Streamline.net - the home of appalling web hosting

[slick132]

Hi Nick and welcome to CAG

 

If you want to discuss your case and give us a little more info, feel free to start a new thread.

 

[Svartmetall]

Yep - I just ignored the buggers, and haven't heard from them since.

 

Streamline.net - much sound and fury, signifying nothing.

[saysaywatson]

I'm in the exact same situation myself, they are insisting I pay for 2 years' worth of hosting that I do not want simply because my card expired before the renewal date and the first I heard about it was a message saying the payment had failed, which has led me to this impasse; I had been made redundant and web hosting for a website I'd given up on the idea of making about a year previously was the last thing on my mind and now I have this bunch of cowboys hassling me.

 

It seems to be impossible to talk to Streamline's billing departtment directly, as well; the only number that works is the 0844 941 1000 number, which takes you through to a call centre in the Philippines full of script-reading robots. They refuse to deal with billing issues and say the only way to get these dealt with is to fill out a 'support' ticket...whenever I've done so all I've had is the same old 'you must pay for a service you don't want' stonewalling.

 

I'm getting very stressed out by this, can anyone help?

 

I've had the exact same issue - they have sent me a letter saying if I don't pay in 7 days I will be referred to debt collectors. I called them today and offered to pay for 1 year not 2 and they refused. Call centre staff barely spoke English so it was getting me nowhere. I have requested a copy of the contract I am bound to. It's not fair that they are charging for 2 years of future hosting that I don't want!

[slick132]

Hi SaysayW and welcome to CAG

 

Please feel free to start your own thread to discuss your problem with Streamline.

 

Take comfort from the stories here and, if you don't want to pay them any more, take a look at the contract and see if it may be regarded as unreasonable or unfair based on other cases here.

 

[Themod]

Has anyone ever been taken to court by Streamline and their cronies?

They've just sent me a letter asking for £150 and I have never even heard of them. I think my ex-wife may have used them when we were still together but their demand seems to concentrate on threats rather than on giving detailed info.

I have written to them asking for some proper details. The phone number is for a call centre in the Phillipines, so no help there.

[dx100uk]

then not your debt

 

but 9/10 its spoof

 

ignore them

 

dx

[Logi]

My situation is the same. I just received a letter from this company informing me that unless payment is made in the next 7 days they will pass my details on to a debt recovery agency. I bought their hosting for 12 months, noticed that the renewal cost had jumped from £90 to £320, saw all the negative reviews and decided to cancel. My cancellation notice, via the ticketing system, oddly disappeared! Their approach seems to be a 'Chicken before the egg' scenario. How is it possible to acquire a debt on a pre-paid (poor) service?

 

As I understand it, should they engage a debt collection agency, that agency would need to apply to the courts to see if there is a case to answer. The court would then assess the legitimacy of the claim. That would be impossible since you cannot have a pre-paid debt.

[C|aymore]

Hi!

I have the same issue with Streamline as others here: Prepaid hosting, paid by Debit card which expired and I didn't respond to email in time to cancel.

 

I did contact them a few days after the next two years hosting should have started. I have numerous correspondence with them afterwards (even offered to move to a cheaper hosting package, or pay a months pro-rata charge) but they were intractable.

 

Now have two letters and nearly daily emails from CCI Legal. The latest says:

"If for any reason we do not hear from you by 24/10/2012 further recovery action will be taken against you which may incur additional costs. Legal fees will be incurred in the event of legal" blah blah

 

Should I contact them, ignore them or be worried about it?

 

Thanks for any advice

[slick132]

Hi Logi and Claymore,

 

I think it's best to write one letter to tell Streamline that you are not obligated and will not be paying them. After that, ignore them .

 

If a DCA contacts you subsequently, send a similar letter but, after that, ignore them. They appear to be total chancers !

 

[Logi]

Hi cjaymore and slick123

 

Many thanks for your advice. I agree this company are simply chancers and not worth getting concerned about. Who are CCI Legal?

[slick132]

Who are CCI Legal?

 

If you search the web, you'll find they're a DCA in North Wales.

 

[Logi]

No surprise to see they are a 'No win No fee' setup!

Edited October 24, 2012 by Logi

[Themod]

"........They've just sent me a letter asking for £150 and I have never even heard of them......

I have written to them asking for some proper details....."

 

Well, I got a reply from their "Credit Control Dept" (no name given).

