Problem with Internet Service Provider

Don't know if this is the right forum for this question but let's see how we go.

I have recently had an issue with a company that I paid to host my websites. As a result of the issue I have decided to leave them and move my custom to another supplier.

In response, they have dediced that they will retain my property and my data until I pay them for another years worth of service.

To be more specific, this is what happened. I started up three new websites within a period of three months. Each new website I started had it's own 'hosting package' (where they look after the data that makes the website on their servers) and each package was paid for 12 months in advance. So I paid three times in June August and September.

As we are now mid way through July the company was expecting a payment to renew for a further 12 months for the first package. As I did not remember to do this they decided they would cut the service of the other two packages which were due to run to August and September. Since I had paid for service for that period until their expiry I felt they were effectively stealing from me by not providing services which had been paid for.

As a result of what they had done I decided I did not want to continue to use them and I have bought a new package from a new provider. The snag is that the old provider is refusing to give me access to my data unless I pay for a years worth of service which I am not going to use. I have asked if I pay will I then be able to cancel and will they give me a refund and they have said they wouldn't. Basically it seems they do not equate provision of service with money paid. They just want the money and they don't care about anything else.

So does anyone think I can get my data back? Is there a way to force them to hand back my data or am I completely at their mercy due to the fact that I agreed to their terms by originally contracting them to provide this service?

What state are you in?

United Kingdom.

Sorry, this website is U.S. law only.

Pay them and get your stuff back, but do NOT use American Express. They will side with the provider. Pay with PayPal if you can, get your stuff and back it up - twice! Refute the charges with Paypal after that for goods not received.

dlw99 said:

Pay them and get your stuff back, but do NOT use American Express. They will side with the provider. Pay with PayPal if you can, get your stuff and back it up - twice! Refute the charges with Paypal after that for goods not received.

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And, of course, he'll lose.

Maybe, maybe not. He didn't post the terms of agreement. Either way, it's worth a shot if he wants his data back.

dlw99 said:

Maybe, maybe not. He didn't post the terms of agreement. Either way, it's worth a shot if he wants his data back.

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So, you are familiar with the law on charge-backs in the UK?

I am familiar with chargebacks via PayPal. Are you?

When I worked at an ISP (I was the CTO, so I knew what was going on, and designed most of the processes myself), when a customer account was closed, their data was deleted (why should we use our space to keep someone else's data if they were not paying to do that). Yes, we did have long term backups, captured every day. But it was costly to selectively retrieve data from those backups. The backups were designed to deal with complete failure of a hard drive or server. We charged $75 an hour to conduct a manual data restoration (and this was in 1999). Typically it took at least 5 hours for one of the sysadmins to do it (around 3 hours to restore the entire tape to a spare drive, then a couple more to find and transfer the individual files). It was not automated and we had no intention to automate it since there was on average about two times a year we needed to do it.

YOU should be responsible for keeping ALL of your own data on your own computer AND have multiple backups of your computer. That's what they make blank DVDs and USB memory sticks for. Surely one or two web sites is not larger than than the 4GB capacity of either of these.

If you need actual legal advice in the UK, find a UK based legal discussion site. It may even end in ".co.uk". Good luck.

cosine said:

YOU should be responsible for keeping ALL of your own data on your own computer AND have multiple backups of your computer. That's what they make blank DVDs and USB memory sticks for. Surely one or two web sites is not larger than than the 4GB capacity of either of these.

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So true. Not sure about U.K., but here you can find a 4GB stick for ten dollars. I like memory sticks over DVDs because you can't damage them easily (DVDs can be scratched).

I sent them this email that I wrote. Seems to have done the trick!

Dear Grant.

Since our conversation earlier I have decided to look into the legality of Fasthosts actions with regards this matter.

Firstly, under the provision of goods and services act 1982 there are various ways you are breaking the law and it would be proper at least; to re-enable the two products that have remaining time left to run. By denying me access to those services you are not providing something which has been paid for. As a consumer in the UK I am entitled to receive all that I have paid for. None of your terms and conditions supersede this statutory right that I have and a court of law would decide in my favour on the basis of this principal. You would be required to provide compensation for failing to provide these services where I have made the purchase.

