It’s sort of fitting that on the anniversary of my "Battling with Iomart" blog I had a meeting with a client whose domain we are attempting to move from that company.

The story so far. Iomart call my client back in February of this year saying they were recommended by a well-known organisation within my client’s industry for providing websites.

My client decided to let Iomart do their website, and as it transpired were less than impressed with the end result, a two page website.

Interestingly, a Google search returned a ufindus directory entry on the first page, but when I looked for my client’s site among the listings far more inappropriate sites were listed in ufindus way above my client’s entry - and when I clicked on the link to their site it came up "Server not found". The link was mis-spelt and consequently of no use to man or beast!

Iomart, trading as ufindus, charged £199.95 plus VAT for the set-up of the website and an ongoing £29.95 plus VAT per month. Minimum contract period of 12 months with mandatory 60 days notice in writing to terminate.

Fortunately, my client didn’t sign the contract. However, the domain transfer is proving to be as complicated and error-prone as all the other transfers I’ve done involving the parent company, Iomart.

First of all, ufindus require a fax on letterhead paper from the domain owners to request the transfer. Not unreasonable.

Next they require the customer to login to their control panel in order to pay the £50.00 (plus VAT, no doubt) transfer fee by credit/debit card. Now the first problem is encountered. The username and password for the control panel doesn’t work. Neither does the forgotten details process. A phone number is given in case of problems with usernames/password. The number is called and my client was told ufindus didn’t have an email address to send the details to. My client must now send a fax to ufindus requesting the username and password, with an email address for the details to be sent to.

I understand the organisation referred to earlier are considering legal action against ufindus to prevent them saying they are recommended by said organisation.

It is only my opinion, but I’d say there are better companies to deal with when it comes to organising a web presence.

And so it seems nothing much has changed at ufindus/Iomart.

I wonder what next year will bring…

Iomart Group PLC have recently released details of their financials showing a turnover of £16.6m (2004 - £7.4m) with annualised sales running at £20m and operating profits of £1.8m.

Iomart also claim to have 200,000 customers, which given their recent performance over the transfer of a domain away from them totally amazes me.

At the beginning of May a new client asked me to take over the domain management and Web hosting of one of their domains - all in a day’s work, HA!

Easy, request Iomart to change the IPSTag to my tagholder and then I can change the name servers and have the website up and running on the new servers within 24 hours.

First of all, Iomart charge £49.00 + VAT to change the IPSTag; this is what I refer to as a "Sour Grapes" charge - as in you move your domain away from us and we’ll whack you with a hefty "transfer" charge.

Iomart requested an authorising fax on letterhead paper signed by the legal registrant quoting the domain name and new IPSTag - perfectly reasonable. Sent 5th May.

So how should the £49.00 charge be paid for? My newly acquired client has to go into their control panel and pay by credit card, then Iomart change the IPSTag and the transfer goes ahead. And if the client doesn’t know their username and password Iomart emails it to them.

This is what happened, but said username and password didn’t work, client emails them to me and I try - dead right, it doesn’t work.

Back to Iomart. I phone them (10-15 mins listening to repeated statements that they are "experiencing heavy demand for this service") to be told that my client will have to send them a cheque. Cheque gets sent on 6th May with a covering letter stating the domain name concerned… and we wait a week, nothing.

I phone them up and they say thay haven’t received the cheque.

I phone the client to ask for a cheque number. Client has gone on holiday and won’t be back ’til this Wednesday (yesterday).

I speak to the customer today, get the cheque number and confirmation that the cheque cleared yesterday, and call Iomart.

I speak to a young girl in "billing" who insists that although Iomart received a cheque no. the same as my client’s cheque number it’s not my client’s cheque. Bit of a coincidence methinks and ask her to doublecheck her facts, but she’s adamant there’s no mistake. Billing girl asks me to find out which bank account the cheque has been paid into.

I phone client, client phones their bank to be told that the bank doesn’t know and can’t find out the recipient’s details unless banked at the same bank. Back to square one - getting really uptight now but retain professional attitude when calling Iomart again.

Billing girl still maintains the cheque is not my client’s. She tells me it belongs to a company in Wales. I make investigations, call the company and speak to Mike. Mike confirms he paid Iomart, a company he says is "difficult to deal with"… but paid them last year!

Back to billing girl. I don’t think she’s enjoying these conversations with me now, but still insists company in Wales is the only cheque with the same cheque number. She still claims Iomart’s accounts system is accurate. I point out that the Welsh company paid their cheque over a year ago, so why would it only just have been paid in (sorry, I forgot to mention she had said the cheque was paid into their account on 16/05/05). I’m getting nowhere and say I’ll be complaining to Nominet before ending the call.

Think about it some more, and decide to see if I can escalate the matter to management level. I call again and ask to be put through to Customer Services. "You’ll have to call another number" - 0870 050 0303 - I recognise this as "Technical Support", and dial it, ask for Customer Services only to be told I’ve got Technical Support. Obviously no Customer Services within the company - but think to myself that I’d already worked that out, pah!

Another girl on the line says she’ll find me someone to speak to and puts me on hold… back to the billing department and the "billing" girl again.

Billing girl says she was going to phone me but didn’t have a number - at least she’s right about that.

Guess what. They’d made a mistake and the IPSTag would be changed today - what a waste of an afternoon. Perhaps I’ll ask for a refund for my client.

Just goes to show that not all Web hosting companies are same!

By the way, I don’t charge for transfers to or away from us so if you’re asked to pay more than £15.00 + VAT in transfer charges give us a call - there is a way round it. ;)

One of the most important parts of my job is to ensure when a domain name is transfered between hosting service providers (HSP) the client’s email is disrupted as little as possible, with the ideal situation being no email losses at all.

But unfortunately there are so many companies out there who "just don’t get it"!

This is a topic that was bound to come up sooner or later in this blog, because so many Web design companies who handle their clients domains and hosting just don’t know how to do it properly.

So, anyway, I get a call this morning from a print and publicity media company that has taken over an old account of mine, requested the domain name transfer, which went through, but obviously didn’t make any provision for the seemless transfer of the company’s email facilities…

So now this guy on the end of the phone wants to know if I have an email forwarding address for his newly acquired Web client! Well, at least he knows enough to forward email to an existing mailbox of his newly acquired Web client, because a quick fix is better than nothing.

Taking a deep mental breath, and in my usual polite and professional way, I explain I don’t know of any such email addresses of my ex-client.

I go onto explain that his client used to use a catchall mailbox that their internal server collected from and then distributed via the internal network. I went onto explain that one of the staff didn’t work from the main office, collected mail from home and needed a separate mailbox to collect from.

It was obvious the guy didn’t have much idea of what I was talking about, and quite honestly I don’t blame him for that - he’s probably been saddled with looking after the websites for his company’s clients, because they don’t have an inhouse IT guy. He’s probably a designer or marketing bod, with little or no training in Internet matters - so it’s the company that’s to blame - it’s all down to the management… that’s what I say.

Still, that’s not going to be any consolation to my ex-client. Ah well, life’s full of little surprises.