They have failed to address a number of points, the biggest one being "I have no knowledge of this account!". Instead they have referred me to their T&Cs and printed off a screenshot which is supposed to show how they arrived at the figure they are demanding from me.

I admit, it may well be possible to open an account using another persons details but this does not seem to worry Streamline.net. They do not seem to be the sort of people who would let facts get in the way of their T&Cs.

I am not going to reply to them. I shall wait and see if I get anything further from them or their DCA.

Streamline.net? What a shower!

[moghul]

This thread was started over 4 years ago.. so in that time no one as yet has actually got a visit from a DCA ?

 

I've just received a similar threatening email from them.

[slick132]

Hi Moghul and welcome to CAG.

 

It seems that most of the threats made by this company are simply hot air and they're just hoping folk pay up, ignorant that they are able to refuse.

 

Feel free to start your own thread to discuss your case.

 

[moghul]

Thanks for the reply slick. It's ok... just wanted some sort of feedback.. and so dont think it's worthy of creating a new dedicated thread.

 

The thread was very informative. Thank heavens for Google, that threw up this site and the relevant thread.

 

I'll ignore the baseless threats by the company.

[slick132]

Sounds like a plan !!

 

[Themod]

Just got another letter from Streamline.net.

Basically its a bullying letter in disguise.

Apparently they have "Checked everything we can and the details appear to be legitimate" so they are refusing to waive payments.

They have ignored the points I gave raised, refused to provide proper details or give any info that would validate their claim.

I am still not going to respond. Perhaps responding in the first place gave fuel to their fire and I should have ignored them.

In a way, Im hoping they go to court with this. I think even with a legitimate claim (this one isn't) it would be nearly impossible to actually prove a case like this as theres no signatures or hard evidence.

Waiting for their DCA to get in touch now....

[locutus]

I agree, set your final position out then ignore them.

[slick132]

Agreed.

 

Ignore them and, once they realise you're not responding, they'll move on to their next victim.

 

Court action by them is most unlikely as I don't think they have a legal leg to stand on.

 

[Conniff]

You know a company hasn't much ground when they say 'DCA' instead of just going for a ccj which they would do if they had a case.

[deano_uk]

hi, there are many many web hosts. most are just resellers. almost all web hosts offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee. The problem with this guarantee in my experience is that whilst the site is online 99.9% of the time, the site is slow, sluggish etc. You want to use MYSQL - my experience from cheap web hosts is that the MYSQL server is slow.

Most hosts oversell their services. For example, there is one UK host I looked at a number of years ago. Everything seemed brilliant with them, their example sites loaded fast etc. But, then I asked the rep if she could give me details of customers sites and was told no. After a little bit of research, I found their customers sites and some further research showed me that the company had over 3,000 websites held on just one of their servers!

 

As with most things in life, you get what you pay for. Attractive and cheap services are just that, attractive but cheap!

I see streamline offer UNLIMITED disk space and UNLIMITED bandwidth for a joke price of £5.99 per month. If this was really true, then that means the whole of youtube can be run for less than 6 quid a month....

 

Only thing i can suggest is research your webhost before you buy their services. If they can not provide you with customers example sites then stay away from them.

 

Here is a handy tool you can use: http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/web-sites-on-web-server/ reverse ip / domain look up

That tool allows you to enter a web domain name and you can then find out other sites stored on the server. Eg, consumeractiongroup.com shares its server with 10 other websites (suggesting they have a dedicated server).

 

 

[Guy123]

Hey Guys,

 

Hope you're all well!

 

Just read through your posts as I am having the exact same problem.

 

About 2/3 years ago I took out hosting with Streamline.net. They had one of their ever so many deals on and I obviously paid in advance for what I thought was just going to be for the 2 / 3 years. To be honest I bought it but never used it. It seems Streamline carried on with the hosting that I didn't agree to and charge me for it!

 

I knew nothing about this as the email they were "so called" contacting me on I wasn't using at the time. The way I found out about this was when I received a "Final Notice" letter from Streamline.net through the post.

 

The letter said:

 

"Total Amount Overdue: £203.98

Despite our best efforts to resolve your past due account via email, payment on this account has still not been received. We are informing you that this is your last final notice and last oppurtunity to make payment. Regrettably unless this payment is received within the next 7 days we will have no alternative than to pass your details to a debt collection agency for recovery of your arrears in addition to the full value of your remaining contractual commitment. You will also be liable for any additional charges incurred as a result of this recovery and you should note this may affect your credit rating."

