Visitors to the site are reminded that the details contained within user comments are uncorroborated and as such should not be read as fact but as the opinion of the person who left the comment.
Comments:
I'm currently in dispute over unwarranted credit card charges & am having extreme difficulties even getting responses from their complaints department.
I signed-up for the 3 month free trial & submitted a support ticket requesting the account be cancelled, via the account control panel (as per their T&Cs), some 2 weeks before the end of the 3 months. I had already taken a copy of all account data.
I was then away from home, without Internet access to confirm they had cancelled the account. However, rather than cancel the account they had replied to the ticket requesting I back-up any account data before they continued with cancelling it (which I'd already done anyway). Having received no reply from me, rather than going ahead with my cancellation request they left the account open & charged my credit card. I have since complained via website, phone & letter & 1 month later they have still not responded back to my complaint.
My advice to others - avoid Streamline.net like the plague!
I have been a web designer for over a few years now and have never came across a company with such poor customer relations skills in all my life.
I signed up to the free trial account which gives you 3 months free. I used this for testing purposes for a few weeks and found the service to be quite poor in terms of server perfomance so decided to forget about going any further with their services.
After the 3 months I was shocked to find that this company had taken nearly £100 from my bank account for payment of a service I didn't want!! .. I contacted them thinking that they had made a mistake only to get a load of patronising babble from them saying it was in my terms and conditions when signing up for the trial!!!
I have now decided to run a protest website against this company at www.streamlinewebhosting.com with the full details as I was so disgusted by their attitude.
My opinion is simply this - AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!!
I'm a volunteer with a registered charity, and I build their website for them. When my current ISP came to the end of the contract I looked around for another one and found streamline.net at the same time my friend whos a volunteer with another charity was also looking to set up a new website for his charity, so I showed him the streamline.net site. The site advertises that it offers a 50% charity discount on provision of the charity number. So I signed up and so did my friend. I then went on holiday and forgot about it, when I came back I realised I'd not got the charity discount so I read the terms and conditions and found out I needed to raise a support ticket and supply them with my charity number which I did. They then came back and said that that charity number was already registered and hence the discount couldn't be claimed as it was only 1 discount per charity. I said that as a trustee of the charity there were no other websites using that charity number and hence please could I have the discount, they again refused so I asked what the website was that was using the discount ? I got a standard 'discount will not be applied for the reasons stated' so I asked what checks were in place to verify the right charity was using the charity number answer -'discount will not be supplied for reasons stated' so I asked where in the terms and conditions it stated that if the charity number was already in use the discount wasn't applicable - answer ' discount will not be supplied for the reasons stated'. So I formally complained only to receive a letter telling me I had to contact the charity using my charity number and ask them to stop - how ? they wont tell me who it is !? In the end I moved in a subsidary charities website and claimed the discount on that - they finally let me have it after I'd threatened legal action. (this was 4 months after sign up) - make a note of this timeframe as it comes on to my friends experiences.
After I'd finally got the discount he tried to claim his discount, only to be told - You have to claim within 6 months of signing up. To which we pointed out that it was only just over 5 months since signing up. To which the response came back... ' it doesn't matter whether its 4,5,6 months discount must be claimed at the point of sale. (despite the fact I'd got mine 4 months afterwards) and the terms and conditions clearly state that you have to claim it back after sale and can't get it at point of sale.
I've written to them formally to complain and ask them to change their conditions of the charity discount to ensure all conditions imposed are advertised and all I've received is a fob off. So i'm now contacting trading standards and the advertising standards agency regards them to ensure no other charities sign up on the offer of 50% discount.
Don't use them ! as mentioned below you can't get them on the phone the only way to get them is through support tickets
I’ve never quite seen a company with staff that lack basic common sense as much as streamline.net
I purchased a domain name and hosted with streamline.net to start off everything went fine, i got the site up and running and everything was great. Then i tried to login to the control panel to add a new e-mail address... that’s strange, password doesn't work... click the forgot password link, wait 2 days... no password
I then contacted streamline who told me the details I have given them don't match the ones on the account... WHAT??? same details I registered with... apparently the details I gave them were right for the ones I registered with and the credit card details were fine but someone had changed all the personal info, e-mails and passwords. When I tried to explain that it wasn't me who changed the details and someone must have hacked the account, I got an e-mail back saying "We look forward to the possibility of working with you!" and now they don't reply to my e-mails and I have lost control of my domain!!! no support services whatsoever and it would appear that their servers aren't as secure as they say they are...
