Can I legally break my hosting contact?

Now I've been given some free Win2K3 webspace and domain via my univerisity I am finding my other space now worthless as it is too unreliable. I am paying £23 a year for basic HTML hosting but half the time it dosn't work and its also rather slow. For this reason I will switch all my websites to the university web space (my course tutor said this is fine as thats what we have been given it for) but it means I by robertsonnet.co.uk space which is currently unreliable will not be needed.

I am not sure what to do, if I cancel my direct debit to fasthosts will that mean I get bad credit history? I have signed a contract with them for a year, I've got another 6 months to go but I have business sites and some which seem to have 95% uptime despite Fasthosts promosing 99.9%. What can I do?

 

Are they contractually obliged to a 99.9% uptime? Do you have stats that show otherwise? If so then they are in breach already and you can prove it.

Go to them with this and say you want out of the contract, they can't really argue if they've already breached. If they do argue, then threaten legal action and media exposure of your stats - that should do it. If they still argue, well you're stuck between your principles and your wallet. It'll cost more that £23 to take them to court, though you could still get coverage in some computer mags, and internet publications would definately be behind you I'm sure.

If you don't have proof then it's rather more difficult. The route of just cancelling you DD could cause you trouble - because you have breached contract by not meeting your payment obligations.

At £2 a month if they can't be persuaded to terminate the agreement it will probably cost you more to get out than to stay in.

 

Thats the problem I don't have proof, all I know is my sites hosted on that account seem to be down more often that say zerogain and I vist zerogain much more often than my own sites.

I am tempted just to carry on paying for a year but say the hosting has been transfered due to unreliability of my old server then give the name of the hosting company.

 

if you have agreed to 1 year and you cancel your DD then they will wait a bit then you will recive a letter for £2 for the month and £200 for the cost of transfering it to a debt colection agency.

This really is not worth trying.

considering the price of £2 a month i would just either payup for the year saying you want to cancel at the end. this way you have no hasle when the year is up to sort it out. Or cancel saying taht you can pay the remanding years cost if needed ( the second may be better in your favour.)

for teh record its not worth saing there services wasnt that good and you are changing unless they ask you. and even if they do ask you it might be wise to just say you where offerd hopsting for free on a good service.

That way there are no bad links for future.

Diplomacy is a good thing

 

sounds a bit wet to me. I'd tell them exactly why! Constructive criticism!

 

You can do this but might end up with extra charges depending what the company is like.

my rule is if they can charge you more cos they dont like you they will.

 

Well it was never about the money it was more about principles. If I had my own house I would run my own server but I simply don't have the option of having a pc running 24/7 in my house and ADSL is not the most reliable of connections either.

I think I will just pay them off in one lump sum and tell them I don't want anything further to with them once my existing contract runs out. I will just use my uni space for the next two years.

 

right, i've not read this thread properly, so forgive me if i'm wrong here. What level (if any) do they guarantee? And if they don't then contact them. Explain the problem to them, it may be easily fixed. But if they're not delivering on their guarantee, inform them you wish to break off the contract.

 

I agree with Mo (that's the second time today...). Talk to em and see what they say. Many companies won't do a thing until quizzed, and they just roll-over -- insurance companies are famous for that.

Be polite, ask open ended questions, make them work out what their policy is -- if they don't know or aren't sure, they might just give it up.

~ ~ Dave

 

Most ISPs will claim 99.something uptime. What they won't tell you is over what period of time that uptime is calculated. In other words, it's a meaningless figure. 99.9% over the lifetime of the contract? 99.9% over each day/week/month? Or 99.9% over the entire lifetime of the ISP?

-- Ian