My legal battle with Streamline.net
Streamline.net
I have been contacted by Andrew Dollamore who has asked me to point out that he left Stremline.net in May 2008 and from that date Fasthosts had complete ownership and control of the company.
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At the start of this year www.vinylonthe.net moved its hosting to Streamline.net who offered …
very powerful hosting packages
and promised
great stability
No sooner had the site transfered to them than the problems started. The site would often run slowly, but worst of all it was frequently going offline, often more than once a day and sometimes for many hours at a time.
I’d fill in the support tickets but it was soon apparent that the support staff left at 5pm and I had to wait up to 17 hours to receive their stock reply informing me my site was now working normally.
The support staff were totally unprofessional. As I kept discovering their policy was to deny everything first and then think later, so many times after they’d deny there was a problem there’d be a notice on the Service Status about the very issue that they’d denied existed earlier. They’d also not answer questions regarding specific problems, they either couldn’t answer them or weren’t reading the emails properly, prefering to just return the stock answers. For a great article on their incompetence click here.
So unreliable had the service become that Google drooped the average number of pages it crawled a day from nearly a thousand to almost zero; which, for those of you who know anything about search engine optimisation will know that spells disaster.
I then did something I should have done earlier and investigated online to see if there was any information about Streamline’s business practices. There were lots, seems they were stealing money from people’s accounts, had illegal terms and conditions, provided an abysmal uptime and a useless customer service.
I was getting so sick and tired of customers complaining about the site not working properly and with all complaints to Streamline falling on deaf ears I quit after 5 months and with 19 months on my contract remaining.
So, I asked for a refund on the remaining 19 months but they refused so I took legal action.
Here’s how the scam I fell for works. They take in 100 customers. They put say 10% onto a decent server, look after those customers, they’re happy, they leave testemonials. The other 90% get a shit service on their overloaded servers (they don’t even own the servers the sites are hosted on) and leave with Streamline pocketing their money. Only a small precentage do anything about it, thereby making Streamline.net a lot of money.
I’ll update this with further progress in the forthcoming weeks.
I have had letters from CCI Legal threatening to take me to court over some GBP218 unpaid hosting fees, for a website I don’t even recall asking them to host, and for which I had no idea any service was still being provided. I’ve been threatened with legal action. I spoke to CCI to ask for details of what the o/s payment consists of, and they asked me to contact the company.
I contacted the company, spoke to an agent in a call centre in Asia, and was told they have no access to my account and are not in a position to discuss the charges, and that I should pay the charges and only then they will discuss. I am considering not paying up, but to complain to UK TS instead.
What can I say, I sit here (once again) waiting for a scripted and useless support ticket system (hosted offshore) to help me do absolutely nothing.
Streamline.net have provided since day nothing short of the absolute worst service & performance I could have possibly ever considered – and they then went one step further.
The shared MySQL databases are horrendous – we’re talking around 6 – 10 seconds for a standard fresh WordPress site to show up and from their ‘control panel’ (which is a joke – the only thing you can do on it is spend more money) you can’t really change or access anything.
I tried to add an SSL cert to my site – they said I can’t do my own and I need to buy through them (at £25) for a shared SSL that doesn’t secure my site but instead gives me access to a ‘shared’ secure folder? Absolutely useless.
My uptime over the last 4 months has been measured as only 85%, the servers are slow and over loaded, the support is non-existent, the features are limited, the cost is ridiculous…
When we had problems with their MySQL databases (which were far too busy to handle the traffic) they suggested moving everything across to a new MySQL Database – handy when you have 10 sites running multiple WordPress installs and thousands of tables!
Literally every time I think they can’t get worse they manage it. An absolute shambles.
It’s too late for me, but honestly – save yourself. Don’t get tied into their contract which (you’ll see from other reviews here) is absolutely impossible to get out of.
Don’t go near them – even with a 25ft bargepool mounted to a crane boom – stay well away or you and your business website will regret it for ever.
Add me to the list. Having taken over the running of a website from a friend of mine I immediately moved the domain away from Shitline.net. 6 months later they are hounding me for domain payment and an upgrade to “power user” or some such rubbish. I kept getting emails to say I owed money and when I logged on to see what they were on about the site told me I had to pay before I could access the portal. I refused and tried to contact them directly via their site contact form. After being ignored I assumed, wrongly, they had done the honourable thing – turns out they just flat ignored me and kept the meter running. Today, returning home, I get the dreaded final notice letter that the debt collectors are on the case. I rang shitline.net and the operative couldn’t be less helpful. Apparently when the website says your portal won’t be available it means it’s still available and you can contact support if you ignore the message on the screen! WTF! Please, can we all join forces and do something radical? I’m not a happy bunny.
We too are in the same boat.
A redundant website we had forgotten about.
No warning about renewals, just a final demand.
Rang them to sort it out but they wouldn’t help
Then cci legal letters
Has cci ever taken anyone to court over this?
We haven’t heard anything after 3 months of ignoring their demands. Don’t pay them a penny
I’m absolutely livid. I’ve just receive my Barclaycard bill and found a charge of £189.59 for a domain I cancelled two years ago.
From all the accounts I’ve read about Stinkline.net, my nightmare is about to begin. I think first port of call will be shyster.net to give them the benefit of the doubt, though I know it will be a futile phone call. Some folk have suggested that Trading Standards in Gloucester I has anyone else spoke with them? I guess finally I shall phone Barclaycard and report an unauthorised transaction.
I’ve also left the UK so I’m non resident so I’m thinking let them call their debt collectors as I am outside their jurisdiction.