Why not to use UK2.net

Updated: UK2.net 2 years on on 10/11/2006

Some years ago I received a birthday present in the shape of a domain name. That was when www.elfden.co.uk was born. At the time it was purchased through uk2.net because they were relatively cheap.

Everything went well, for a while, and I extended the domain name to a small hosting package as well. That was when the trouble began. The package lacked various little things like cgi and php. But at the time that wasn’t a problem.

Then came a time when I wanted to move the site. Despite the lack of fax machines in most peoples homes, they wanted a fax. Although we have several PC’s in the house, not one of them had any fax software. I scoured the web and eventually found something that sufficed and sent the fax. I was transferring my domain and hosting to UKWSD (UK Web Solutions Direct). Although the DNS took a while to be transferred, it all went reasonably well.

From there the trouble started! When I wasn’t even a customer anymore!

I was being sent their members newsletters. I tried to unsubscribe, but to do that you had to be a member, i.e. have an account with them. Of course my details had been deleted, and I couldn’t access anything.

I emailed them. Apart from the auto-replies, I didn’t receive anything. Then the following month, another newsletter. So I emailed again, adding in all the email addresses I could think of at the time. Finally a reply, yes they would remove me from their list.

3 months later I received another newsletter.

I started the cycle of emails again.

This same thing happened every few months. Then by the beginning of this year I had had enough. In March over the course of 3 days I received a total of 63 automated responce emails from them, following my attempt to contact them once again. I made a complaint to Trading Standards and sent the following email to them:

To: abuse@uk2.net
CC: stopabuse@uk2.net; abuseisp@uk2.net; postmaster@uk2.net; root@uk2.net; sales@uk2.net; support@uk2.net
Subject: I am being spammed from yourselves.

Dear sirs,

Once again I have been added to your apm list despite repeated requests that
I be removed permanently. I was a customer of yours, but have not been for
several years. Every time you send me one of these ‘spam’ email I have
complained, and my email address has eventually been removed for a short
time, but it appears you are not honouring these removals.

You are in breach of the ‘Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC
Directive) Regulations 2003’ and i would like to formally request that my
email address be completely removed from your system.

Also as you are a UK company I would like to formally request that you send
details of how I can obtain from yourselves a full copy of all information
you hold about myself on your computers. This is in regard to the Data
Protection Act, and I trust this matter will be dealt with quickly.

Thank you for your time

Rich Pedley

Although no reply was received the emails, and so far the newsletters have ceased.

Hopefully this article will not be continued…

Updated: UK2.net 2 years on on 10/11/2006

This entry was posted in Rants, UK2. Bookmark the permalink.

272 Responses to Why not to use UK2.net

  1. Don larson says:

    I have uk2 for a year no problems ! But since febuary the bullshit started ! live chat yea right half the time don;t work or they just don’t answer as for tickets ! another bunch of garbage ! I have submitted over 8 tickets on several problems average responce time 8 days to answer ! was paying three different accounts all three websites where off line for 3 days due to paying them !! there customer service and care are shit !!! they do not care about customers ! other issue ask for a customer complante department there is none !! they always say submit a ticket ! yea right I have had several tickets disapear from my ticket logs !! I am moving away from them they have cost me loss of revenue and loss time with programmers ! I also have hired an attorney to go after them for damages ! I can understand 24 to 48 hours on tickets it happens buy 8 days please they just don’t care !!

  2. D4WSE says:

    Hi, I just wanted to add my two pence here:

    1. UK2: They are truly diabolical, offering absolutely lousy support, lousy facilities and deliberately devious underhanded charges at every opportunity. Really,nasty, stay away.

    2. UKREG: They are just as bad if not worse! Unreliable services, hidden costs at every opportunity and a week ago they took money from my card without my request or authorisation. Their customer support truly stinks. Please stay away!!! UKREG are owned by Fasthosts, a company with one of the worst reputations in the biz. (Unless of course you read all of the BS reviews they themselves have placed around the net).

    I’m offering my opinion on over 10 years experience with both companies using a full range of their miserable services.

    AT first look they both appear to be good for the money, but they simply arn’t. What price do you put on your sanity?!

    Currently I now only have 1 domain with UK2 (thankfully) but 20 with UKREG… I’m looking to move the lot now I’m a bit older and wiser…

  3. David says:

    I’ve had a server with UK2 for 3 years plus, and admittely now it’s an old box and has been failing lot recently, after spending much of my time bugging Ditlev about the server to get fixed, I have now discovered that if you put your ticket for a server at critical they pretty much fix it within a couple of hours. I am now going to look into this 99.9% uptime SLA, as much as they have sorted stuff out recently, I do wonder how much is intervention by Ditlev, also looking at adverts for jobs as Techies, 22-26K in central london isn’t going to get them the highest calibre of people to look after there servers. I fear rebuild after rebuild in the near future!

