123-reg.co.uk are sh*t

Ok time for a rant, as I haven’t had one since last Saturday! This time it’s 123-reg.co.uk are are in the firing line for their diabolical support and general service. I’ve been using them for a number of years, but steadily things have deterioated to the point where I can take no more.

The latest gaff from them saw me unable to update a business client’s web site (whom had the starter hosting package) due to FTP access denied errors – for no apparent reason. I checked the usual things (ftp address, password, permissions, etc) before contacting support via email (rather than paying 50p per minute to call the support line!). I am still awaiting a response – despite this downtime affecting my clients online sales. This however, is pretty much the norm for their support as I’ve found to my displeasure on numerous other occasions.

Pre-Christmas I renewed another domain name – or at least I thought I had – through 123-reg’s domain registration service, only to find out via Nominet that my domain had expired. Thanks 123-reg, you take my money, but don’t renew my domain – nice one. Having google’d to see if I was alone in my suffering, it didn’t come as too much of a shock to see that I wasn’t. Take a look at these little gems… “123.reg denies promblems – The Register” or “What the hell is wrong with 123-reg?” or even “123-reg problems and complaints” and finally “123-reg ARE having problems“.

I was glad to see that I wasn’t the only one who thought that they and their service was pants. Which is why I’ve started moving all of my clients (domains and hosting) over to a hosting provider which I’ve been using for my larger clients since 2002 called ‘Lunarpages‘.

These beauties who are based in the States offer not only an extraordinary value for money hosting package but a quality support service as well – not to mention a large support community run by users. Why is it that an American company can offer a better service to UK citizens that our own companies can? I mean any calls I have ever placed via email to the Lunarpages helpdesk have ALWAYS been responded to within a maximum of 4 hours – even if it was just to acknowledge the problem or to give me an update.

Just to give you an idea (in terms of value for money), these guys are offering – 250 GB of webspace and a free domain name for life (as well as all of the extra trimmings like mysql/postgres databases, php, cgi, webmail, ftp, scripts, etc) for a paltry £3.55 per month!! If you don’t believe me check out the Lunarpages web site. 123-reg charge about £30 odd quid for 250MB of webspace and cgi access – with none of the trimmings. So bye bye 123-reg it was nice knowing you – NOT.

Enough of my rants. It was a major anti-climax this morning – after all the hype of yesterday’s predictions about heavy snow – to wake up and see only a light dusting outside. So much for the 2 – 6 inches that was anticipated in these parts.

Listening to the radio on the way into work, it appears as though Swansea missed out on all of the fun – unlike Bridgend and Cardiff. My afternoon trip to the capital highlighted how bad it must have been there early this morning, with large amounts of snow still present along the M4. Oh well DDWT Junior and I will have to wait until some other time to build snowmen.