In december 2006
I ordered a domain from another.com. I waited a couple of days, and tried to log into my another.com account. Wouldn't work. Submitted a "support ticket":

Dear Valued Customer

We do aplogise for the delay in replies. We are currently experienceing some major problems with Modernbill and Hardware issues. Our Technical Department is currently in the process of restoring these issues and hoping to have it it rectified before the end of the week. Once again we do aplogise for any inconvenience caused.

Please take note that Another.com was purchased by UK-2 Limited, one of the UK's biggest Web Hosting Companies. As part of the UK2 group Another.com will receive significant investment and benefit from an improved network and new systems. However, these enhancements may take several months. UK2 apologise for any disruption in service or technical problems that may arise during this period.

As a result all Another.com clients are invited to move to the established UK2 platform and benefit from FREE Web Hosting for 6 months whilst these changes are being made.

Please contact [email protected] to move your services to UK2. (Only contact UK2 if you wish to have your domain transfered to us).

So I submitted a ticket on uk2.net's site, and got this back...:

Dear sir,

Please can you submit a ticket via the another.com website in the billings queue.

This ticket system is only for UK2 customers.

Another.com will deal with your ticket quickly and sort a refund.

But this is not the correct queue.
Thank you

So I tried another.com again several times and eventually recieved this reply:

Dear sir,

I've checked through our system and the transaction and domain name are not showing up at all, they do not exist and i'm therefore not able to refund you as no money appears to have been collected.


Regards,
Technical Support Team.
Another.com

Now at this point I am considering reporting the incident as a matter of fraud, because my bank account HAD been charged £12.00, and another.com HAD NOT registered the domain for me. They claimed I wasn't even a customer. I decided to email WorldPay, the company that were managing another.com's payments, in what I expected to be a feeble attempt at recovering my funds. All this wasn't really their fault, but this is the response I recieved:


Thank you for your query.

The online store is responsible at all times for any queries relating to the payment and fulfilment of your order. Unfortunately, if you have been unable to contact the online store you have purchased from, we can only recommend that you contact your card issuer to raise a dispute and/or approach the relevant consumer rights organisation for your region for further advice.

As a Payment Service Provider we only provide online stores with the ability to accept card payments securely over the internet. We do not hold information about the goods/services you have ordered or their delivery status, and are not able to cancel your order or to provide you with a refund.

Once again I would like to thank you for taking the time to contact us regarding this matter. I can assure you that your concerns are taken seriously and as a result of your feedback, we may withdraw our services from the online store if we find it does not comply with our terms and conditions, any legal requirements for online trading and/or persistently fails to act with integrity.

Not the best result, but at least they weren't total twunts about the whole thing, and they did give me some advice.

Bottom line is:

Do not use another.com OR uk2.net. Though cheap, they are clearly a set of con artists, and will probably take your money.

Since this is already ridiculously long, I'd like to add that after searching the internet, there are other people who have had similar problems, and some have been duped for a lot more than £12...

Many Apologies for Length.
( FreudianSlap, Fri 19 Oct 2007, 18:09, 1 reply)

Registration
I used godaddy.com, not the cheapest by far and only $8 a year for com, net, org + no trouble at all.
(Benzyl, Mon 22 Oct 2007, 22:05, closed)