Fasthosts

A question about : Fasthosts

I'm not sure if this is the right subforum or not. If not hopefully a mod can redirect this thread as necessary please?

Basically I'm after some advice along the lines of any organisations that may be able to help me with this.

My church, which I used to sort the website for, was with Fasthosts for a number of years for our hosting. In April 2013 we decided to move our hosting to another provider. We'd paid up to Nov with Fasthosts but were happy to live with that. Unfortunately we forgot to cancel the service with them or even remove the credit card from our account. That meant they automatically took payment in Nov 2013 for the next 12 months and we never noticed for a number of reasons. It was for approx Ј83. Due to our transfer of the site basically we paid that money just to keep a few old files on their server. Nothing pointed at it so no bandwidth was used.

Come to Nov this year and due to the credit card expiring they sent letters asking for payment. I made a mistake in thinking because we'd had nothing to do with them for over 18 months I could just ignore it. I presumed when they couldn't get payment they'd just cancel our account. Unfortunately what has happened instead is they passed our information onto a debt collection agency.

I've tried reasoning with them that we paid for a year and never used the service so surely it's reasonable to drop this year. I've also pointed out we're a registered charity and that's who they're demanding money from.

They just keep referring me back to their terms and conditions and saying there's nothing they can do. The debt collection agency aren't interested either.

I know by the letter of the law we've made a mistake, but it just seems to me that it would just be reasonable to accept they got money for nothing and draw a line under it.

Is there anyone or any groups who may be able to help us with this?

Best answers:

• Whose name is the account under and whose name was on the method of payment?
  I have setup websites for people and hosted them on my own private space whilst setting up then i purchase hosting for them, I spotted a thread similar to yours and thought if they dont pay im going to end up with the bill.
  So i make sure i change the name and payment details over now.
  Black and white you failed to cancel and owe the money. If they are inflexible and just insist that pay or else, then there is not a lot you can do without spending more money.
  Bandwidth is one thing they pay for, hardware is another, having the hardware to store your files whether used or not still costs money.
• I would just pay this bill as from what you have said, you have tried to reason with them and they still said you have to pay, you didn't cancel the service so it is still available to you, although you say you didn't use it very much.
  Don't cost the church any more money and pay the bill as I cant see you winning this one/getting it written off. Then cancel it using the process that they detail (email/writing/phonecall or whatever).
• Yes the right way is place a cancellation request if you dont wish to continue and if you have used the site or not is not their consideration, so I will also say pay the bill and get your service cancelled immediately , so that you dont have to pay for it.
• As a webhost i get things like this all the time even though we have a set cancellation process, users will just stop using the service and think that is fine, but as management and billing systems are automated the system thinks they are still a client and will invoice or take payment automatically.
  You need to find their cancellation procedure and fill it in, this should cancel the current invoice, but you wont get last years funds back