39 thoughts on “123-Reg Complaints”

1. Well I don’t have a website anymore. For some reason 123reg couldn’t get their money from my card 2 weeks ago (something to do with the address) and decided to wipe out my site. 5 years of hard work down the drain. No apology, nothing! What a way to run a business.

2. The address?

   Could be the same thing that happened to me. Their form wasn’t working as it wasn’t keeping the postcode – hence the card was declined.

   I think there must have been a coding error on their part – perhaps they renamed a form field by mistake – resulting in transactions failing.

   They won’t admit it though – just funny how when they eventually understood what I was telling them that it was then fixed.

3. Hi m8, thanks for writing the brunt of your experience.

   I had to fax a complaint letter today. I simply cannot believe how stupid some of the operators are told to be (let’s remember, they are told to operate as robots and probably switch off the human brain as they enter the front door of their workplace).

   My problem relates to stored credit card details (from a client that I sat down with to buy a domain one day) and the erroneous billing of said client for unwanted domain renewals using card details I didn’t want stored and instructed 123reg to remove from my account before the 4th time they used them to take £153 from my client’s card.

   They’ve said they’ll call me back….we’ll see….

   Oh better still, they locked me out of the control panel because my client got her money back through her bank, leaving the £153 in debt on my 123reg account.

   They locked my login access, didn’t tell me, and wouldn’t switch it on whilst I wrote them a letter to dispute their decision.

   Seriously, after nearly ten years of custom, all I can say is what a bunch of corporate c**ts who obviously have grown so big the head doesn’t know what the stink is when the other end sh*ts…

   Arrrrghhhh……

4. Oh, I forget the cherry on the cake – the support guy told me he’d email me when he received the fax.

   I got an email through the support ticket system which I couldn’t read or open because they’d locked my login!!

   The spring bunnies of Duuuuuuuuuh are skipping merrily through the fields of AAaaaaaaaaaGH today!!

5. At least you got a response out of them. SSL certificate application buggered up then they have not even responded within 24 hours.
   Share you guys and the pain of the credit cards, they billed me 5 times for the SSL, and in the past on numerous occasions, have billed me for other customers charges. recovering that payment – wll, not easy. i have to proove to them i didn’t order it.

   Next step is complaint to CC company. If they weren’t so cheap, i’d be gone. godaddy seems mighty attractive too as i use them for private hosting

6. Regarding 123-reg, I would never use nor recommend their service ever again. A simple transfer of a domain name into my account ended up in the account of a previous owner before the previous owner before me. After spending a whole day calling them, they really had no idea what they were doing, and I had to clarify everything with Nominet. When I finally did get it transferred, it was out of date. Absolute joke, worst customer service: it is absolutely pointless calling them for help. If anyone could recommend a good registar, let me know. I am thinking of names.co.uk?

   Regards

   Damon

7. I am having an absolute nightmare too. Does anybody have a phone number for Reg 123 please? as I am not getting any joy sending messages. I have to wait days to get a response and the response doesn’t help.

   Thanks

   Julie

8. I think I deserved all I got, for signing up for a web hosting package, having already met with the “forms”, which should have been an indication of how unbelievably backward this company is. It would benefit me, in future to take on board the technical ability or not as with 123, of their own website?Oh duh me!.
   I am off to find a private address/phone number for one/all of this companies execs………I do not intend anyone should profit from my misery without investing a little of their own discomfort.
   My gripe is;
   Late p.m./ 19th sept, I bought web hosting, Early a.m. / 20th sept, phoned 123reg, to cancel web hosting, All good, Web hosting cancelled and full refund will be forthcoming…. Neither happened, so called again 10 days later, girlie promised a call back, Nothing. Emailed, Like Daz, my question did not fit any of the categories, There was no, “I want my money back”. Received an email, regarding “renewal services”, nothing to do with my complaint, So replied thus;
   Hi,
   You have deliberately ignored my initial complaint, Which was regarding cancellation of web hosting within 24 hours after the initial set up, and nothing what so ever to do with the “automated renewal service” You are clinging to, in the hope that I shall be easily fobbed off.
   READ MY INITIAL EMAIL AND CHECK MY ACCOUNT!.