To sum this company up in two few words - "Utter Rubbish".
Their support takes absolutely ages to respond, the SQL servers are so slow to be useless, the response you get from the support staff is frankly ridiculous and they will not under any circumstances refund your money once you've uploaded anything onto their servers.
Don't be fooled with the free 3 month trial either, as you'll get moved away from the decent servers once thats finished.
If you've already been burned by this company, make sure you speak to Derbyshire Trading Standards, as they have (to quote their guy) "A quite sizable folder on this lot".
When I first looked into Streamline.net I thought it was great, now a year down the line I know better. If your thinking of opening an account with streamline.net I suggest you do a google search and read all the negs about them first.
Lets deal with the important stuff first, “login”
You will be given login details to Streamline.net personal portal, but will not be allowed to have the details to tucows Domain login portal (Streamline.net are resellers for Tucows). This means any changes you would like to make to your domain, will need to be changed by support ticket throught Streamline.net. this is a direct breach of Tucows conditions.
Here is the support ticket I sent to Streamline.net about this.
--------------------------------------------------
I understand from the Tucows web site you should have provided me with login and username for the domains I registered with you, as detailed below from their site.”
In order to update contact information, you will need to log into https://manage.opensrs.net with your domain management username and password. This information should have been provided to you by your Tucows reseller at the time you purchased your domain.
I need this information to transfer the domains away, please provide me with them.
---------------------------------------------------
And this is the reply
---------------------------------------------------
“Hi Graham Docherty,
Thanks for your query.
We do not provide the details to this for customers for security reasons. Please let us know which domain you want to take action on and we will make the changes for you.
We hope your Tuesday is going well, have you seen our excellent Search Engine Submission product?
Kind Regards,
Support Department
Streamline.Net - The home of good value web hosting “
-----------------------------------------------------
Next lets deal with payments
When our account came up for renewal, we wore charged twice on the same day for the same account. We eventully recovered both amounts. This ment we had to cancel our credit card and fill in lots of paperwork to allow the bank to reclaim the overpayment.
If your going to try and run a SQL related site forget it, the SQL servers are so slow page rendering can take up to 45 seconds over a T1 line, god only knows haw long it would take on a dial up line. There was times when no data could be downloaded
The first support ticket I sent
------------------------------------------------------
at present its taking between 1 minute and 10 minutes for each page to load, is their a reason for this.
------------------------------------------------------
the answer I got
well I did not get an answer so I sent another
The support ticket I sent
-------------------------------------------------------
16 November 21:54
I just used
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/wso.php
Web page speed report
www.clankin.com
Your request returned no data.
Please check your url and try again
Report run on Wed Nov 16 16:47:09EST2005
www.nnwc.co.uk
Your request returned no data.
Please check your url and try again
Report run on Wed Nov 16 16:55:41EST2005
www.borgrenegade.com
Your request returned no data.
Please check your url and try again
Report run on Wed Nov 16 16:59:47EST2005
I think there is a problem,
please sort it out.
------------------------------------------------
and the reply
------------------------------------------------
Hi Graham,
Thanks for your query.
We've tested all of these websites and haven't had any problems.
Kind Regards,
StreamlineNet
Streamline.Net - The home of good value web hosting
--------------------------
next comes the details of your domain
One of my domains was registered to Streamline and not to myself, this has caused me to lose an important account. OK the problem was corrected after I sent a support ticker, but that’s not the point.
Server errors
I kept getting internal server errors which I sent in a support ticker in for
------------------------
I keep getting an internal server error on both www.buthead.co.uk and www.forums.buthead.co.uk is this down to you or me.
----------------------------
and the reply
---------------------------
again I did no get one, I gave up
this could go on and on so im going to paste all support tickets I’ve had to submit over the last year. ill divide them with XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I cannot log into the control panel for borgrenegade.com, can you fix it please.
--------------------------
Hi Graham,
Thanks for your query.
We've reset the password and all appears fine now, apologies for any inconvenience. If you still have problems with this please respond to this support ticket.
Kind Regards,
Support Department
Streamline.Net - The home of good value web hosting
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
do I have a control panel for the true domain clankin.com added to the buthead.co.uk account.
