Just a personal piece of advice not to use ukhost4u.com. I have just received some email from them with some discount, but I would not touch them with a barge pole.
The reason why is that a while ago I needed a service to do various email spam and virus scanning and forwarding tasks after an ISP we were using (port995.com) were having problems. I called up to confirm that the service offered could do the tasks required. The guy on the sales line checked with the technical guy, and I was told that there service would do what I needed, so I went ahead and ordered the service and paid a little extra for support.
When it came to setting up the service I could not figure out how to do it and contacted the support service. I was told (eventually) that the service could not in fact scan an email and froward it on as required. When I complained I was told that the person I asked about the service misunderstood the requirement and had asked the technical guy the wrong question.
As they had admitted they had given me incorrect information before I took out the service, and that they admitted that it was a communication problem between there employees that caused this, I asked for a refund. I was told that refunds are not given but I could contact the owner, that I did, and did not get a response.
Sadly I am not alone in experiencing bad service. More bad reviews can be found on reviewcentre.com.
Update: After this blog entry I eventually for a businesslike response from Paul Hughes, only 13 months late, stating that they welcome comments positive or negative. No refund though. :-)
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Also had problems with these jokers – or should that be “this joke” – I’m convinced it’s just one guy operating out of his bedroom. Tried to transfer a domain away from them for easier maintenance and had nothing but trouble – and still not got the domain away. They (he?) now claim the domain has expired, despite a whois (and godaddy.com) indicating it’s still locked and with them. Awful.
Yes; I too have had a problem.
They are unable to communicate within their company – now they have royally messed up, and refuse to give a refund… so I am taking the matter up with my credit card company.
I have to say that I disagree of recently. Since the new web site has launched and new staff have been employed I have seen a major improvement in service. I have been a customer for over a year now and for the small amount a month I pay, I could not be more happy.
I must say with the extra and new staff of recent there has been a major change though!
Miss Holdway
I have to say that I disagree of recently. Since the new web site has launched and new staff have been employed I have seen a major improvement in service. I have been a customer for over a year now and for the small amount a month I pay, I could not be more happy.
I must say with the extra and new staff of recent there has been a major change though!
Miss Holdway
Obviously, the last poster was someone from UKHost4U
Our site went down again today for the umteenth time!
They are cheap sure but as the old adege goes 'you get what you pay for'…Rubbish
I've been with UKhost4U for about just over a year and host quite a few of my clients accounts with them. I've always had great and useful service any time I've had cause to call (usually just gain some information rather than because of a fault).
I find the sites I host with them to be speedy (unlike some others I've tried) with minimal down time.
I think the trouble with blogs like this is that people generally only put finger to keyboard when something is wrong and seldom when everything is rosey, which is most of the time. We don't live in a perfect work and anyone who thinks we do is a little misguided.
My experience is that most companies, in general, try to do their best by their clients but nobody is perfect – are they – and only a fool would expect them to be.
When reading complaints such as these is always wise to remember your only hearing one side of the story and to keep an open mind. Chances are that the people working at these companies are probably never going to see these blogs and will not have the opportunity put their side of the case.
Oh and before anyone accuses me of working for UKhost4U – I do not, nor do I work for any other company of a similar nature.
Jo Dalry
Thank you for the comment Jo. I always like a good rounded response to anything I write on my blog. The problem is that you posting now with no real reason for you to read this old article makes it seem that you ate a representative of ukhost4u and now who you claim to be. Would you consider posting a link to your site and perhaps some of your clients so we can validate what you say and insure your comments are taken at face value.
I myself have been with UKHost4U for several years and I've gotta say I agree with Jo completely. I've always found both their services and support to be excellent. I'm surprised that you weren't offered a refund given that they had admitted responsibility but in my experience that is not indicative of their usual behaviour.
As this seems obligitory to be taken seriously; I will confirm that I am not employed by nor am I affiliated with UKHost4U. One of my many websites hosted with them is black country caravans if you'd like to validate this (although I'm not sure how you would…?).
It's interesting that positive remarks always get accused of being written by the company in question, but noone ever suggests that negative comments / posts could be written by competitors.
Thanks for your feedback Stephen. It is clear that the site you mention and another site registered to yourself is hosted by UKH4U, so I can take your comments at face value.
I confess I am more dubious of positive than negative comments because of why they come in. If I have trouble with a service then I hit the search engine to see if I am alone. I rarely do this for services that I do not have a problem with. Naturally I do come across services that have done well for me and I comment positively as you have done here.
I do get a lot of comments on my blog from companies blatantly trying to get a link to there competing service, and I do tend to treat these as spam and remove them, but in all honesty the server market is so crowded at the moment I seriously doubt UKH4U would be targeted by a competitor trying to disparage them. They are just not important enough.
Please note that I have not deleted any comments here and I merely suggest that not leaving a comment anonymously will give your words more credibility.
I have to agree with Alistair, UKhost4u are small fry, and it would not be worth the time and effort writing bad reviews about them. My experience is that the owner is quite capable of sinking the company himself. I am also aware of a review posted by the owner on various review sites. It was at a time before he realised he should not use his own name!
I have found UKhost4u provide very poor uptime. When a cancelled my trial subscription, the owner still took the money from my Paypal, and refused to refund. In the end Paypal refunded the money after I went through the dispute resolution process.
The reason why I would leave a bad review is because I don't trust the owner, and I found his service to be below standard.
In the world where everything is online, and especially when dealing with Internet savvy customers, the last thing a business should do is make the client feel ripped off.
I run an Internet business, and realise that the answer to negative publicity is not to spend hours writing good review for yourself, or wondering whether the competition is making up bad reviews, but to look at the bad reviews as a key to understanding what will make the business better.