   If your reading these complaints, to determine your decision on becoming a customer of this company; If you have not done that before getting to me, then you deserve to be a customer of 123reg. 🙂

9. I also having issues with this company. They stored my credit card details on their system for automatic renewals, but I’ve updated their system through the domain control panel to let the domain expired without renewal. They just go ahead and renew the domain and take the money automatically. I’ve raised the support ticket to demand my money back but they refused. In the support ticket I’ve told them that I will go to the press or trading standards if I don’t have my money back. Guess what, they deleted the response from my support ticket. How do you go about getting your money back when you don’t have any responses from them through sending messages?

10. An absolute nightmare. One of my domain names has been suspended because I have been unable to get through to 123 on their web site. I have changed my password as per their emails dozens of times but access is denied. After reporting the matter to Nominet, a dim whit at 123 finally called me today and said my access was denied because of fraudulent acitivity on my account. What fraudulent activity? I was kept holding for 10 minutes while she checked with accounts. She returned to tell me that I had cancelled a payment 2 years ago therefore my account had been withdrawn. I have never been informed about this and on subsequent checking through my correspondence from 2008 and earlier realise this is connected with Webfusion (their parent company?) over a major battle I had with them when they put a debt collection agency on to me because I had refused to pay for web space I had never used and cancelled 18 months before.
    This company appear to be out of control and they are causing untold problems to many customers.
    I had tried to transfer my domain to another company but was told 123 have to agree. Because of the hassle I agreed to leave it with 123 but expected them to waive the renewal fee but they won’t because they claim I have ‘already cost them a lot of money’. I am not prepared to pay them anymore money.
    I have been dealing with Nominet on this for three weeks but they have tried to help by giving me an email address and premium call rate number for 123 but they refuse to respond to emails.
    I have finally got a name of their CEO:
    Thomas Vollrath
    Webfusion
    5 Roundwood Avenue
    Stockley Park
    Uxbridge UB11 1FF

    I am now writng to Trading Standards and urge others to do the same.
    Regar4ds
    Bob

11. What a shower of dunces this lot are.

    We have been an affiliate for 8 years and got paid regularly until 2 years ago.

    We have registered over 1000 domains with them for our clients over the years which all qualified for affiliate commission. Now they say they will not pay fees due since 2008 nor will they supply full details of all transactions.

    Support tickets get canned replies and managers to whom I have spoken to on the telephone NEVER call back despite promising to do so.

    I don’t need the money (and never will). The fees may be minimal but it is the principal that gets my back up.
    I am currently moving all domains to another provider, 50% completed already.

    Once that’s done I`ll move all my hosting solutions and servers to the new company as well.

    SUPPORT AT123-REG IS PATHETIC and their affiliate scheme is crooked
    Motto:
    Cheap services company – employ monkees.

    They are committing fraud and I looking forward to seeing them in court as the cost is worth it just to meet the dummies who run the company.
    🙂

12. 12 month with an issue and still not resolved if I treated my clients like this I would not blame them if they claimed compensation

13. Pingback: Getting British Business Online offers free websites | Mr Daz

14. And still more tales of woe…
    We have used 123-Reg for over ten years for all of our own corporate and client domains.
    Initially things were pretty stable – we did not actually have any problems to be dealt with by Support. However cver the past couple of years we have begun to encounter service issues and have had a number of occassions where we have had to deal with their “Support” (I do use this word in the loosest sense ) team…

    We have now found that FOUR of our own corporate domains have not been Auto-Renewed (as they were set to.)
    To cut a long story short we have today been advised that

    “…The auto renewal process is not a guaranteed service that we offer. We take the payments at an unusual time therefore some banks can decline the payment from being taken. Also, at the time of auto renewals we might fail to take payment from your card. We do advise all of our customers that they need to check that there package has auto renewed to make sure they are not loosing there domains or services.”