  4. Paul Withers says:

    I started using UK2 (the worst web hosting company ever) a couple of weeks ago. Problems first started when I found that the sendmail function had been disabled. After several emails to UK2, requesting a resolution to this, they suggested using smtp. The setting were changed, but their smtp only allowed incoming mail not outgoing. After several more emailes to uk2, they stopped replying and no resolution was given. I then called them requesting a refund, which I was told I could not have as outside of the first 7 days. I advised them that this is incorrect and it is stated on their site that a full refund can be given only within this 7 days. I want my money back for all the months I paid for and haven’t used. After speaking to the rather rude customer service agent, I was told I would get a call back from a member on the 24/7 team. 2 days later I am still waiting, and after requesting a call back on their automated service, I am still waiting.

    DO NOT USE UK2.net, THEY ARE THE WORSE WEB HOSTING COMPANY EVER, WITH RUBBISH CUSTOMER SERVICE.

    I WILL BE REPORTING UK2.NET TO TRADING STANDARDS UNLESS THEY CALL ME TOMORROW. I WILL UPDATE THIS POST THEN.

  5. Dean Chapman says:

    Well, here’s my contribution.
    I have 6 domains on UK2 and have a bitter experience of their GOLD email service.
    Firstly, they can be very underhand at applying charges, best Idea is NEVER leave your credit card details for automated billing because they WILL automatically bill you for NEW services.
    Take for example the Catch-all forwarding, now whilst I don’t necessarily disagree with their reasons for restricting catch-all… It is a bit of a liberty AND a little shifty to add a DEFAULT of automatic billing for this new service without my prior agreement.
    UK2’S APPROACH HERE WAS, WE’LL MAKE ALL YOUR DOMAINS CATCH-ALL AT £4.99 PER MONTH AND AUTOMATICALLY BILL YOU UNLESS YOU TELL US NOT TO.
    Now come on – That must surely be illegal!

    Now on to UK2’s email… it’s been down all day so far – That is truly amazing for a live ISP that fancies a bit of credibility in the world.

    I moved my POP3 email onto http://WWW.FASTMAIL.COM a year ago because I was so pissed off with the unreliability of UK2 Email.
    Fastmail is absolutely brilliant. Their service never blipped in a year, their spam traps work 100 times better that UK2s, its fast and it’s cheap.

    My Fastmail account has just come up for renewal and 2 says ago, I thought… I wonder what UK2’s like now so I changed all my redirects to UK2 – What a mistake – Thanks a Bunch UK2!
    You are utterly crap – No email ALL DAY so far
    For POP3/IMAP email: UK2 vs FASTMAIL = UK2(CRAP) FASTMAIL(BEST EVER)

    UK2 – You are shameful excuse for a ‘Production’ IT Services Company

    UK2 – SORT IT OUT OR ABANDON YOUR SHAMEFUL EFFORTS AT ISP HOSTING AND TRY MANUFACTURING PLASTIC TOYS FOR CHRISTMAS CRACKERS INSTEAD!!

  6. Dean Chapman says:

    Just a little more ranting here:
    It is now DAY TWO of UK2 email services being down, their 0800 612 2142 helpline number is little help apart from STBO.
    And you know what, this is laughable, when signing on to my UK2 domain maintenance to redirect my email back to FASTMAIL… I get a nice little UK2 pop-up survey ‘Are you a happy UK2 Customer’ – Oh dear UK2, that’s poor timing isn’t it. It just illustrates the total lack of management and awarenes. Anyway I guess Service Delivery will get a fairly poor CSat result on that one then!

    Can someone explain to me how a Company such as UK2 can stay in business?

  7. Andy says:

    UK2 are at best tiresome, mostly abysmal. Their Opt-Out scam a few weeks ago on catch-all mail was borderline illegal in my opinion, and their mail servers have been down for over 24 hours now. Yesterday there was a message on the webpage saying the technical problem was being looked at, today mail.uk.net doesn’t even open it times out! What sort of company would have something as essential as mail servers offline for that amount of time? UK’s biggest internet host – more like UK’s biggest internet JOKE!