I have had a mixed bag experience with UKHost4U. At first we had problems and very bad communication with their support team. We were running three hosting sites as a pilot to see which one we would choose. the other two were Fasthosts and Network Solutions.
We had issues, bad issues at times and in the end we choose UKHost4U as the best of a bad bunch. However, as we worked around issues and worked with the support team things got better and better.
We have been with them for four years now and yes there are issues and problems occasionally but their customer support response has just been impressive. I cannot say anything other than that. The team are friendly, they are helpful and, most importantly, on occasion when one member has got something wrong or not quite right another member of the support staff have corrected such issue promptly.
I understand the complaints about hosting provision. My God our other two choices of pilot were a truly awful experience. In addition I am currently fighting with Virgin media to get a service installed and their customer service is an incarnation of one of the layers of the abyss. I am sick to the back teeth of being treated badly by so called customer support. Hanging's not good enough for most of them but that, in all honesty, is not how I feel about UKHost4u.
Jack of HumanRightsTV
I am coming back again on this issue of blogs and slagging off provisions because i think it is right that mostly only people with bad experiences go to the trouble of logging their complaint.
I also think that there are many times when we the customers must be a right pain in the arse to people providing services. I must admit that when i see people choosing Windows Business models then I just think they ask for all the problems they are inevitably going to get. But this is my point and I will stress it again.
Yes, I have had issues with UKHost4U, yes I have had problems with my service BUT (and it is a really big but) as we have worked through these issues and established a relationship I cannot say that I can get a better service elsewhere (and I have run other test models).
Further, I would actually say that the customer service I receive now is just perfect. I am very, very happy with how we communicate and also they are actually 98% of the time responding with real impressive speed.
So what my point is I suppose is that as customers we have high expectations of receiving this service, this response or that response. We often berate (I know I am guilty of this) services when they don't snap to attention when I need them. But in the real world we are all doing one job or another, other than the outright criminals nobody actually wants to perform badly. So here in blog world we can complain and slag off services without any real exercise of balance or judgement. As an historian by training and practice I know the importance of rigour and sources, blogs have neither.
They are simply matters of opinion.
The fact that I have taken my time to come back here and write again, especially as we suffered a huge dropout yesterday, is my expression of my faith in UKHost4U. And believe me guys, if I didn't have good experience WORKING WITH them then I would be out here nailing their arses to the nearest cross.
Jack Adams
Founder and Project Leader
HumanRightsTV
Thank you for your exceptionally prompt reply to my comment.
I accept that feedback on blogs is not made of customers with great experiences of a product. Although as you own comments prove – this is not entirely the case. The negative comments made by customers only scratch of the surface of the real number of awful experiences. This is not just ukhost4u, but many other companies.
I am pleased your experience has been better than most, and with only one major drop out over the last week – this seems a much better experience that I had. I don't agree that all the negative reviews are demanding customers, just people who want honesty and transparency.
To add to my own previous comment, I would like to draw attention to the following positive review for ukhost4u written by David Paul Hughes of http://www.hughes.eu.com;
http://yfrog.com/j3davidpaulsreviewofukhosp
The owner of ukhost4u is Paul Hughes, who also owns http://www.hughes.eu.com!
This is just one reason why I do not trust ukhost4u or any positive reviews about it.
I administer a small specialist forum and have had problems with spam comments using UKHost4u IPs for the past 3 months.
No response from the company when I complained. Consequently have blocked their entire IP range.
I have just signed up at this company so I will let you know how they are both technically, and in terms of support.
We have used over 10 companies in the last 7 years, so it will be interesting to see how this one compare’s.
In terms of reviews, you cant really tell either way.
Likewise, technical and non-technical people are going to face different problems even at the same company.
I am also a forum admin, who has just IP banned ukhost4u due to the volume of spam and abuse from their IPs. I found this blog by googling ukhost4u forum spam and this and the rest of the results show I made the right decision.
I have had continuing problems with spam from a particular IP allocated to ukhost4u – 188.64.185.65
No response from the company to complaints. I consider that to be a measure of the company as a whole.
Googling the IP shows that many other people have had the same problem. Google also brought me here. Don’t support spam don’t use ukhost4u !
In the midst of a nightmare with UKHOSTS4U – they wanted £12 to transfer a domain out (a bit steep but not too much of a problem) so paid it, turns out they never had the domain and have been billing us for registration for the last two years! It’s become fairly obvious that this is a one man band reseller – AVOID AT ALL COSTS
And nothing has changed. They are still as close as you can get to being crooked without actually trading illegally. But, the sooner they are made bankrupt – since they are a sole trader, not a limited company – the better!
Please note the details on this comment are fake and it was posed from UKHost4u.
I have been nothing but happy with the service provided by UKHost4u. They have always been very friendly and have actually taken the time to fix issues with my web site code which would have normally have cost money and a developers time.
Unlike other providers I have used the telephone calls are answered and most emails that I have sent in have had a reply within 1hr which is much better than the 48hrs that my last provider took to even advise me that it had been assigned to support.
I understand some people here don’t seem to have been happy with them, but I think they will find a lot of much worse providers and when you go with someone with NO telephone support, 48hrs email reply times and 80% MAX up time you will be more than happy to use UKHost4u.
I’ve long suspected that UKHOSTS4U is just one very rude incompetent person pretending to be lots of other rude incompetent people.
The service I’ve received is dreadful and has been for ages. “His” billing process is downright awful and consistently rips me off, gets itself in a knot and then shuts down my site, despite having already charged me in advance.
Nothing about this service is good.
My experience leads me to think that anybody who provides positive feedback is either running the business or simply hasn’t yet run into the inevitable problems. I am very confident that they will and convinced that when this happens their life will be made a misery for an extended period.
Do yourself a huge favour and avoid these (pretend) people like the plague.