    (This statement incidently from the somewaht infamously aforementioned “kirsty”…)

    And, just to make matters worse, they then closed the bloody Support Ticket as ‘Solved’ as we “had not responded for 72 hours”, which, yes you’ve guessed it, was over a week-end!! (64 hours of this 72 hours being 17:00 on Friday evening to 09:00 on Monday morning…)

    Perhaps it is just me, but I quite simply cannot understand how a company can possibly offer such a disgusting, unprofessional service as is currently being dished out by 123-Reg.

    As has been mentioned by several other eralier Posters, we too shall be moving our services away from 123-Reg with immediate effect, but this is going to require somewhere in the region of 16+ man-hours which I really feel like charging back to this sham of a company.

    Absolutely disgusted.

15. 123-reg have locked my account – all because I’ve won a paypal dispute

    They sent me several emails telling me domains were expiring – and then decided to renew them all and take money out of my bank via paypal without any notice of how much they were taking – anyway Paypal refunded

    (.info paid 50p for then got renewed @ 200% increase without notice)

    But now account is locked – I’m trying to transfer domains away – but it seems they won’t let me.

    Can they do this? – or do I have to pay Nominet to change tags for me?

    I am seriously thinking of entering a claim against them in small claims court – one of my domains expires in about 1-2 months that I really want to keep – if they won’t allow me to transfer away and they won’t renew it – I will take them to the cleaners in court – if I lose this domain!!

16. 123-reg is very devious. If you want to cancel your auto-renewal the wording they use makes you think you are cancelling your domain names all together. When I saw this I thought ‘hang on, I don’t want this’. So I could not find out where to cancel the domain renewals and thought I will just transfer them before the domains expire. But they billed me anyway stating that I did not cancel the auto-renewal (I did not get past their devious trap, you see …) and they refuse to refund me. I can’t even mange to delete my card details so they stop stealing my money.

17. ok sounds like 123-reg is best avoided but who shall we use instead for domain registration?

    Any recommendations?

    Ray: Who did you move your domains to?

    Cheers,
    Mark

18. I wish i had read this before i decided to pay 123-reg.

    As a first timer in website producing thought i would use their intersite program. FIRST mistake.

    SECOND… the program didn’t work on any application or on my mac or pc. took a week to resolve.

    THIRD… the package is very inflexible and even though you buy 500 pages you only actually get 66. 6 top level and 10 lower on each top level. the other 434 pages are not editable they are for a shop or gallery.

    this was not mentioned when buying the package.

    Totally annoyed and wished i had bought a desktop package.

19. 123 reg a joke just deleted my website for no reson, county court letter going in the post asap or a new website will be paid for i am furious, paid in full for web hosting 2 months ago and cleared funds avoid them like the plague

20. good grief. I have never experienced customer support like this. Completely unbelievable. I am appalled by the lack or professionalism and utter neglect. I have sent 5 support tickets asking a simple instruction to take payment to release my domain from redemption.

    Every time I get an automated response that refers me to a irrelevant link.

    Once I have a response from a ‘technician’ offering a solution but they disappeared with no reply.

    This is so frustrating, how can they operate a company like this.

    I will be writing to Trading Standards, I have copies of all my support tickets and will enclose them when writing to the CEO of this shambles of a company.

    DO NOT USE 123-REG – complete joke.

21. Do not use 123-reg please. They take money from my card we no permission, my website has disappeared costing me £1,000’s of lost business. I have made a complaint to watch dog, there are now over 190 and they are well aware of the company. My email never works, the staff are rude. Anyone considering using them, I beg you please don’t! They do not even deserve one star, but sadley you have to put one! A dangerous company, stay well clear! Also contact watch dog, this company should not be in business. i have lost real money due to them, it is hard enough out there without these fools. Please Please Please stay well clear!!!!!!!