 

As soon as I received the letter I called Streamline.net straight away as I was horrified as to what I had received. I told one of the Streamline employees that I would not be paying due to me never seeing these emails and that I was disgusted that they would just carry it on! I said that if I wasn't replying to these emails why didn't you just send me a letter in the post saying my hosting was coming to an end and if I'd want to renew it or that I can cancel etc. Not send me a final notice with a charge that I didn't agree to or even know about! As far as I'm aware with all other hosting companies I've dealt with, as soon as a payment isn't received they just suspend / cancel your account not carry it on and then tell you you have x amount of outstanding fees. I called Streamline and obviously they were no help what so ever and they guy said all he could do was create an online support ticket to which I never received. I then just left it.

 

Yesterday I then receive an email from a "CCI Legal Services Ltd" saying:

 

"Dear xxxx

We have been instructed to contact you in relation to the above unpaid

account.

To make payment by card or cash via your local PayPoint outlet, click:

Link...

or call 0845 6710043 and enter reference xxxx

To speak to a customer service agent, call CCI on 0845 6443738

 

Yours Faithfully

CCI Legal Services Ltd."

 

As soon as I received the email I called Streamline again straight away to which I then explained again why I was not going to pay. I was then told (again) that there was nothing they could do to help and that it is now in the hands of the DCA and that I would have to speak to them.

 

So before I called "CCI Legal Services Ltd" I checked them out on the internet to see if it was some sort of a [problem] as I find this whole situation to be a big con! This is how I found you guys and reading all your helpful posts in relation to this matter.

 

So rather than calling "CCI Legal Services Ltd" I emailed them saying:

 

"Hello,

 

I have tried to contact Streamline.net several times without any joy in resolving this matter.

 

As stated to them I bought the hosting due to a deal that was offered on the website for 2/3 years ago which was a one off payment which I had paid for at the time. I never did use the hosting even though I had paid for it. I also was not using this email for a year so any emails they had said to sent me I had not received. The only way I knew about this situation of them carrying the hosting on and charging me extra for the new renewal came to light through the letter Streamline.net had sent me via the post. My issue was that because I was not using this email I had no incline the hosting was going to automatically carry on and also be charged for it! Had they of sent me a letter by post like they did with the final notice I would have replied and would have clearly said that because I have never used it anyway that I would not want to carry it on. Rather than doing that they said they sent a few emails to this email address and that's it.

 

Like I said rather than wasting your time I tried resolving this matter with them but as a service they are extremely unhelpful. When I did receive the final notice through the post I called them to which they replied saying they would send me an online support ticket. I never received this.

 

I have called them twice now to explain this situation and my reasons for not paying for the new renewal and like I said on both occasions the company was extremely unhelpful and not willing to help in any sort of way.

 

So for the reason of miscommunication and Streamline.net carrying on their hosting without me agreeing in writing to the new renewal I will not be paying.

 

Sorry to waste your time in this matter.

 

Thanks,

 

xx"

 

So I wondered if I could ask you guys if I have done the right thing and if I should be worried in any sort of way?

 

Apologies for the lengthy reply but I thought it would be best to tell you all the details.

 

Many Thanks!

[slick132]

Hi Guy and welcome to CAG

 

You've done the right thing so far by explaining that you won't be paying.

 

You could have made the letter to CCI a lot shorter but you've made your point clearly enough.

 

They may be encouraged to pursue this because you responded but, if they contact you further, I suggest you ignore them completely.

 

If you read the experiences of others with Streamline, you'll see you're not alone but the majority of folk ignore them and the matter ends.

 

They really are just chancers hoping to scare folk into paying more. Also, I doubt CCI Legal Services Ltd are a separate company and I doubt they take any legal action in these cases.

 

Edited December 5, 2012 by slick132
typo

[locutus]

Ignore but keep copies of all communications.

 

If you feel the need to contact them further to clarify your position, keep it short and bullet pointed, something like this:

 

• I do not owe streamline.net any money.
  
• As this sum is clearly in dispute it is against the OFT guidelines for you to try to collect unless we can resolve this dispute. I will only accept a court descision to resolve this dispute.
  
• Any further demands will be reported to the OFT.
  
• You represent yourselves as "legal services" so I am sure the next communications from yourself will be confirming that I will hear no more about this matter, or a court claim.