-------------------------
Hi Graham,
Thanks for your query.
this has now been added.
Kind Regards,
Support Department
Streamline.Net - The home of good value web hosting
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
access to the sites is slow, is there a reson for this. and how can this be solved.
--------------------------
Hi Graham,
Thanks for your query.
The problem with shared hosting is that you are sharing the server with other people, and if at any point another website on the same server becomes popular it is going to effect your website. If you require a fast, responsive website 100% of the time we suggest you use a dedicated server.
Kind Regards,
Support Department
Streamline.Net - The home of good value web hosting
--------------------------
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
why does it take up to 5 minutes to access any of my sites, is there a reason for this.
--------------------------
Hi Graham,
Thanks for your query.
We have investigated your enquiry thoroughly and we've not been able to replicate the problem that you experienced. There could be a number of reasons for this: The problem may have been caused by an Internet wide network issue outside of our control. There may have been a temporary problem on your PC or local connection. It may have happened during a maintenance period on a server and so be very unlikely to occur again. It was a one off glitch that's just proved impossible to retrace. If the problem reoccurs please reply to this with as many details as possible. Please try to include error messages and any settings you were using (including username/passwords if necessecary).
Kind Regards,
Support Department
Streamline.Net - The home of good value web hosting
--------------------------
it is not my system or my adsl line as im getting complaints from users trying to get on the site. The site loading slow.
i have tried to load three sites.
www.nnwc.co.uk. very slow load times.
www.borgrenegade.com, slow 4 minutes to load.
www.clankin.com. slow 4 minutes to load
from what i can determin from here, it would appear the MySQL server is having a hard time. but i could be wrong.
-------------------------
Hi Graham,
Thanks for your query.
These domains are loading within 5 seconds. You may need to edit your pages and refine the script.
Kind Regards,
StreamlineNet
Streamline.Net - The home of good value web hosting
Incredibly poor service. In fact, non-existent service. I cant believe this company is still in business. They completely failed to register a domain for me, did not setup my ftp account for over 4 weeks (causing me much delay) and were impossible to contact.
They finally got in contact with me when I researched there company and threatened legal action.
they propose a free 3 months trial for a web site,1 paying option is to buy
a name,ok,but usualy when you secure buy on the web,after entering bank details,you confirm the transaction after the amounts appears,streamline has invented something else:you click submit,you are informed an e-mail is sent to you,so if customers have not seen there is a mistake in a column(subdomain is free,domain has to be paid);
too late,you have been billed
To confirm i am not the first abused user;one of their FAQ:have submitted for a free trial,why had i to pay ...£?
also no way to phone them :2we have operated an auto recording,but we don't guarantee an answer"
they could be honest and tell:we guarantee NOT TO answer
i e-mailed them a claim,their answer:we are sorry..., telling me to e-mail somewhere else...
however,i kept my transaction,but i cannot congratulate them about their proceed,
i am not sure that the fact i trusted was so stupid,because i really thought i HAD to confirm the transaction,but even if i was; so:as the others who claimed on FAQ?
Why companies have often to lie:no hidden charges;
my opinion,this was a hidden charge
Add a comment about this blagger
Visitors to the site are reminded that the details contained within user comments are uncorroborated and as such should not be read as fact but as the opinion of the person who left the comment.
Comments:
I signed-up for the 3 month free trial & submitted a support ticket requesting the account be cancelled, via the account control panel (as per their T&Cs), some 2 weeks before the end of the 3 months. I had already taken a copy of all account data.
I was then away from home, without Internet access to confirm they had cancelled the account. However, rather than cancel the account they had replied to the ticket requesting I back-up any account data before they continued with cancelling it (which I'd already done anyway). Having received no reply from me, rather than going ahead with my cancellation request they left the account open & charged my credit card. I have since complained via website, phone & letter & 1 month later they have still not responded back to my complaint.
My advice to others - avoid Streamline.net like the plague!
I have been a web designer for over a few years now and have never came across a company with such poor customer relations skills in all my life.
I signed up to the free trial account which gives you 3 months free. I used this for testing purposes for a few weeks and found the service to be quite poor in terms of server perfomance so decided to forget about going any further with their services.