22. Do not use 123-reg.

    First of all. Make sure you do not put your credit card details as it will be used for unauthorized transactions in future without your consent (eg. renewals of unwanted domains). If you give them those details you will be unable to delete them in future. There is no option to delete them.

    I’ve tried to transform my .co domains to go Daddy. I have started the transferring process went to 123-reg to cancel auto renewals and found out that all those domains where renewed 10 minutes after I have started transferring them to GoDaddy even though there was still one day left. I have end up paying twice. Requested a refund from 123-reg and asked them to unblock the transfer and was told to ask for a refund from GoDaddy. No refund from us and domains stay with us. Well only for this year guys. Last year. I have transferred all my domains away from 123-reg. They have used my card details to pay for the renewal. The card I have used 2 years ago to buy those domains. Even the address doesn’t match with my current one. It was an unauthorized use of my debit card and theft of my money to buy services from 123-reg by 123-reg. Nice. Stay away from 123-reg.

    Kind regards
    P

23. Look like lots of these problems with 123-reg. Been reading about them elsewhere.

    Surely unauthorised use of credit card for automatic renewal is illegal. There is a very weasel-words clause in their Ts&Cs that tries to suggest that they can keep details after they’ve been used:

    ‘6.8 Where the Client authorises payment of any of the Fees by credit and or debit card then 123-reg may deduct other amounts becoming payable to it under the Agreement from that credit or debit card without obtaining additional authorisation from the Client. For the avoidance of all doubt the Client must have an active credit or debit card stored on 123-reg’s systems for the duration of the Agreement.’

    I think that the part beginning ‘For the avoidance of all doubt’ has no meaning, let alone legal standing. (What doubt? Whose? Who is trying to avoid it? With what intent)?

    If it really did mean what it seems to be trying to suggest it would amount to a perpetual retention and use of credit card details.

    Why did I look into this?
    I removed credit card details after a ‘phone call to the support section, which told me where / how to do it. Apparently all OK, and checked a few times subsequently. Details gone, s intended. However, some time later the details had reappeared on my record. I suspect that this was illegal and potentially fraudulent and intend to take legal advice. In the US this would probably be grounds for a class action against the company.

    I believe that under UK law the credit card company has 50% liability. This is worth following up.

    Searches on Twitter hash tag #123reg reveals other problems. Perhaps worth reporting experiences there, too. Will be investigating Webfusion and Supanames – all part of the same stable.

    When a company, especially a large one, abuses customer trust like this, whether it be with regard to law or business ethics, it should not be allowed to continue the practices and should be liable for compensation. If reports here and elsewhere are to be believed this would seem to be a significant case.

24. If you do have a problem with 123-reg.co.uk you can ask for help and advise from ICANN – http://www.icann.org/en/help/dispute-resolution .123-reg have to abide by the legislation set by ICANN. after submitting a complaint, they helped me get a refund from 123-reg.co.uk

25. I’ve been a customer of 123 for many years and they were never good, but this year (2012) they seem to have transformed themselves into something surpassing awful. On five separate occasions they have double-charged me for domains. Now they have taken a payment for a domain and cancelled it anyway – demanding £40 to bring it back to life. This last tactic is theft, as far as I am concerned.

26. I just stumbled upon this thread with the complaints about 123-reg. I had a bad expereince with them and they have a worst kind of customer experiernce. After much research, got their customer support number

    0845 4502310

    They did automatical renewal, took payment off my card without any approval from me.

    The reply was they have 7 day auto-renewal policy which is not on the control panel through which domains are renewed/cancelled. They have also charged a ridiculus amount for the domains which are available lot cheaper in other companies.

    My advise is : Avoid them at all cost.

27. 123 have lost my domain after charging me and sending a confirmation email.
    They’ve charged me 3 times on some domains. Lost others.
    They quote t&cs at every single complaint.

