| The Complaint Shop All Your Complaints under one Roof |
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Last update 17/10/2007 |
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| Internet Service Providers |
Ace Internet
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Complaint Date 18/10/2002 |
Complaint entered by C.A. Speckner |
Subject: Domain Renewal |
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The last e-mail we received from Steve Daniels from Ace Internet was as follows and I quote
‘I assumed you were a man of honour. I would hope you would stand by your promise, as this was one of the conditions of receiving a full refund’ And here the story nearly ends. Ace Internet had finally refunded the value of their invoice after we agreed to remove our Ace page from our website which showed and explained as to why we wanted our money back. True to our word we did remove this page but clearly AceInternet are not particular happy as they were hoping that we would remove all evidence which would link the Complaint-Shop to Ace Internet.
So how did it all start?
It started in September 2002 when Ace Internet sent us an invoice for the domain renewal of one of our companies [see enclosure ]. Having used Ace Internet previously we sent them a cheque as requested which they duly cashed. We thought nothing more of it until we received yet another invoice from Nominet requesting immediate payment to renew our domain. When we went back to Ace Internet asking them to explain why they had not paid Nominet they engaged us into some kind of silly e-mails but did in the end write to us: ‘Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2002 12:35:40 +0100 Hi You do not have to pay again. We are making payment directly to Nominet on your behalf. Kind Regards Needless to say they never paid. What followed from then was a never ending exchange of letters and e-mails and a constant change of reasons and excuses by Ace Internet to the extent that in February 2003, 5 month after they confirmed to us that they would pay Nominet, they suddenly claimed that they had no trace of our payment. Under normal circumstances we would have issued a Default Summons in the County Court but we had by then realized that Ace Internet were operating with a PO Box number only and that the Company was not registered at Companies House. Further research revealed that we were not the only ones who had been invoiced by AceInternet and who had found out later that their domain name had not been renewed [ see Newsgroup: alt.internet.providers.uk on google ] None of these had received a refund but a helpful reply informed us that the Post Office is under the obligation to disclose the forwarding address which relates to a P O Box. Subsequent enquiries with the Royal Mail revealed that the P.O. Box used by Ace Internet on their stationery and their website had actually been cancelled but they did give us the postal address near Stockport to which this P.O. Box was linked. AceInternet had previously threatened us and our web space provider with legal action for libel and we consequently decided to disclose the postal address on our website inviting AceInternet to sue and informing them at the same time that we would now issue a court order to this postal address. This is when they phoned us and when they agreed to a full refund of their invoice on the undertaking that we would remove this postal address and our website. We have kept our word and we have removed our original site and we have replaced it with this page. Our claim has been settled and we finally had our money back, but if you are one the people who paid AceInternet for a service they did not provide then please contact us and we will gladly share our experience with you. And finally. Ace Internet have a new web site. New layout and a new address. The P.O. Box is gone and has been replaced with a postal address within a ‘Business Centre’ in Stockport. They also tell us that you can’t just go and visit them and that Visitors to our offices are only permitted on a strictly pre-arranged appointment basis only.’ We wonder why? We can’t find Ace Internet being listed as occupier of the ‘Houldsworth Mill Business and Arts Centre’, but they do list a Direct Mailing House - but that may be pure coincidence. Who knows!
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| Complaint Status: Closed | Overall Efficiency |
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