (but not telling me when it's scheduled for yet), that the free email forwarding I currently enjoy is going to be migrated to the paid mailbox service without the one feature I need.

olliebean

DullGreyGuy said:

olliebean said:

I have two domain names registered with 123-reg, and pretty much the only thing I use it for is to forward all email sent to those domains to my Gmail. Now they are telling me that in order to retain the mail forwarding feature, I will have to pay a further £23.88/year + VAT for each domain for a mailbox on their site. Furthermore, the catch-all mail forwarding feature will no longer be available.

The mailbox will be provided free for the first 12 months, but since a feature I regard as essential is being removed, I consider this a degradation of the service to the extent that I will have to switch my domains to a different registrar very soon - i.e., before this change is implemented. I paid for a year's renewal less than 3 months ago, and they are telling me outright that they don't give pro-rata refunds.

Is this legal? If not, and surely it shouldn't be, I would like to know what consumer law to quote to them the next time I contact them.

Sounds like you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater 

There are places like freehosting.com that inc a mailbox for free so just sign up for an account, update the MX record to point at Freehosting and you have your free service back.

Alternatively upgrade your Gmail so that you can point the MX directly at GMail rather than bouncing it through an intermediary. 

I'm inclined to switch to a different provider anyway, as there are cheaper alternatives and it's really only inertia that's been keeping me there - but I want to know if I can force them to refund me pro-rata for degrading my service after I've paid for it.

DullGreyGuy

From what I can read the only service you paid for was the domain registration which they have done and havent changed.

You are currently enjoying a free additional service and its that which is changing, I'm sure they'd give you a 50% refund of the £0 you paid for it if you ask nicely. The fact it wont be free after the first 12 months was a known fact at signup.  You have full control of the DNS and so there is nothing stopping you moving that free part of the service to someone else at any time and still getting full value out of the domain registration.

There is very little difference in price between domain registrars once you are beyond the new business discount and so either you are going to have to move the domain every year and have the dodgy email service etc for a few days as the DNS reseeds or ultimately accept what a domain costs and stick with a solid provider. 

You get what you pay for in life most the time and personally wouldnt want to be trying to string together a series of free services especially if the domains are for any form of revenue generation. 

olliebean

DullGreyGuy said:

The fact it wont be free after the first 12 months was a known fact at signup.

No, it was not. It has always been free, was and still is advertised as free with a domain name, and this is the first I've heard - nearly two decades after sign-up, and a couple of months after my latest yearly renewal - that it might not continue to be included for free.

tightauldgit

I may be missing something obvious but you appear to be complaining that you signed up for a 12 month contract which now has 9 months to run and the service provider is telling you that the terms will change in 12 months time (3 months after your contract finishes)? 

What exactly are you asking for a refund FOR?

prowla

Move elsewhere.

olliebean

tightauldgit said:

I may be missing something obvious but you appear to be complaining that you signed up for a 12 month contract which now has 9 months to run and the service provider is telling you that the terms will change in 12 months time (3 months after your contract finishes)? 

What exactly are you asking for a refund FOR?

The service is changing soon (they haven't said exactly when yet), and will no longer offer the main feature that I use it for. I would like a refund for the 9-ish months of not being able to use the service in the way I want to, and have always previously been able to. Surely there must be something in consumer law about the right to a pro-rata refund if a company degrades a service after it has been paid for in advance?