If you’ve not heard of them, read about UK2 here. The original article was written by a guy called Andy Crawford, but I’m having exactly the same fustrating troubles as him.
Basically, UK2 are trying to charge me for each domain I want to transfer away, even though I have already thrown tonnes of money at them. This is what Andy Crawford said:
[1] They are not cheap
Ok so they might look cheap at first, but after you register your domain everything else is an add-on. Your website(s) will posssibly cost more in the end.
[2] Pop-ups and the UK2 advertising banner
You will have to pay for removal of pop-ups and the UK2 advertising banner.
[3] Webspace is extra
Webspace costs extra and it will be assigned to only one domain name. If you have more than one domain that you want to run separately, you need to buy webspace for each and every domain. This now becomes very expensive.
[4] Upgrades and add ons are assigned to each domain
You must also pay for upgrades for each domain separately (CGI-PHP, Statistics etc)
[5] Email is a forwarding service only
If you want a POP3 Mailbox or use IMAP, you will need to create a separate UK2.net mailbox address. Even if you pay extra for unlimited email address forwarding you will not be able to forward to multiple recipients.
[6] It’s pot luck whether your CGI scripts will run
Even something as simple as FormMail will not run on the UK2 servers. If you use their own version of FormMail, any mail generated can only be sent to a UK2.net mail box and cannot be forwarded.
[7] Support
My own experience of the support team is that:They will reply with a block of standard text which does not answer the query, or, they reply with various conflicting and incorrect answers.
[8] Transferring your domain
When you have had enough of UK2 and want to move away, they will charge you to have control of your domain and allow the transfer to proceed. But they will not make it easy, they seem to do everything in their power to stop the transfer proceeding.
[9] Renewals
They will renew your domain and services and charge your credit card even when you have asked them not to, and even after you have transferred you domain away from them.
All of this is totally true. I advise anyone to stay well away from UK2.net, they are just money grabbers.
I’ll post more of my experience when (or if…) I’ve resolved my situation.
July 15th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Yeah, I had a ball with those sh1+h34d5 too.
July 15th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Well, a strongly worded e-mail to the head of operations seems to have sorted things out. I really don’t think issues like these should be escalated that far (having the head of operations have to sort out the issue), but in my case it has worked.
I think it should be much clearer when you register a website with UK2 that you will have to pay £12.99 + VAT to transfer your domain away within the first 2 years.