Thread: 49p/Rapidswitch and much more...

For those of you waiting or thinking of this company as a colocated or hosted solution, please make sure that you read and agree to their T and C's before you do so.

They have very cleverly put in them that they throw the packaging away, which was not there when we signed up with them. So when you try to cancel a contract and get your server collected you are in a tricky situation.

Also, never ever send them cash as a payment, they will email you back telling you that they do not take cash, it is uninsured and then refuse to guarantee the safety of it. They will also not seal the envelope or pack your server up for collection by a courier. Therefore rendering you to a 400 mile round trip to collect it. The same for the Server!

They have a smug, we do not care about your business attitude, and tbh I would never give them another penny of my business.

Another thing they have done is implement a Verify your Credit Card within 8 days or refund to your card. Well Mr Ed, when the 5 days that is left is up. looks like you will be refunding my card, as I am off work for 2 weeks, so if you decide to refund my card, more the fool you. But then again I expect that you then will use a Late Payment Fee as well.

Its a shame really as 49P were one of the better hosting / colocation companies around, you seem to have a total disregard for your long term customers with your cavalier, leave then if you want, as we really don't care attitude.

This is an honest review of their company and no doubt will be removed once they see it. But beware we warned you in advance.

We only let customers pick up their server personally, unless the server has been sent to us in the first place (in that case we send it back to the address it was sent from). If necessary, we can check credentials and all invoices must have been paid (we haven't had cash payments in years, and don't accept it either).

So, you have my sympathy but this doesn't surprise me.

No doubt if you sent them a box and the server then got damaged during transit it would be 49Pence fault for not packing it correctly.

This has absolutely no bearing on the fact that when we asked how we would get our server back, we were told that we would have to send packaging. So if our packaging was not sufficient, why ask us to send it?

That also does not excuse the fact that they could have at least put the cash in an envelope and then sealing it, if they had been prepared to do that we could have had the cash collected by courier there and then. They refused point blank to:

1) Place the money into a new envelope

2) Put the money in a safe place

3) Even if we sent a prepaid, addressed envelope, they would not place the money in that envelope, hence we had to physically drive to Maidenhead to collect it

and to be honest you sound like that type of person

Thank you for your kind remarks, it has nothing to do with that issue whatsoever, it say Review at the top of this section, I posted in. I reviewed them so hopefully someone else will not have the same problems.

The fact that you have your name and company you work for in the postbit template of this forum, has kindly made my mind up to never visit your website or buy from your company as well. What a ludicrous comment for you to make.

Sending cash? Well of course they wont guarantee the safety of it.

As we did not know that they didn't take cash, (truthfully didn't know) we made every effort to make sure that our payment was not late and so sent the cash direct to them.

They would have had a duty of care to look after it, having sought legal advice, we were advised we could have claimed it back if in fact it did go missing. The point I was making, it was impossible to retrieve the cash once sent. If they had of offered a degree of customer service, it would have taken 30 seconds to reseal the envelope we sent to them with sellotape. They even refused to do that.

We only let customers pick up their server personally, unless the server has been sent to us in the first place

Fair comment


It would transpire someone else has had exactly the same problem, and in the end rather than play ticket tennis with their staff, told them to dispose of the server as it was quoted in the region of £1000 for Rapid Switch to arrange delivery of that person's server back to him in Scotland. Now that is what I would class as extortionate. So the Guy lost his server and Rapid Switch never even refunded the £18 credit they owed him.

Like I say, its just a review and my opinion of what actually transpired. If they can afford to lose £160 a mth for the sake of an envelope, then I am glad that I am not a director or any longer have any dealings with them.

it's certainly not the easiest task finding the perfect one!

I don't think there is a perfect one, and we didn't pick 49p for cheapness. We have had our co located server there for years, as well as a dedicated server.

Its not a case of looking for a more accommodating host, but a host who is prepared to offer a degree of customer service. To not seal an envelope there is just no reasonable excuse I could think of. As well as the "well that's your problem not ours type attitude" as for the old chestnut of incase it goes missing, they had already confirmed by email it was all there in its entirety and so they could have posted it using Special Delivery. We offered for them to take Ten Pounds out of it to cover their costs.

We ended up going to another company and now spend nearly a £100 a mth more for 2 higher specification dedicated servers. Yes we could have shopped around and got it cheaper I suppose, but then when you use a budget service, you get budget support. As it was we emailed the new company on a Sunday morning, got a response within 10 minutes and then had 2 brand new servers online 24 hours later.

There is absolutely no point in being in business if you cannot work with your customers. Yes we were in the wrong for not realising they don't take cash, but then again the way they dealt with it was appalling.

Also thank you for the offers to colocate our server and offer a service whereby people / companies have contacted me since posting this thread. Unfortunately it is now too late, but nice to know people share a similar point of view.

Originally Posted by richardys

Never used Rapid Switch / 49 Pence, but did you expect him to have a lock-up somewhere with the packaging for every server that's colocated?

They use a lock-up as their data centre

I did personally, It got a blue palisade fence around it now, No matter how much you dress it up it still a industrial lockup.

Originally Posted by richardturpin

They have very cleverly put in them that they throw the packaging away, which was not there when we signed up with them. So when you try to cancel a contract and get your server collected you are in a tricky situation.

That's standard practice. If you consider the size of box your typical 1u comes in, times that by the number of boxes delivered, you'd need a box storage area at least twice the size of the DC and a method of tracking which boxes belong to who (along with problems of box 'squashage' and the associated risk of storing 1000's of cardboard boxes in the close vicinity of your DC.

Originally Posted by richardturpin

Also, never ever send them cash as a payment, they will email you back telling you that they do not take cash, it is uninsured and then refuse to guarantee the safety of it.

Never, ever, ever send cash, to any place, to any person, ever. This alone makes me wonder what planet you're on.

Originally Posted by richardturpin

They will also not seal the envelope or pack your server up for collection by a courier. Therefore rendering you to a 400 mile round trip to collect it. The same for the Server!

I can't understand why they wouldn't package your server (for a fee) and ship it for you (for a fee) along with all the relevant disclaimers (packaging, insurance against loss or damage, etc, etc). I'm with you on that.

Originally Posted by richardturpin

They have a smug, we do not care about your business attitude, and tbh I would never give them another penny of my business.

Couldn't comment on that as we've never used them.

Never, ever, ever send cash, to any place, to any person, ever. This alone makes me wonder what planet you're on.

Cash was sent so that the server payment would have been made on time, as to transfer to a card, would have taken about 3 days. I already accept that we made the error thinking that we would have been OK sending it, Special Delivery.

The due date was a Saturday, they got their payment on the Friday (cash) and as well again on the Saturday, when we had to pay by a Card as well because they refused point blank to accept the cash.

Originally Posted by richardturpin

Cash was sent so that the server payment would have been made on time, as to transfer to a card, would have taken about 3 days. I already accept that we made the error thinking that we would have been OK sending it, Special Delivery.

The due date was a Saturday, they got their payment on the Friday (cash) and as well again on the Saturday, when we had to pay by a Card as well because they refused point blank to accept the cash.

I'm not sure if they accept postal orders, but to be honest that sounds like a problem of your own making.