  8. Matthew Kyle says:

    Well 17:00 and email servers still down. Anyone know what is going on? A fire a bomb. Perhaps the wires melted with the volume of complaints. This is outrageous how can any business like yours and mine stay in business without access to email.
    Why the hell have they not got backup servers on a different site with automatic switchover.

  9. Dean Chapman says:

    Well, I’ve already redirected my emails back to fastmail, and very happy I am too. I can tell you also that I’m never ever going to renew or buy anything with UK2 again.
    Very interestingly UK2 said on the 0800 recorded Servicedesk message, that “They were working on it but no emails would be lost”
    Hmmm, now I’ve just been onto another UK2 email acount that should have 100+ emails it all seems to work OK but there are no emails. Are UK2 REALLY going to recover these?
    All I can say is:
    1. I’m glad I’m not a UK2 Systems Engineer… I’d be looking at my second night without sleep!
    2. UK2 Servicedesk have quite an easy life really and receive very few complaints – However that’s primarily because they never answer the sodding phone and their email system is knackered even if they did ever feel like looking at the incident queue!

    By the way, perhaps Richard Branson should by UK2 like he did NTL(hell) – He’d probably turn it around in no time. I’ll look forward to to VirginISP!

  10. Martin says:

    UK2 are useless. 2 days without webmail and then i log in to find all my folders empty! I’ve lost an important contract and work contacts. And they have made it deliberately difficult to switch off catch all automatic renewal for all your sites – i’ve just found my bank account debited for a service i don’t want in the slightest (it just dumps spam on me)… Who can i change my domain hosting/email to? I will never use UK2 again.

  11. UK2 have given me poor service and only bothered to answer 2 of the 5 mails I sent to them. The other 3 mails were carry ons from the first few. They said there is no ticket for the other mails…hmmm…
    So I found this site and mailed the MD, wow, it only took 3 days for him to pass my mail to his C/S team. Very poor, I’m a commercial business.
    Now my web site is down, that costs me money.

    I dont want to leave UK2 because of the problems in doing so, but I will monitor over the next year and kick them out if they asre still crap.

  12. Dean Chapman says:

    Martin, if you really RELY on email use Fastmail… no I don’t work for them, they’re just fab and fast. Alternatively, for full hosting, I did look at http://www.aconixhosting.com a whle ago but abandoned the switch ‘cos UK2 are such a right Royal pain in the arse to move away from. But I think the time has come to switch.. I remember being so impressed when aconix acalled me to discuss my enquiry email.
    I’d be interested on anyones experiences of aconix or any other alternative.

  13. The Bean says:

    Just saw this email in my old UK2 inbox…

    Dear Customer,
    Yesterday we had an unexpected and serious issue with the UK2 E-mail Service, which unfortunately left some customers with little or no e-mail access. etc etc etc..

    My comment on this is…
    From what I could see it seemed to leave ALL customers with NO ACCESS, furthermore it was not YESTERDAY but the DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY.
    Presumably the sender from UK2; Dan Spencer (Head of IT) would have deliberated over the wording for some time. Therefore why could he not get his facts straight?
    Cos their useless!

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  15. Andy says:

    Well, over two weeks on and some of my emails arrived, others disappeared into the ether for ever. I mailed myself from various other accounts and a few turned up but most disappeared. Annoyingly, their POP email doesn’t seem to be working now either! I can see my new messages if I go into their web mail, but when Outlook does a Send/Receive it doesn’t retrieve a sodding thing. And none of my settings have changed in the last week. Does anyone know how I can leave UK2 forever? I have read time and time again it is nigh on impossible, but to be quite frank I’m happy to pay – the amount of money their regular problems cost me in lost business is far greater than one last little payment they can eek out of me. I wish I’d never heard of UK2 – they truly are the worst company I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with.

  16. Martin says:

    1st a shameful 48 hours outage… 2nd all historic webmail deleted. Now, no incoming mails for 24hrs. I’ve emailed myself several times both from UK2’s webmail and from Mozilla – nothing. I’m still awaiting an email from myself titled ‘UK2 are a f***ing joke’ but it hasn’t shown up yet. Why can’t this company do anything right? I’ve lost a couple of regular clients because of inability to respond to emails in time to meet deadlines… I’m struggling to run my business due to UK2.

  17. Andy says:

    Saw this yesterday: http://www.andycrawford.net/UK2.net-Domain-hosting.htm.

    Todays problems. NOTHING WORKS!!! No mail.uk2.net, no uk2.net homepage. No nothing. Nada! I’m transferring out of UK2 today, Lock, Stock & Barrel. I don’t care how long it takes, how awkward they make it, how much it costs and how much down time I have as a result.