    Really are as bad as they come! How have they gotten away with this??

28. I’m having a big problem with 123-reg, as I have used the trial for the e-commerce package in 2011 and cancelled it right after as it was no useful for me as I was using another e-commerce software.
    The problem is they took payments out of my credit card until today even when I cancelled it back in 2011. Now they say I haven’t cancelled the e-commerce package but the hosting package. How could I have cancelled the hosting package if I still using it until today and still paying for it???
    Clearly their error, but now they don’t want to assume responsibility for that.
    I’m now seeking legal advice so any suggestions would be much appreciated.

29. 123.reg,webfusion is a company not fit for purpose and is in breach of trading standards laws and data protection. They are a disgrace. Do not use them as they will cause you many problems as their systems are designed to confuse.

30. We’re a small web design firm and we have used 123-reg a lot. Normally their website and system works for us… and in all honesty we have no cause to complain.

    HOWEVER… should you be unfortunate enough to require “help” from their customer “service” team, I warn you, it’s like a bad trip.

    Each time I am left in utter disbelief about how truly terrible it is. Canned answers. Contradictory instructions. They seem to read no more than the first two lines of your most recent question, and so there is no continuity.

    It would be comical if it weren’t for the fact that this is the last thing you need when you have technical problems and your website is down.

    For example:

    1. On one occasion, their domain cancellation system (which I use frequently and am very familiar with) failed to work. Rather than look into the error, they simply refused a refund unless I could prove (err….how?) that I had actually cancelled the domain. (We have since made it company policy to take screenshots of all cancelled domains.)

    2. More recently, my girlfriend’s domain expired by mistake and she had lost access to the email account used to manage it. Her error. Can’t blame 123-reg for that one. Still, I thought it would be *relatively* easy to prove her identity and re-establish ownership….. heh….

    It’s now 5 days later. The website is still down. It’s been 8 hours since we last heard from their support team. We have spoken to 6 different reps. Each has requested us to fill out a different form, or send them a different item of ID. Each time we send the ID. We hear nothing. We prod them. They ask us to send another, different, form of ID. We do. We hear nothing. We prod them. They request us to fill out a yet another form. … you get the idea.

    Well bit of a rant there. But as you can see above, the 123Reg Team inspire this kind of prose quite frequently.

31. UPDATE + SUGGESTED STRATEGY:

    Following above rant, I am happy to say that our problem has now been resolved.

    I would like to share with you my new “123-Reg Support Strategy” in case it proves useful to anybody else having trouble.

    1. Submit a support ticket clearly outlining the problem you’re having.
    (You will no doubt receive an irrelevant canned response / support article. Don’t let this wind you up though – we’re really only preparing for steps 3 and 5 )

    2. Call them up. 0845 450 2310. 9am-5.30pm Monday to Friday.
    (If you can, ask for Kevin. Of all the support staff we’ve spoken too, he stood out as being actually quite helpful. Even if you can’t get him… staff in general seem more efficient and much less antagonizing on the phone then they do via support tickets).

    3. Each time you get passed to another agent, don’t bother explaining AGAIN, just quote the ticket number
    (Despite appearances to the contrary, 123-reg support staff ARE capable of reading support tickets. You just have to ask them nicely.)

    4. Keep them on the phone until your problem is actually resolved. As reassuring and helpful as they may sound during the conversation, DO NOT take their word for anything until it’s done..
    (“Would you mind staying on the call until that has been done… just that I’ve called you guys up X many times now and I’m starting to go crazy…”)

    5. If you really must end the call (for example you need to wait 48 hours for X or Y to happen), then request that they update the support ticket with any assurances / promises / instructions. Don’t hang up until you can see that they’ve done this.

    Just remember – customer support at 123Reg is a misnomer.

    A support ticket may not get you much support. however you can use it to manage their internal communications and processes as they are clearly not capable of doing either themselves.