After the 3 months I was shocked to find that this company had taken nearly £100 from my bank account for payment of a service I didn't want!! .. I contacted them thinking that they had made a mistake only to get a load of patronising babble from them saying it was in my terms and conditions when signing up for the trial!!!
I have now decided to run a protest website against this company at www.streamlinewebhosting.com with the full details as I was so disgusted by their attitude.
My opinion is simply this - AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!!
After I'd finally got the discount he tried to claim his discount, only to be told - You have to claim within 6 months of signing up. To which we pointed out that it was only just over 5 months since signing up. To which the response came back... ' it doesn't matter whether its 4,5,6 months discount must be claimed at the point of sale. (despite the fact I'd got mine 4 months afterwards) and the terms and conditions clearly state that you have to claim it back after sale and can't get it at point of sale.
I've written to them formally to complain and ask them to change their conditions of the charity discount to ensure all conditions imposed are advertised and all I've received is a fob off. So i'm now contacting trading standards and the advertising standards agency regards them to ensure no other charities sign up on the offer of 50% discount.
Don't use them ! as mentioned below you can't get them on the phone the only way to get them is through support tickets
I purchased a domain name and hosted with streamline.net to start off everything went fine, i got the site up and running and everything was great. Then i tried to login to the control panel to add a new e-mail address... that’s strange, password doesn't work... click the forgot password link, wait 2 days... no password
I then contacted streamline who told me the details I have given them don't match the ones on the account... WHAT??? same details I registered with... apparently the details I gave them were right for the ones I registered with and the credit card details were fine but someone had changed all the personal info, e-mails and passwords. When I tried to explain that it wasn't me who changed the details and someone must have hacked the account, I got an e-mail back saying "We look forward to the possibility of working with you!" and now they don't reply to my e-mails and I have lost control of my domain!!! no support services whatsoever and it would appear that their servers aren't as secure as they say they are...
Their support takes absolutely ages to respond, the SQL servers are so slow to be useless, the response you get from the support staff is frankly ridiculous and they will not under any circumstances refund your money once you've uploaded anything onto their servers.
Don't be fooled with the free 3 month trial either, as you'll get moved away from the decent servers once thats finished.
If you've already been burned by this company, make sure you speak to Derbyshire Trading Standards, as they have (to quote their guy) "A quite sizable folder on this lot".
To Sum Up - Avoid at all costs.
Lets deal with the important stuff first, “login”
You will be given login details to Streamline.net personal portal, but will not be allowed to have the details to tucows Domain login portal (Streamline.net are resellers for Tucows). This means any changes you would like to make to your domain, will need to be changed by support ticket throught Streamline.net. this is a direct breach of Tucows conditions.
Here is the support ticket I sent to Streamline.net about this.
--------------------------------------------------
I understand from the Tucows web site you should have provided me with login and username for the domains I registered with you, as detailed below from their site.”
In order to update contact information, you will need to log into https://manage.opensrs.net with your domain management username and password. This information should have been provided to you by your Tucows reseller at the time you purchased your domain.
I need this information to transfer the domains away, please provide me with them.
---------------------------------------------------
And this is the reply
---------------------------------------------------
“Hi Graham Docherty,
Thanks for your query.
We do not provide the details to this for customers for security reasons. Please let us know which domain you want to take action on and we will make the changes for you.
We hope your Tuesday is going well, have you seen our excellent Search Engine Submission product?
Kind Regards,
Support Department
Streamline.Net - The home of good value web hosting “
-----------------------------------------------------
Next lets deal with payments
When our account came up for renewal, we wore charged twice on the same day for the same account. We eventully recovered both amounts. This ment we had to cancel our credit card and fill in lots of paperwork to allow the bank to reclaim the overpayment.
If your going to try and run a SQL related site forget it, the SQL servers are so slow page rendering can take up to 45 seconds over a T1 line, god only knows haw long it would take on a dial up line. There was times when no data could be downloaded
The first support ticket I sent
------------------------------------------------------
at present its taking between 1 minute and 10 minutes for each page to load, is their a reason for this.
------------------------------------------------------
the answer I got
well I did not get an answer so I sent another
The support ticket I sent
-------------------------------------------------------
16 November 21:54
I just used
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/wso.php
Web page speed report
www.clankin.com
Your request returned no data.
Please check your url and try again
Report run on Wed Nov 16 16:47:09EST2005
www.nnwc.co.uk
Your request returned no data.