    I think that the people here so far who have lost business, money & countless hours of out time should consider group legal action against this pitiful company.

    Andy

  18. Martin says:

    Good call Andy. We should get a group together and take legal action. My work has ground to a halt because of UK2 and I’m losing money. This is beyond a joke – I’ve not been able to download a single incoming mail for 3 days now. Ditlev did offer to transfer my domains to another ISP free of charge – so email him asap (assuming you can, that is).

  19. Barry SHort says:

    I’m shocked at how crap UK2 have been. I am changing to Blackfoot.co.uk as recomemnded by other people. This is tha final straw…. As with everyone on here… no E mail now for a week and Lost history E mails all resulting in a complete loss of work, as yet I don’t know the financial damage UK2 has caused me, but when I find out, I WILL be seeking compensation.! Run Forset Run…….

  20. How on earth do these problems with UK2 continue? They repeatedly fail to deliver and lurch from one catastrophe to another. The answer is, the abysmal quality of staff, starting at the top! Perhaps they simply don’t care – we are only their customers and, a minority – they foolishly believe. Think again, UK2, before it’s too late, and you’re all thrown out on the scrap heap with the rest of life’s failures.

    Why not employ someone who has a verifiable background and suffiently experienced to handle their responsiblities efficiently?

    Were you to operate efficiently just imagine the financial gains. You would need less staff to respond to customers’ queries and, you would not need to advise customers to telephone you on premium telephone lines at 50 pence per minute!

  21. Grant says:

    Is something happening at UK2 – are they going Bust ?

    Below is a transcript of my trouble ticket with them after buying a domain name for 50 4 Days ago.

    I tried phoning Billing but they said they would get someone to phone me back but of course – no-one did

    Grant(me) Says – SUBJECT: Newly Re-Purchased Domain Name not getting Registered – URGENT I may lose it !!
    As above really for the xxx.org Registration
    I held this domain with you for a couple of years but it fell into redemption and was lost.
    It has now become available again & I purchased from you for 50 on Sat 9th June.
    This domain is still showing as available – you have not registered it for me – I may lose it.
    Your Invoice number xxxxxx.
    Please don’t force me to lose it again.
    Thanks

    Darren (UK2):Hi Grant.
    This order has been successfully completed. Is this still causing an issue for you?
    Thank you.

    Grant:Hi Darren
    Ref: xxx.ORG
    Please explain which part of (“This domain is still showing as available – you have not registered it for me – I may lose it.”) do you not understand.
    This Domain name is still showing as available to purchase on other sites & whois shows it as unregistered – it has not been registered as owned by me.
    Please advise me ASAP

    Darren :Hi Grant.
    The WHOIS I see shows Domain Status: Registered And No Website

    Grant:Hi Darren
    I am really lost for words – please try and help me resolve this situation.
    Has UK2 Net debited my card for your – Invoice xxxxx
    has the xxxx.ORG Domain that this invoice was meant to purchase now been REGISTERED BY UK2 TO ME, or is it already registered to someone else?
    Why is this Domain showing as available on all of the domain registration websites that I query.
    Thanks

    Darren :Hi Grant.
    I’ve passed this on to my senior who will be in contact with Joker to request what is happening with the registration.

    I say is this the way to run a Business ? or are they stalling me till they anounce they’ve gone bust?

  22. Matthew Kyle says:

    I’m afraid it is probably just the useless service of UK2.

    If your registration hasn’t gone through then DON’T DO IT. Register your domain with someone else. You would very soon discover that UK2 cannot provide any sort of service what so ever. It will also cost you twice as much to transfer your domain away from UK2 when you discover how bad it is than it cost to register in the first place.

  23. Peter says:

    All my webmail was recovered in the May/June outage. Problem was that only a handful of trusted friends have my uk2.net address for personal messages. Business mail goes to mydomain.co.uk and that was bouncing.I was getting very annoyed that support didn’t seem to understand that there was any issue other than webmail.

    Apart from that I really thought that they had turned the corner in the last 12 months. The ticket system actually seems to work these days and a low priority query today was turned around in 25 minutes.

  24. UK2 now blacklisting its own cutomers?

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/07/05/uk2_net_blacklists_its_own/

    You couldn’t make it up, Mike (UK2 escapee)

  25. Frustrated says:

    I have been with UK2 for years and have had nothing but problem, after problem after problem. I thought it was just me but obviously this company is treating all it’s customers the same, basically like they couldn’t care less about them. It’s like ‘OK, we’ve got you money now, you don’t like the cr*p service? Tough. We don’t care.’