Secondly, the same act mentioned above entitles me to some form of compensation. That is, you are obliged to make some effort to not only rectify but to also compensate me for this loss of service. Once again, that is a statutory right and not superseded or overturned by any of your terms and conditions.

On the point of you retaining my property illegally, that is my data and my domain names and failing to hand them over is illegal. You have no right of retention of title as the data you are withholding was never yours and this is not what I had paid you to provide. Therefore, any dispute over what I have and have not paid does not entitle you to retain my property. Legally you can prevent me from accessing my data through the use of any service I have not paid for but to do so would bring us full-circle back to the provision of goods and services act. I have paid for the service that should allow me access to the data so you have no legal right to terminate that access and your T's & C's do not supersede my statutory rights. You are obliged to provide the service in accordance with my statutory rights and your terms and conditions do not supersede or take precedence over my statutory rights. If you are not prepared to release my property through the provision of services where a dispute exists then in any case you are still obliged to return property where I hold the title. In this case I own the intellectual property and I own the domain names so you must not take them away and prevent me from accessing them as you have no legal title to that property.

To summarise, the contract is for service, not for my property. You may withhold service where I have failed to pay, not where I have not failed to pay and you may not assume title to my property as our contract was for provision of service. My statutory rights as a consumer are not changed by your terms and conditions.

I have contacted trading standards and they agree you are in breach of the law as described above.

I can also reasonably and legally request compensation for the loss of service which I will do if this episode continues without swift resolution.

If you wish to speak to me regarding this then the contact number is either

cosine - In principal you are right about the data although depending on who was attempting to prosecute you in a situation of legal challenge you may or may not end up having to return the data free of charge. It depends on the context and how they argue against your actions. For example, if it were compared with the container shipping business and a customer paid to have three containers shipped... would the fact that the customer had paid in full and separately for the shipping of two containers but not for the third... then mean you would fail to deliver all three and claim the contents of the containers for yourself? I don't think it would. The customer should recieve the two containers which were paid for but they would have to either pay for the shipping of the third or come and clear it out and ship the stuff another way if for some reason they decide not to use this company. The company could dump the contents of the container and notify. The customer would then have to arrange to collect from the dump site.

When it comes to the domain names, they have absoutely no right whatsoever to prevent me from moving them to another supplier.

Courts in the USA generally do not require one party to provide a service or product to another party for free, unless that service or product was determined to be due to them. We simply did not offer any service of "keeping" data in general. We kept data for the purpose of delivering it to internet users when requested. When that service was done, there was no cause to keep it. OTOH, if the data was lost during the time the service was supposed to be in effect, we would be obligated to not only restore the data, but also compensate them for the lost services. We also had a clause in our terms that we were not responsible for other consequential damages. We did have one server go down for half a day. Customers were compensated with a full week of service credited to their account.

I do not agree that the shipping container analogy applies. This is copied data. The customer retains a copy of their own data, and could also update it onto our server designated for their web site any time they wanted to, or even download everything, again (using FTP).

If it had been a case of the customer account being terminated because of an error on our part ... for example, if we failed to post a payment ... then we would be obligated to continue the service when the situation was revealed. No such problem ever happened, fortunately. If it had, we'd just do that selective restore from backup and no cost to the customer, as well as compensation for their interruptions. But if it is a case the customer decides to leave and cease paying, then at the end of the period they paid for, we're done. And for what it's worth, we even allowed customers to end services before the period they prepaid for and get a refund (minus $3 for costs to write and mail a check) or apply it to another service. Very few companies around (at least here in the USA) do that. We were a small business, but our customers were happy as far as I could tell. Unfortunately, banks didn't seem to like our ways (they wanted us to be more aggressive and do lots of upsells, cut tech support staff, and do more with less) and it was easier to sell out than finance growth.