32. If you need to speak to anyone call this number.

    0208 061 1599 (ext 1076).

    Senior Member of the Support team called Oliver, he does everything by the book and unfortunately that’s the reason I’m compiling a complaint letter 🙁

33. I completely agree with 123-reg offering a very poor service.

    However your initial email to them was pretty rude and antagonistic and they didn’t get any more pleasent. You might find people are more inclined to be helpful if you’re polite and professional when asking for help.

    Bare in mind also that it’s the company that is at fault for not adequately training their staff or providing them an efficient infrastructure in which to work. Being rude is neither likely to help resolve your problem or fair on the support staff who already have to put up with working for a crap company.

34. Same here with 123.. Total shambles… Had a domain from them, pointing to a zenfolio site and decided to start a w-press site knowing I had to use another domain. Hired a cracking web guy to build for me and it looked amazing. Then I rang 123, to ask for a domain transfer.. They advised they’d need to shut down the site to repoint my domain to the w-press. Advised my developer to back up all the content. This was done and they transfered the domain. When my developer uploaded the back up, it failed. He called them only to be told their is an issue with their back up and it’s holding 0 bytes even though it appears the back up is there. They tried saying the SQL was in the FTP file and for him to try again.. What a load of nonsense.

    They confirmed the back up hadn’t worked and they would have to do a restore, at £40 plus vat and it would take 24hrs. I agreed out of sheer desperation and the restore came back from the 30th of last month, even though my developer was promised they would restore it from the point of it being taken down..
    I have been on the phone for hrs over this, endless emails, chats and more emails and we are still at a standstill. I put a huge marketing campaign online and bid for a photography job (thats what I do) using the website as evidence of my work. So looks like I won’t even be considered for this now.. Totally blown away by the customer diservice and the ammount of teflon shoulders in this company.. Think once my blog page comes back, my 1st blog will be on them..

35. Word of warning to all, had removed all payment details from 123, with one remaining – a debit card that had expired with no expiry dates, no cvv, and the wrong address.

    They still managed to take money from my account when a domain expired!!! I phoned the bank to say that this is fraud, and according to them, they can request VISA to give them the details so they can process the transaction!!

    I simply could not believe this! The bank said they would monitor my account – however VISA can not block it in future. Really weird considering (IMO) this is fraud…

    My advice: Use PayPal for payment to 123 – you can cancel the recurring transaction part from PayPal. On the basis that they never have your card details in the first place – you should be safe(r).

36. Well, I’ve just used their website builder. I built four in the past with no problems using other platforms, so I’m no novice. So far they have lost the entire website I first built, despite saving it. I built it all again, not as good as the first, and it’s lost again. They said that I didn’t save it. Derr!.. So what’s the ‘Save and Publish’ button for then?… I think it should be a ‘Delete all of your hard work’ button.

    That said, I will be complaining to the relevant ombudsman, because they will get heavy. That said, 123-reg will just deny, deny, deny. I think they should build one for free, as I am self employed and considering charging them for my wasted time too.

37. They lost all of their clients websites last week. It was all over the news. They deleted the websites and the backups. You’re better off getting a professional web designer to build a website, rather than doing it yourself with a an online website builder. I wouldn’t try and fix my own car or install my own kitchen – I’d use an expert. That way I wouldn’t mess it up, waste my time and make an expensive mistake.

38. Here we are in 2017, the better part of a decade later, and I’m having the same problems written about in this article.

    Bloody idiots.

39. I have had 3 yrs payments taken from my bank account in the last 7 days When i contacted them on their help site I was informed that the person I was corresponding with could not deal with it and was passed to a colleague who gave me a ticket number and said they would look into it. Talk about incompetence,more like theft. I tried phoning, but thats a waste of time as I was left waiting for 20mins before I gave up.So far I have phoned them 5 times and my ticket number has had 0 responce from them.I will be informing my bank to block them as soon as this is sorted.Thats if they dont empty my account by then.

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