    Thing is in typical British fasion, I moan about it quietly, but do nothing about it. And I expect that is what 99% of UK2’s customers do, they just accept the awful service. If we all took action, UK2 would cease to exist over night.

  26. Steve says:

    Just found your blog through a search for uk2 – was thinking of using them based on their website – called them up and spoke to someone in sales. As I’m looking for two managed servers for my company, it’s a little bit more than a simple request, and you expect to be handled appropriately.

    I talked through my basic requirements, leaving pauses expecting the representative to start selling… Nothing. Eventually I stopped talking, and the chap pipes up with:
    “You haven’t actually aksed (sic) me a question”.

    Needless to say I hung up straight away, and did a quick google to check other experiences. Definitely won’t be using them! 😀

  27. Designer Dude says:

    Hi from the Design World! I came across your blog posting after searching for domain name registration cheap web site hosting website and your post on Why not to use UK2.net makes an interesting read. Thanks for sharing. I will research more next Friday when I have the day off.

  28. Wah says:

    If anyone actually wants UK2 to take notice of your complaints post here with a review of how bad they’ve treated you. They will take notice if their reputation is at stake on the most popular webhosting forum on the internet.

    http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1

  29. Rich says:

    Wah,

    believe me UK2.net have taken notice of the comments on here.

  30. I thought UK2.NET were cheap, but they are not when you just want to point your domain name elsewhere because if you dont pay 10 per year on top of your registration cost they put an HEADER and a POPUP! on your site.. Others dont do this like easily.co.uk and works out cheaper 9.99 a year and that includes VAT and no headers or popups. UK2.NET advertise without the VAT!

    check out what i mean by going to my site http://www.simmtek.com

  31. Pete says:

    I have lost the will to even be bothered to repeat the events that I have had with uk2.net. 🙁
    I have 4 client domains with the “company” and want to move them all to a REAL host biased in the uk, with mysql/php/perl/cgi webspace pop3 and cpanel etc, budget of 100.00 or less per year, and technical support where you can dial a phone number (thats not a 0900 0.50 per min to a Nigerian who can barely speak a word of English let alone understand the SIMPLE… support issue) and speak to an ENGLISH support person who can actually help you. Any suggestions anyone?

    I was also wondering what the procedure is for moving domains away from uk2.net, is there anything that should be taken into consideration before locking yourself out of your own domains when trying to move? (and shortening your life expectancy explaining the obvious being a mediator between old+new host)

    A “How to move your domain from uk2 Guide” should be created, this is what many people are looking for, with explanation of joker.com and joker handles, can Nominet still transfer the tag for a fee etc.

    I have to say that anyone looking to purchase a domain with UK2.NET should LOOK ELSEWHERE. UK2.NET couldnt give half a crap about there customers, and it has been like this since I first discovered them in 6 years ago, nothing has changed.

    Keep up the good work Andy

  32. joanne says:

    Well I hope that you have found a better webhost lately.
    They shouldn’t be spamming you with rubbish and not answering your calls – not professional.

  33. Sean C says:

    Hi all,

    I have had similar problems to many posters here over the years. I have 10+ domains registered with Uk2 going back 7 years during which time I have suffered some infuriating issues relating to customer support and how UK2 has handled email failures etc.

    My main domain for which I have webspace with UK2 is the hub of my retail business all my business email addresses use this domain address and are forwarded to a BT/Yahoo POP3 account.

    Twice this year forwarding has failed for a number of days at a time. It has also happened in the past as many others have experienced. UK2 servers being blacklisted for spam being an example of an excuse more recently they blamed the halting of the catch-all system with customer support saying that it was Aug 23rd when it was finaly stopped this was in reply to my last forwarding problem dated 8th Nov it started working a few days later.

    Right now and over the last 3 days, in the christmas shopping run up that is so critical to my business all email forwarding to anything@mydomain.co.uk (over 7 years old so very busy with emails) is not being delivered and after initialy not even being bounced back with delivery failed for the first day or two emails are now being bounced with failure notice and an Error 550.

    EG:

    Hi. This is the qmail-send program at yahoo.com.
    Im afraid I wasnt able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
    This is a permanent error; Ive given up. Sorry it didnt work out.

    :
    83.170.81.160 does not like recipient.
    Remote host said: 550 relay not permitted
    Giving up on 83.170.81.160.

    All sales enquiries and direct orders from my ecom website use this email address not to mention all my business associates, existing customers, advertising etc etc. Needless to say, the situation is extremely damaging to my business and reputation.

