Nov 15 2005
Valuehost - or not
Sometime on Friday night http://www.universitydancesport.com stopped working. After a day or so it became clear that it was not due to a temorary technical hitch. On Monday both Jess and I independently managed to discover the problem was that our hosts, valuehost (link diliberatly not included so no-one makes the mistake of following it!), had pulled the plug on the account. Their justification was that we had not paid the bill, which seems fair enough, or at least would do were it not for the fact that they never told us the bill was due. Ideally we should have checked, but its still not nice of them. After some hasty online meetings with Chris (IVDA president) we decided to pay them, rather than try and take the opertunaty to jump ship and go with a sensible hosting company.
We do still plan to move to a different hosting company, but this way we have the chance to do so at a time of our choosing rather than when its forced upon us.
Anway, valuehost have their money, and now we are just waiting for them to notice, wake up and put the site back online. Lets hope they don’t take too long.
Technorati Tags : web-hosting., ivda
Did you even manage to get in conatct with these people. i have a site hosted by them they have taken my money done a bunk and left my domain to be suspended, i even went to their london offices to see them and they have vacted the premisis.
Please let me know how you got on and any numbers youhave for them
Pat
I don’t know what sort of company Valuehost are. Their address is “165 The Broadway” in London. If you do a Google on this address, you will find that there are many companies at this exact address, so I believe this is a shared mail address, which gives small companies the prestige of having a London address.
I have been a Valuehost customer for many years. They have never lived up to their 95% uptime guarantee, but other than that, I’ve had no major problems.
At the begining of December ‘05, all of my websites displayed a message “You do not have permission to access this server”, and I could not access my web space via http://FTP.
I sent an email to support@valuehost.co.uk (I had used this address many times previously), but I received no reply. I sent many more emails over the next month, and eventually (over a month later), had an auto-reply telling me to use the online control panel (what if I couldn’t access it ?). I was eventually told that my account had been suspended because SPAM had been sent from it. I have one php mailing script which is a contact form for customers to contact me. Anyway, I was told to remove this script - but I couldn’t as I couldn’t access my web space. After sending many (approx 30) requests for help, I never get more that a one line reply saying “Delete the script” or “Your account has now been activated” BUT IT HASN’T !.
Nearly two months have gone by, and my sites are still inactive. I have tried phoning the number on their website many times, but I just listen to a fax machine. I have asked them via the control panel (over and over again):
Why wasn’t I told my account was being made inactive ?
Why can’t I telephone them ?
Why do none of the “Contact Us” links on their website work ?
But they won’t answer any of my questions.
I’ve just had an email from these guys asking for money that i owe ! I’d never heard of them till today ” guys i think you have been had by these lot and they are just scammers
I received a message out of the blue from Mark J. Burnett of Valuehost Billing Department claiming that there was a chargeback made by the owner of the card that I paid for my account with. He claimed to have deducted the amount of the chargeback, GBP 119.40, from my account and added their standard fee of GBP 25.00 as well. I was then invited to open an attachment for more details.
I suspect the attachment is some form of virus so I haven’t opened it. However, I had given Mr Burnett 24 hours to provide me with an office telephone number before I report him to the authorities. I shall keep you posted.
My email was rejected by their email server so I’ve put the matter in the hands of the police. fraud.alert@met.police.uk I hope nobody else get caught by this.
Really not sure who they are either. They sent me a mail yesterday, here it is
“Dear customer,
We have received a notice from your card service stating that there was a
chargeback made by the owner of the card that
you paid for your account with. This is a very serious matter. I have deducted
the amount of the chargeback, GBP 119.40,
from your account and added our standard fee of GBP 25.00 as well. (Now you can
see your payment details in attachment.)
If there was some mistake, please let us know immediately so that we
can get this situation resolved. We ask that you have the chargeback
removed as soon as possible, as our account has already been debited for the
amount in question.
If you would prefer to make your payment using a new payment
method that would be fine as well (you can use a different credit card or you
may send a money order payable to
Valuehost).
This is a time sensitive issue and must be resolved promptly at the
request of the card service. Please email the billing team using the Web
Administration Panel with information about how
you are going to deal with this situation.
I thank you for your time and hope to hear from you
soon.
See your payment details in attachment”
I’ve not opened the attachment, can’t be sure whats inside but here’s the
best bit of the whole thing….I’d not even heard of them until I received
the mail asking for money! Any advice..?
I had this recently, and I’ve never even heard of Vsluehost. It’s a scam…..
Dear customer,
We have received a notice from your card service stating that there was a chargeback made by the owner of the card that
you paid for your account with. This is a very serious matter. I have deducted the amount of the chargeback, GBP 119.40,
from your account and added our standard fee of GBP 25.00 as well. (Now you can see your payment details in attachment.)
If there was some mistake, please let us know immediately so that we
can get this situation resolved. We ask that you have the chargeback
removed as soon as possible, as our account has already been debited for the amount in question.
If you would prefer to make your payment using a new payment
method that would be fine as well (you can use a different credit card or you may send a money order payable to
Valuehost).
This is a time sensitive issue and must be resolved promptly at the
request of the card service. Please email the billing team using the Web Administration Panel with information about how
you are going to deal with this situation.
I thank you for your time and hope to hear from you
soon.
See your payment details in attachment.
Sincerely,
Mark J. Burnett
Valuehost Billing Department
http://www.valuehost.com
I am not a valuehost customer and had never heard of them until today when I received an email appearing to be from them. They claimed that a ‘credit card chargeback’ had been made on my account and that £119.65 plus a £25 fee had been credited to my account to balance this. That the chargeback was a serious offence, but if I paid the money back straightaway then they would drop the matter. A file was attached asking for payment details. The email was badly worded and quite obviously a hoax. Peraps they are now looking at other ways to get money from people?
If anybody is with VALUHOST I would suggest that they do not renew. I suspect thatthey have done a runner.
Renewed my domain on good time in DEc 06 but as of the 5th February the domain is suspended as they have not forwared money on to internic.
Access to the ftp or control panel is notworking as the password has been changed and now requests for help get auto respose from a .ru address saying welcome to our brilliant 20 minute response service only available via the control pane - brilliant.
All phone numbers do not work nor does there parent company answer.
Fear the worse of to find another hoster.