Johnnie Moore

Internetters/IOMART

Johnnie Moore

Johnnie Moore

I’m Johnnie Moore, and I help people work better together

I used to host this website with Internetters. A few months ago they were taken over by IOMART.

The standard of service went into decline. In particular, the previously friendly telephone support became rude and unhelpful. I’m currently disputing a series of charges IOMART are trying to levy for accounts I still hold there.

I’ve noticed a number of angry comments online about IOMART.

Here’s one thing that annoys me. They propose to charge £49 (thats around US$85) for the privilege of letting a customer transfer a domain away from them. This is a bit outrageous. (And given their hosting charges, I’d expect a lot of people to want to transfer away from them).

What’s more, it’s a flat contradiction of this promise, which still remains on the internetters web site here. Extract:

Domain name registration companies that have very low headline registration prices very often give you the domain name and nothing more… And if you want to move your domain name to another company for whatever reason, you may have to pay a release fee to the one you are leaving, even if you are actually doing all the transfer work yourself via an online Control Panel. This fee can be anything from £20 upwards – Internetters is aware of some companies that charge £100 plus VAT.

Some Internetters customers have also discovered that although the company they originally registered their domain with claimed to have “no hidden charges”, in fact they were charged a release fee when moving the domain to us. You should specifically ask any prospective registration company whether or not they will charge you a release fee should you wish to leave them.

To transfer a domain from Internetters, for our customers’ security all we ask is for the Registrant to send us a fax or letter on their company headed notepaper, or if the domain is registered to an individual, that they include some proof of identity such as a copy of their Internetters invoice / receipt.

Compare and contrast this statement within the internetters knowledgebase:

If you have decided that you wish to transfer away, please ensure that you have all the information you require to hand and that you have followed your new Hosts instructions regarding domain transfers before proceeding past this stage.

If you are ready to transfer your domain away from us simply click “Proceed” which will take you to the secure online payment area. Please note that all domain transfers away incur an administration fee of £49.00 ex VAT.

So a shabby change of policy, implemented incompetently.

You might have thought an internet company would be more aware than others that crappy behaviour like this gets noticed and talked about. I may be talking about them some more over the coming days…

UPDATE: In December 2005, after pursuing my complaint by post, Internetters wrote to me agreeing to release me from my contract without charge, and dropped some other charges I was disputing. They’ve also corrected the charging information for internetters customers. I think it’s only fair to give them credit for sorting this out, even if it took a while.

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