    All email forwarding (and the usual tun of spam) from my other UK2 hosted domains is working fine its just my main, active, webspace hosted domain that is not working.

    UK2 customer support initialy sent this response blaming other isps

    Dear Sean,

    Unfortunatly yahoo, hotmail, freeserve,BT and orange are some of the email accounts they have blocked our server
    because of the ammount of spam we sent out because of our service which we offered for free (catch-all), Which can cause emails to bounce back or cause MAJOR delays.
    unfortunatly we do not have an ETA on when this problem will be fixed but it is on going.
    im sorry for any problems this may cause you.

    alternitavly you can set up a uk2.net pop3 account which you can forward to hopefully this makes things easier it is free and you should get all your mail.

    to do this go to mail.uk2.net and set up an account then add it to your forwarding to replace Disfunctional accounts.

    i hope this helps, again im sorry for any problems this may cause.
    Warm Regards,

    Well if this is the case then surely it means UK2 are useless anyway if their email servers are blocked by most popular isps? Regardless, its odd that I was and am still recieving spam forwarded from all my other UK2 domains to m y BT/Yahoo Pop3 account fact is I even found the odd email, even a genuine one, to the domain that isnt working had got through.

    Yet testing emails sending and recieving with many combinations of POP3 email accounts even setting up forwarding to a UK2.net POP3 email and sending from a UK2.net POP3 (so completely by-passing BT Yahoo or anyone else UK2 care to blame) I still get Failure notice

    Many urgent, unresponded emails later I have now recieved this reply

    Hi,

    Weve refreshed the DNS Records which should resolve this issue. Please allow up to 24 hours for the changes to take full affect – if you do not see any improvement after the 24 hours, please get back to us.

    Warm Regards,

    Well see

    Apologies to rant at length but I feel completely let down by UK2 and my livelyhood and reputation is suffering as a direct result of their inconsistency to provide the most basic and important of services or back it up with honest and effective customer support.

  34. Andy says:

    In response to Sean C’s comment, I too have been experiencing the same email forwarding drop-out to the 2 domains I have with UK2 that forward to my BT accounts. I too have been with UK2 for many years but this year the service has been by far the worst. I too have had comments from customers stating that they’ve not even had a bouncback (but now they seem to be happening) as Sean states, its’s been approx 3 days and still no sign of the mails that have been sent – will they ever arrive or are they now lost . . . ? Totally frustrating . . .

  35. Sean C says:

    Andy… I wouldn’t be holding my breath to see if the lost emails ever turn up. I very much doubt it.

    At least emails are being bounced back with errors now… for a day or two any website sales enquiry, existing customer or business associate that has emailed me would have had no such notice and will no doubt be thinking me and my business are either ignorant or just plain useless.

    To further update my situation that should be fixed according to UK2 supports 2nd attempt to come with a solution (after first just saying BT yahoo etc blocked their servers)…

    This morning I found some spam emails in my BT bulk folder to @mydomain.co.uk so I assumed the problem may have been resolved. I even managed to send a test email myself that got through. JOY !

    But no … It immediately was NOT working at all once again.

    This is now the 4th day that my business email is not working and the start of a new working week. This is totalty catastrophic for my business and reputation… made even more so as the xmas shopping season begins.

    I find it hard to believe that a company like UK2 can get away with this level of failure of service.

  36. Sean C says:

    Update…

    Today I now get this back to square one BS reply again blaming other email providers… despite me explaining very clearly that I have already set up and used uk2.net POP3 email to send and recieve the defective email… and it does not work.

    Dear Customer,
    We’re aware that some email providers such as AOL, Virgin, Hotmail, BT
    and possibly other Email Providers are blocking some emails from our
    network. We’re busy making changes to our network to get ourselves
    unblocked, however based on the existing network setup and the changes
    required to be made to get ourselves unblocked, we are unable to predict when
    this will be resolved. We apologise for this and ask that you please
    be patient with us for a while longer as we’re working as fast as
    possible to correct this.

    To combat this please activate your Free POP3 email account (one FREE
    per domain name) that is now available within your domain’s control
    panel. Please log in, click on “E-mail forwarding and POP accounts” link.
    Then click Add a “POP mailbox to [yourdomain.com]”. Enter the email
    account you wish to set up, IE: info@yourdomainname.com, add and confirm a
    password, and then click on “Create new POP account.”

    Once this is done, you can access your POP email accounts mail by
    webmail or by linking to an email client. To link to an email client
    instructions will be sent once you activate the POP email account, within the
    welcome email.

