I set up my own website a few months back, and originally went with Streamline.net for the hosting. The package seemed to have everything I wanted, and as i was using Joomla to create the site, .htaccess and the Mod_rewrite command was a feature that was very important to me. I found no mention of it in the sales blurbs on their sites, but did find an article regarding .htaccess, and more specifically Mod_rewrite, within their knowledgebase: http://www.streamlinesupport.net/index.php?page=show&id=33 http://www.streamlinesupport.net/index.php?page=show&id=130 As these articles did not mention that the feature was NOT available on their Linux servers, I decided to speak to one of their sales team, and was assured that the feature was available on all their servers. So I ordered, and felt quite chuffed that I had got a pretty decent deal. That lasted for oh, around an hour. I uploaded my site on to the server, set the Mod_rewrite function to on in the Joomla backend, and guess what? No friggin go!! So called the support line, to be told that .htaccess is in fact NOT available on the Linux servers, I then sent a support ticket to Streamline. Here's how the conversation went: So I called the number to find an auotmated system, and selected the relevant option (you guys know the drill) and boy is this department hard to get a hold of! I spent around 80 minutes in total in trying to reach the cancellation team. So I have had to pay for 80 minutes worth of calls, and lost 80 minutes of my time too at work. By this time I was getting slightly peeved (well, more than I already was!!). So I decided to open another support ticket and see if that got a response. It did, but not the response I was looking for: The exchange of ticket replies went on for some time, and every one of their replies falied to acknowledge that I had been mis-sold the package. They then resorted to using canned responses, and they never once answered my questions regarding why I had been told that .htaccess was available on their Linux servers, and the knowledgebase did indicate that it was available. So I never managed to cancel the contract with them. They are still charging the monthly fee to my credit card every month, for a service that I have never been able to use. I have taken it up with my credit card company, and the matter is still ongoing, so if you are looking for hassle free and honest website hosting...........stay clear of Streamline.Net!!!
why not cancel the direct debit on your credit card????? they wont be able to take anymore funds from you and cancel the contract!
I was told by the CC company that as a contract had been entered into, they couldn't cancel the payment unless there had been some wrongdoing or breach of contract. As I am claiming this is the case, I have to wait until the cc company has looked into it. Seems like they are dragging their heels over it all though, as it's been a while and I have just had a payment made on the card today It's not direct debit on the credit card , direct debit is where the money comes from a bank account.
I've used these people before and while they worked fine for me...for others not so much. For example there 3 month trial is it? Seems pretty good deal, but you have to send a support ticket to cancel it, else they will put you on the £100/year contract assuming you want it. However they expect you to send a cancel ticket, and then they ask you to confirm, so you have to reply....most people fire one off and forget then get charged some £100 in 2 months later.... My experience, i was with them for 2 years, stop using them towards the end of the period, but the contract auto-renewed, fortunately, my CC was lost and so they havent been able to charge my account. However its still there for use (not that i have used it since), i told them i was not aware of the auto-nenew contract and politely told them i am not using their service nor will i be and would like to cancel. I was told, i must pay the outstanding amount £90 iirc and only then can they cancel. As i 'should have let them know of cancellation 30 days prior to renewal date'. Well i sent them a letter, didn't get a response, and seeing as they don't have any banking details i've just left it. Though i am worried in 2 years time they'll tell me i owe them £180 or something equally stupid for a service i have not used !
I was in the unfortunate position that Stickeh mentioned where they charged my card £100 without informing me, as I had forgotten the trial period had ended. As their T&C's deliberately make it as difficult as possible for you to cancel your account, it seems I'm stuck with them until the end of the renewal period. What's more is that I can't cancel my account now in advance, as I have to wait a year and hope I remember to send off a letter 30 days before the contract ends. Surely it shouldn't be this difficult to get a company to stop taking your money if you don't want them to? I wouldn't advise anyone else to use this company for their hosting if they make it this difficult to cancel your account.
Report your credit card lost/stolen - your cc company will have to close that account down and issue a new card. I had a similar thing when my card was cloned and was being used to buy things on the internet, and a transaction in china, when I used it at the same time here in Notts. One simple call and it all stopped. With continuious payments you have to re-instruct the cc company of the transactions that you still wish to poay from your cc. Regardless of this being a contract, you can advise that you have agreed this to come out of your personal/business account, but agaion you dont have to tell them this. The CC company regardlesss have no contractual obligation to send this host the funds from your CC. If that fails, follow the CC complaint procedure, request a copy of your T+C's to show that any agreement made between yourself and a third party for funds to be paid via your card have to be honoured
I don't have a credit card, the funds were taken out of my debit account so I don't have any protection in that regard. Nevertheless, my card expires at the end of next month so they'll have trouble charging it again next year so I'll probably just not bother updating by card details. However, I'll probably then be in the position where I'll owe them money, because according to their T&C's I'm still in contract with them unless I explicitly state otherwise in a letter. I'll try to get hold of them on their cancellation line tomorrow, but from the sounds of it I doubt I'll have any luck.