Please check your url and try again
Report run on Wed Nov 16 16:55:41EST2005
www.borgrenegade.com
Your request returned no data.
Please check your url and try again
Report run on Wed Nov 16 16:59:47EST2005
I think there is a problem,
please sort it out.
------------------------------------------------
and the reply
------------------------------------------------
Hi Graham,
Thanks for your query.
We've tested all of these websites and haven't had any problems.
Kind Regards,
StreamlineNet
Streamline.Net - The home of good value web hosting
--------------------------
next comes the details of your domain
One of my domains was registered to Streamline and not to myself, this has caused me to lose an important account. OK the problem was corrected after I sent a support ticker, but that’s not the point.
Server errors
I kept getting internal server errors which I sent in a support ticker in for
------------------------
I keep getting an internal server error on both www.buthead.co.uk and www.forums.buthead.co.uk is this down to you or me.
----------------------------
and the reply
---------------------------
again I did no get one, I gave up
this could go on and on so im going to paste all support tickets I’ve had to submit over the last year. ill divide them with XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I cannot log into the control panel for borgrenegade.com, can you fix it please.
--------------------------
Hi Graham,
Thanks for your query.
We've reset the password and all appears fine now, apologies for any inconvenience. If you still have problems with this please respond to this support ticket.
Kind Regards,
Support Department
Streamline.Net - The home of good value web hosting
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
do I have a control panel for the true domain clankin.com added to the buthead.co.uk account.
-------------------------
Hi Graham,
Thanks for your query.
this has now been added.
Kind Regards,
Support Department
Streamline.Net - The home of good value web hosting
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
access to the sites is slow, is there a reson for this. and how can this be solved.
--------------------------
Hi Graham,
Thanks for your query.
The problem with shared hosting is that you are sharing the server with other people, and if at any point another website on the same server becomes popular it is going to effect your website. If you require a fast, responsive website 100% of the time we suggest you use a dedicated server.
Kind Regards,
Support Department
Streamline.Net - The home of good value web hosting
--------------------------
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
why does it take up to 5 minutes to access any of my sites, is there a reason for this.
--------------------------
Hi Graham,
Thanks for your query.
We have investigated your enquiry thoroughly and we've not been able to replicate the problem that you experienced. There could be a number of reasons for this: The problem may have been caused by an Internet wide network issue outside of our control. There may have been a temporary problem on your PC or local connection. It may have happened during a maintenance period on a server and so be very unlikely to occur again. It was a one off glitch that's just proved impossible to retrace. If the problem reoccurs please reply to this with as many details as possible. Please try to include error messages and any settings you were using (including username/passwords if necessecary).
Kind Regards,
Support Department
Streamline.Net - The home of good value web hosting
--------------------------
it is not my system or my adsl line as im getting complaints from users trying to get on the site. The site loading slow.
i have tried to load three sites.
www.nnwc.co.uk. very slow load times.
www.borgrenegade.com, slow 4 minutes to load.
www.clankin.com. slow 4 minutes to load
from what i can determin from here, it would appear the MySQL server is having a hard time. but i could be wrong.
-------------------------
Hi Graham,
Thanks for your query.
These domains are loading within 5 seconds. You may need to edit your pages and refine the script.
Kind Regards,
StreamlineNet
Streamline.Net - The home of good value web hosting
They finally got in contact with me when I researched there company and threatened legal action.
a name,ok,but usualy when you secure buy on the web,after entering bank details,you confirm the transaction after the amounts appears,streamline has invented something else:you click submit,you are informed an e-mail is sent to you,so if customers have not seen there is a mistake in a column(subdomain is free,domain has to be paid);
too late,you have been billed
To confirm i am not the first abused user;one of their FAQ:have submitted for a free trial,why had i to pay ...£?
also no way to phone them :2we have operated an auto recording,but we don't guarantee an answer"
they could be honest and tell:we guarantee NOT TO answer
i e-mailed them a claim,their answer:we are sorry..., telling me to e-mail somewhere else...
however,i kept my transaction,but i cannot congratulate them about their proceed,
i am not sure that the fact i trusted was so stupid,because i really thought i HAD to confirm the transaction,but even if i was; so:as the others who claimed on FAQ?
Why companies have often to lie:no hidden charges;
my opinion,this was a hidden charge
Back