    If you wish to set up any of the 5 FREE forwarding email addresses then
    you have the option to forward them to the newly created POP3 email
    account.

    Warm Regards,


    Denis
    1st Line Customer Care
    UK-2 Ltd

    The email gets bounced using and existing UK2.net personal POP3 account.

    I even set up the POP3 account for the mydomain.co.uk account… and guess what? That didn’t even work at all, even for the actual email address it was set up as.

    Uk2 must surely be the worst it can get ?

  37. Kevin D says:

    I also have the problem of mail forwarded to my BT account sometimes arriving and sometimes not. Raised a UK2 Support Ticket and received the standard unhelpful reply.

    I want to solve the problem by transferring the domain to a different registrar, so raised another Support Ticket. The seemingly helpful reply explained that I need to check the WHOIS database details and update if necessary before the transfer details can be sent. However, the link to WHOIS from the UK2 website doesnt work.

    I checked the details via another route, so know that the e-mail needs to be updated. Does anyone know whether its possible to do that without going via UK2?

  38. Webmaster at Wells says:

    Poor service, rude staff and dreadful support. Dedicated server support does not even have a phone number. We paid for Supreme Support contract with guaranteed 5 min response time it took them 20 mins even to acknowledge a problem. Would avoid at all costs.

  39. Sean C says:

    So I joined the forum at http://www.webhostingtalk.com today … within half an hour of logging in there I receieved an email reply from the managing Director of Uk2.net, Ditlev Bredahl … having copied him in on my customer service emails and also emailed him directly after getting back to square one 5 days in.

    I also received a customer service reply at the same time.

    Both said problem was solved.

    Indeed… my email was now forwarding to my Uk2.net POP3 email account… and I was able to set up a new POP3 account for mydomain.co.uk (which had previously not worked along with everything else)

    BUT … email forwarding was and is still not working to my BT Yahoo POP 3 account.

    When I replied to them to mention this… they still insist that it is BT blacklisting UK2.

    From customer support:

    ” Unfortunatly yahoo, hotmail, gmail, btinternet, mac, ntworld,
    freeserve and orange are some

    of the email accounts they have blocked our server because of the
    ammount of spam we sent out

    because of our service which we offered for free (catch-all) ”

    From Ditlev:

    ” That is another problem … BT email has blacklisted us – that happens from time
    to time for any ISP, and there really is not much we can do about it.

    I hope you understand that this is not our service failing, its BT that is blacklisting legitimate email. ”

    If this is the case… I find it nothing short of an astonishing coincidence that they should have an internal problem with email forwarding for my domian account that strikes at exactly the same time as another identical and supposedly unrelated problem caused by BT blocking and blacklisting UK2.net.

    Either way … its joke.

    What kind of company, who’s business is to host domains and provide internet and email services, gets randomly mass blocked and blacklisted by many of the most popular ISP and email providers ?

  40. Sean C says:

    I have now made a first (short and reserved) post on the forums at http://www.webhostingtalk.com … here is the link.

    http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=653871

    It would be helpful for all of us if anyone with the same or similar problem would post in reply to the thread… it may well lead to some solution that will prevent this from happening in the future.

    I believe this is one of the main forums for the industry and I have noticed that Ditlev Bredahl (MD of UK2.net) has posted on there in the past.

    Fair play to Ditlev … kudos to him for replying to me personaly on email and for responding on the likes of this blog and the forum.

    I found his email on this blog … and here it is if anyone else would be intgerested to run their problems by him … ditlev@uk2.net

    Good skills on starting this blog Rich !

  41. faye says:

    Hi!
    I’m just wondering what you think of UKWSD as I have looked at their packages and they seem very good. I would like to change hosts as I am unsatisfied with my current (1and1) and would like to know if you recomment UKWSD.
    Thankyou!

  42. Sean C says:

    I can’t imagine they could be any worse than the company that’s the subject of this blog.

    I would recommend a search on google or web forums such as http://www.webhostingtalk.com

    A quick search there found this… http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=325864

    Reads quite favourable as it goes… good luck.

  43. Rich says:

    Faye, elfden.co.uk is hosted with them as are a few other of my domains. They are my preferred hosts. Support has always been excellent, they are friendly, and uptime is good as well.

  44. Webmaster at Wells says:

    Well done Sean C for getting Ditlev to reply as he has not responded to my emails at all.

    Can anyone recommend a company for supplying dedicated servers?

