Right, I signed up for web space at One.com in February last year. It supposedly cost me £10 for the whole year, which I paid upon signing up. During December I was sent an email from One.com, stating that I owe them £22.77, presumably for next years services. I have two problems with this. First of all, I don't want another year with them, as I want to change host anyway. Secondly, why the hell do I have to pay £22.77, when it's only supposed to be around £10 per year? Today I was sent another email from them saying that I must pay by the 23rd January or I may incur additional charges. The reason I haven't paid yet is because I refuse to pay for something when I have no idea why I have to pay so much. So I want to know what my options are. Do I have to pay for another year or can I just change my host?
According to the website, the deal you had was only for the first year. This was free hosting with £9 setup fee. Now I don't see any mention of charges for the second year which seems a bit naughty. You can get better deals elsewhere anyway.
Looks like they put you on £1.90/mo package or similar. There is also the possibility that they put you on the £0.90 tariff and you owe them one year for the domain on top + vat?
Not to rub it in or anything but I use a friend for hosting both my site and sites i've designed (total of about 5 so far), he charges £30 per year and so far i've paid £30 for mine and i've had my site with him over 6 yr, and for the 4 or 5 other sites I may have paid 3 or 4 lots of £30's for the first year. I reckon between all the sites for however many years they total, I think I must owe him in excess of £300.
I think it's an introductory offer - you had a cheap first year, and then the price went up. They're betting for the difference that you won't be bothered enough to change providers.
That looks to be the case. I don't have an issue paying it to be honest, it was just a bit unexpected.
Recommend with web hosting you retain registration control of your own domain names. If you decide not to renew on a price-hiking host, it makes it much easier to move away from them. Web hosting makes zero money unless you have thousands of sites, as any joker with a web server can run a hosting company, and most of them are just that. UKREG and 123reg are both ridiculously cheap registrars, and you don't have to buy a new domain to open an account, and transfer your domain in.
Ask them to explain what this payment is for and for what period they are covering, from their reply you can get the answer to your question
I contacted them with this: I got this back: So I guess I'll have to stay with them another year but make sure I cancel earlier next time.
At this point, you should stay with them, and once the domain fee is up to date, request they transfer the domain to your own personal control panel. Just sign up for a free account with ukreg.com or 123reg (its £8 a year for a .com, so not bad) and get them to send it to you.
I wouldnt of paidi tbh, they have no right to do that afaik, i would of simply not paid but got a new host and transfered my domain accross. They cant force you to stay with them as they have done.
Yes, they can, as they hold the domain name renewal on his behalf if nothing else, and he agreed to 35 days of notice if cancelling (even if just like the rest of us, he never bothered to read the T&Cs and got caught out by them).
Yes they do, as one.com them selves don't register the domain, ICANN do (for .com domains at least) so on or around the 12th of December one.com would have paid ICANN for the renewall of the domain, so if you then don't pay the renewal fee one.com are out of pocket. It may seem a bit cheeky to assume you want to renew, but imagine if it was the other way and you had to ask for the domain to be renewed. A lot more domains would expire without renewal and go into quarantine. Once a domain is in quarantine it tends to cost a lot more to renew than the standard renewal fee, so there would be a lot more pissed off customers. To be honest the whole domain name registration system is a mess, and is the biggest headache for my hosting business, but that's the way it works.
I guess that's fair enough. I would have prefered it if they had send me an email or contacted me before the renewal so I knew what was going on.
