Thread: Problems switching hosts

A friend of mine has got a website for his shop. He was talked into getting it built by some charlatans called Bath Business Web.

Basically, they charged him £600 to modify a template with his logo, some photos and a bit of text. They then charge him £600 per year to keep it updated (which they don't actually do as he hasn't given them any new info), to link to it from their site, and to do a bit of SEO stuff.

I told him it is a con and I will build him a much better site for nothing.

So, they got in touch the other day to ask for next year's cheque. He phoned them today to say he didn't want to renew. As you may have guessed, that was not the end of it...

First, they told him he would lose his URL. I checked WHOIS and found it is registered in his name, so it belongs to him. Now the problem is getting it from them.

They want a £25 admin fee to release the domain - sounds like nonsense to me.

Also, they said he is already 2 months into the next year so they want £100. But he hasn't signed anything saying he wanted to renew!

Where does he stand legally? Can I demand to get his domain released? He doesn't have a Control Panel login or any FTP details, as they rather cunningly kept all this to themselves.

Any advice gratefully received.

Thanks Pete.

I cannot copy the site across as he has no FTP details for it!

It's not a problem as the site is awful and a bit of downtime while I rebuild from scratch is not an issue.

How can I pull the domain across to new hosting though? I know it's something to do with DNS servers but if the old hosts aren't playing ball I am not sure how I can bypass them.

it's a .co.uk

It's really hard to say without knowing the companys legal stand point, we haven't got a clue what they might have written into the contract?

Only things i can think of that you can try to do from here is..

1) Get legal advice from a solicitor to find out the exact contract details, most will give you an hours free consultation and £25 to write a scary letter but you have to be in the right, you could also contact your local citizens advice, they have free buisness lawyers that offer free advice.

2) If all those points you mention are written in a contract you could try offering to pay the £125 as long as they can give you ftp and dns access, but you'll need to see where you stand about transferring the domain from there, some domains need a eps code to be abled to transfer them.

3) Let the domain time out and then rebuy it at a later date.

4) Buy another domain name thats similar and set up new hosting and website from scratch. (Then buy back the orginal domain after it times out)
I'm guessing that he's not getting the business leads that he's paying for being listed on there, so would it be that great a loss starting completely afresh ? Would be much cheaper and less time consuming too.

Solicitors with good knowledge of web services contract can help you. However actual contract signed as Experienced one's say here is a good option but this is lengthy procedure however I will recommend to get the domain released first as that is something very much important here..................