  45. Andy says:

    Update :

    As mentioned in my earlier post mail forwarding on the 2 domains I have with UK2 will not work with my BT accounts. From feedback form UK2 and other posters here it clearly shows that UK2 have been blacklisted with BT. So what I have done is set up 2 free email accounts with Google. Mail now sent to my 2 domains forwards to these 2 new Google accounts rather than my BT accounts. Google mail allows you to use POP so you can use your own mail client on your computer.

    Bingo, may emails are now coming through . . .

    It’s a temporary workaround I know and it still doesn’t solve the UK2 overall problem but at least I’m back up and running (until Google blacklists UK2 that is . . . )

    Hope this helps someone.

  46. M says:

    This company IMHO is f****ng sh*t!!! Been with them a week.. is there a bunch of monkeys running the tech “support”?!!

  47. Paul says:

    UK2 offer the worst customer service that I have ever had the displeasure of using.

    I am not one to complain, appreciate that mistakes will happen from time to time and always give companies the benefit of any doubt.

    I had a good chuckle when I saw their recent banner on the homepage

    ‘We bend over backwards!!!’ – Maybe if you stopped bending over and spent more time helping your paying customers, you would have a far better reputation.

    I think that the feedback on this page goes a long way to show how bad they are.

    A lot of their products appear to be resold from other companies, and UK2 staff do not have the knowledge to support them.

    If I wasn’t in a serious business I would think that it is hilarious that it takes UK2 14 days to reply to a support ticket which has been marked ‘Critical’ or ‘Emergency’ – thank God they aren’t responsible for the Emergency Services!

    My advice – avoid like the plague. Leaving them was the best thing that I ever did.

  48. Paul says:

    The funniest thing is when you submit a support ticket which you need a prompt reply for.

    Two weeks later, upon seeing a UK2 message in my inbox, I start to think ‘at last we are making some progress’.

    When I open the message, it is an email from their ‘support’ department saying,

    ‘Hi

    Are you still having this problem? Please let us know.’

    What a reply! Yes I still have the problem, yes I am still waiting for YOU to help me. What sort of a dumb question is that?!

    Oh well, 14 days until the next reply…

  49. Neil Hassan says:

    Im on UK2.net via my hosting company, dxchosting.com

    On January 8th, my websites went down. Two weeks later, it has been fairly well established the owner has done a Reggie Perrin and manufactured his own disappearance.

    He either cancelled his server leasing contract to lapse or cancelled the payments to UK2.net. A few email’s turned up with other peole, which claimed the owner had suffered a “massive heart attack” which was unusual and lacked credibility, because he transferred his own data away from UK2.net onto another server TWO DAYS after UK2.net pulled the plug!

    His own personal domain/mailserver is now pointing at another IP address.

    One of the websites I had hosted with DXC was a large, 5 year old community forum with over 40gb of data. I was assured this was being backed up on a regular basis by the hosting company.

    I have followed the IP trail back to UK2.net These are the details:

    <<<>>>

    Ive contacted UK2.net 4 times without a response stating I would like to gain access to my own data. I have said I am willing to take over the hosting account in order to retrieve the data or transfer my hosting contract to them.

    So far, UK2.net has not responded. I have tried to contact them using the telephone number listed in the complete IP record, but someone has attached a fax to it, while the fax number for them is out of order. Obviously, they do not want people contacting them on their switchboard but to contact them on their money-spinning technical support 50p-per-minute line.

    I have had nothing other than a total lack of co-operation from UK2.net in order to recover my data. I have decided to attempt to press criminal charges as the hosting payments were debited from my CC after the hosting ceased, so a theft has occurred. Whether or not this will open up channels of communication with UK2.net remains to be seen, but I would have much preferred to resolve this without having the police involved.

    My advice to anyone out there with a hosting package is this. If you check the details for your IP and it resolves to UK2.net, get out of the contract NOW! Your hosting company may be acting in good faith but chances are, if anything goes wrong or a payment gets cancelled, UK2.net will hold your data hostage and refuse point blank to offer assistance.

  50. Neil Hassan says:

    Sorry, a bit of text dropped off my message below. the details I have showing my website to be on the UK2.net was obtained from domaintools.com This is an excerpt:

    IP Information for 83.170.86.27
    IP Location: United Kingdom Uk2.net – Uk’s Biggest Host
    Resolve Host: server40326.uk2net.com
    IP Address: 83.170.86.27
    Reverse IP: 79 other sites hosted on this server.
    Blacklist Status: Clear

    Pretty obvious then from the above, that I’m stuck on a UK2.net server!

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