Hey Stu, Try this number instead; 01452 561801 Should be free if you have bundled 'free local calls' with your phone provider. If not, it should still be cheaper!
I've had a similar situation with joker.com recently.. they refused to do a transfer until i had renewed my domain with them. Even with me telling them that i WOULD renew the domain with them if they accepted my f*** card (after about 15 canned-response mails in as many words) or a direct debit from my bank... got it sorted eventually, but it was an uphill battle.
What an absolute load of utter bollocks - that reply doesn't even make any kind of sense, and their knowledge base implicitly states that mod_rewrite features via .htaccess are available. My guess is that mod_rewrite does work and there will be a way to get your .htaccess file to work. Feel free to post a thread in the software forum (dev tag) and between us we can probably solve it edit: a bit of googling suggests people are using mod_rewrite/.htaccess successfully using Streamline linux servers!
Thanks for the offer of help with the problem, I really appreciate that. I have moved the site and domain over to a new host now, and everything is fine now there. The new hosting package is costing me a little more, but I done some homework on the new hosts this time and they have been great so far. It's frustrating knowing that streamline won't acknowledge that they have made the error, or do anything to resolve the issue, other than letting the contract expire (and probably hoping that I forget to put the cancellation request in at the right time too, so they can wangle another 12 months out of me!!). I say error, but I feel as if I have been purposely misled just so they can rack up another sale. I have been reading up on streamline today and they have a very bad reputation, with a very large number of disgruntled customers. I did get in touch with Trading Standards some time ago, but never followed it up. After hearing about the experiences of others, both on this forum and elsewhere, I definitely will be tomorrow. I can't stress enough how arrogant and unhelpful they have been towards me.
Streamline are absolutely aweful. They give no notification that their '3 month trial' (which isn't really a trial at all, more of a '3 months free' kind of thing) is coming to an end, so unless you're really paying attention they just bill you. Without sending any notification of that either. Oh yeah, they also automatically put you onto the highest level of service and bill you for 2 years in one go. They give canned responses to every question, pointing blindly back to their ridiculous t&cs and refuse to make even small consessions to the customer. I tried to cancel due to their non-communication about billing me, and they refused. I tried to get them to downgrade me to an account level that I might actually use, they didnt actually refuse to do this, but they did say they wont refund the difference. So many other people are having problems with them, and I think trading standards are well aware of what theyre up to, but once theyve taken your money it seems almost impossible to get it back
I love hosting companies.. bounced around 20 or so of them by now, finally settled down with Dreamhost and been pretty content. Hopefully you get your stuff sorted, gotta love it when they make canceling a real pain in the ass.
Oh God, don't get me started on streamline's hosting, I used to resell for them, so would actually be taking the complaints myself, and considering back then I was only hosting for about 10 clients, there was a lot of complaints, and so much bloody downtime! The reason they suck so hard is that they actually re-sell for fasthosts, who them selves are God awful. The thing that really pissed me off about streamline is that their mysql servers aren't on local host, so every call to a database took a hell of a lot longer than it should... I also had to pay for an extra year of hosting because they never told me that hosting would be billed 2 weeks before the expiry date, I was planning to cancel, but by the time I got round to it they'd already billed me and refused to refund it. So yeah, If I were you I'd take it to higher authorities, get your money back and then avoid Streamline like aids.
Bit of a thread revival here Well after 6 months the cheeky bleeders are still trying to take payment on my credit card. I called the credit card company way back in October, and told them I had *lost* my card. It was the only way I could stop payments to Streamline. So ever since then, they have tried taking payment every month on the cancelled card. Anyways, when I got the latest failed payment notice this morning, it really pissed me off. There are now 7 statements that they have generated that haven't been paid. They have repeatedly refused to cancel the contract, even though I was given incorrect information at the time of entering into the contract, and are playing silly buggers with the canned responses to the support tickets. To rub salt in, I found a sentence in their email extremely friggin untrue!! I wish they friggin well would hurry up and discontinue it - 7 months should be more than enough surely??? EDIT: I have just noticed that the account is up for renewal in 10 days, so am currently sat here on the phone to them (been on hold for 5 mins already now), and I am going to see what they say.
I am very fortunate to work with a local Hosting company for the last year or so. They've provided nothing but outstanding service, are very competitivley priced, and have been helpful with every single query I've had for them, even at 2AM (literally) on a Saturday morning.
stuartpb; I've had the exact same experience from streamline. Assumed after the year it would cancel rather than automatically re-bill, but i started getting failed payment emails as luckily my card had been lost, so at least they couldn't claim any money! I told them i wish to cancel but apparently you have to do that BEFORE the renewal date, so if i wish to cancel now, i have to pay them the outstanding amount and THEN cancel. What made it worse was the price had gone up! In the end I sent a letter telling them to cancel, i will not be paying anymore etc, never had a reply, but never got bugged again.....except for advertising emails for their services...
