Web Mania www.web-mania.co.uk

Avoid this company at all cost renewed with them in June 2015 did not renew my domain name with Nominet after I paid them in full on credit card. I have now lost the domain name and much time wasted over 3 months trying to sort this out. I Have moved my business else ware

DETAILS PASSED ONTO TRADING STANDARDS

The escape from Yorhost requires time, forward planning and possibly the help of onlinenic, the company that Yorhost uses to register its (your) domain names ( in the case of non uk domains)

Contrary to many reviews, I have had a reasonable service from web-mania and Yorhost. The problem with them is that communication is difficult as the phone line has never ever been answered and the email delay is too long for me. So I decided to move to another hosting company, with reluctance.

That was the start of the problems. Basically Yorhost hijacked my domains and I needed onlinenic to intervene, the whole process taking several months.

So, in the light of experience, this is how I would recommend it be done. In the order below

First be sneaky. Make sure that the admin email addresses of Your domain is one that you can access separately from yorhost. You need to receive an email to progress the transfer so having web mania or yorhost as the admin email is bad, because you will not get that crucial email yourself. You do this through the admin section of the yorhost website , logging in using the bit at the top of yorhost front page.

Next, wait a few days and check that the admin address is listed in Whois or equivalent is your one. Now is not the time to have yorhost retaining you privacy. But you could choose a gmail etc address created for this purpose.

Once done, go onto your yorhost login and change the name server to that of your new provider. Also make sure that the domain is unlocked. Try locking and unlocking the domain once or twice if the site prevents a change in name server.

Now, when you start the transfer process with your new provider, you get the emails and your domain can be controlled through your new provider website interface, cpanel or whatever.

Yorhost will possibly stop the move at this point by not giving you the transfer EPP code that you need, and ignoring your emails. If this occurs, creat an account with onlinenic and tell them your problem. Include emails or invoices that you have from yorhost to demonstrate your validity. Enter the same request through yorhost customer support portal so everything is logged.

Eventually onlinenic will give yorhost an ultimatum. To which they will probably respond providing you with a transfer code and unlocking your domain. If they do not you will need to prove ownership of the domain to onlinenic, they will tell you what to do in such an instance.

The process above is not necessary with uk domains under the control of nominet. They are aware of the problems with Nathan Barnes, sole trader running yorhost. They will make transfer much easier, or at least they did with me. And you can phone them easily.

Well that's my distillation of a whole lot of worry, frustration and time spent doing what yorhost promises on its website; free and easy transfer to another provider.

Good luck. Getting your own email, not webmania or yorhost as the domain registered email is most crucial, i suspect.

This account is my own personal experience, maybe I am uniquely unlucky and other than the communication problem and this transfer I had been happy with web mania and yorhost with several domains over perhaps 8 or10 years. Therefore it is a shame it ended for me in this way.

I've been with them for at least 5 years, and I've been treated shoddily. At one point paid for my hosting and domain (rolling over a year) only to find that it expired anyway. It took 2 months to get it back online, and I didn't receive any money/time compensation. I've repeatedly had my main domain parked for no reason. I'm writing this review now because it's happened again. The only reason I'm still with them is because I don't have time to transfer to someone else, but believe me, I will at the first chance I get.

I noticed recently that the Yorhost offices are in York. That's only a 45 minute train journey from where I live, and the next time I have problems I will gladly visit them in person to talk to them face to face and sort those issues out. I'm a customer. Their "anonymity" does not make them unaccountable for their actions.

I had many good years with Web-mania in the mid 2000's.

However their recent liquidation and conversion into YorHost has prompted a whole load of complaints from people.

I was one of the unlucky ones who paid YorHost to renew domains and basically had my money stolen by them with no sign of a domain renewal.

I eventually managed to transfer my 3 domains away at added cost to myself.

DO NOT USE YORHOST - You will lose money and will not receive any service at all.

DO NOT USE! Webmania.co.uk or yorhost.co.uk

I think it is time to sort out this guy. This guy could have done a lot more to help the people he has inconvenienced, however what he is doing with YorHost is beyond the pale.

Many of us have lost money and been given an immense amount of trouble by the collapse of Web Mania Ltd. Some of us still have issues to sort out.

I am receiving invoices off his new company YorHost for domains that are no longer registered with Web Mania Ltd and I have never been a customer of YorHost nor have I had any domains registered with him. This is therefore fraud and it is a criminal offence. I know at least two other people this is happening to.

At £10-£45 a time this is not a lot of money, however if he is sending out 100s or 1000s of false invoices and some people are paying them then this amounts to a lot of money.

I am willing to collate the information and report the matter to North Yorkshire Police for criminal investigation.

Please send the following you have received from YorHost

- email “Account Renewal Reminder”

- copy of invoice form your Web Mania account.

as a zipped file to:

[email protected]

Please note: Your invoice must be for a service that is not registered with YorHost

DON'T USE WEB MANIA! Can't think of anything good to say about Web Mania. We have lost business because of them freezing our email account without notice a number of times. Their customer 'service' phone line is always closed. They don't answer email enquiries. We have been trying to move to another web hosting company, but as we can't get hold of them, we are stuck. Do yourself a favour, DON'T USE WEB MANIA!

renewed my hosting but they took the money and ran, impossible to contact , website down for 2 weeks while I tried to recover info to migrate, amazingly still get emails from them notifying me of changes at their end although haven't been with them since April.Amazed they can so blatantly steal peoples money and don't get closed down or prosecuted.

If you are thinking of buying a domain name or website hosting seriously do not use web-mania.com or yorhost.net they will take your money and when you renew your domain name they will simply put their advertising all over it and you will be without a website or worst still a domain name.

I would highly reccommend heartinternet.com they are superb, great support, price and service.

Also lost money with web-mania (now yorhost.net). Are they anything to do with yorhost.com? I hope not, for their sake! Good hosting with web-mania for several years, now not responding to any contact. No explanation, no apology - even an email stating "Sorry, we've gone bust and you've wasted this year's money but this is how you get your websites back" would have been appreciated. I hope as many people as possible read about web-mania becoming yorhost.net and avoid this company. Oh well, it's not the first time I've lost sites / money with bad hosting "providers". What I fail to understand is why the people who ran web-mania (who may indeed be in financial trouble themselves) cannot continue to help those who have paid them for a service - a simple note, and simple instructions as to how to proceed, and most importantly, the freeing-up of domain registrations so we can take our sites elsewhere. I don't want to get mad, I don't even want to get even - I want my sites back.