I need advice. I registered with dotcomavenue. I know, my fault, should have done research before hand. The owner is Peter Francis Macrae, or David Jarvis, more aliases I'm sure. I paid a year in advance for service last July. My service has been down for a month and no one will respond to me. Come to find out, they registered my domain name under them as well. I have spoken with the owner, whatever his real name is, and he will only comment that I need to submit a request to tech. support, which I have done many times. Any advice on how to get my domain released? Legal action? Please advise. Thank you for any info. you may have to assist me.

Sincerely,

Kipp

go to your credit card company and do a chargeback. Call them up and say you want to dispute the funds that were transfered to the host. Also, be sure to include all documentation on your dealings with them, all emails, invoices, anything that would help support your side.

Then, you wait until the credit card company investigates the situation.


Jim

Sorry to hear that kippbutler...they've been conning for a long time...years in fact....Aliases wouldnt be in it...i've heard of so many different ones!!

Like jimb says....your best bet is a chargeback....you'll not catch them, they should really be in prison by now!!

Best of luck with finding a better host....


Cheers,

Yes
He wrote to me offering me dedicated servers using photos from the VDI web site (bizzarre).

Gordon

Thank you all for your input. Per your advice, I am in the process of contacting my Credit card company. Any suggestions of reputable hosting services? Seems FutureQuest has high marks.

Sincerely,
Kipp

Originally posted by GordonH
Yes
He wrote to me offering me dedicated servers using photos from the VDI web site (bizzarre).

Gordon

Me too.

Letter went straight in the bin.

Now, that's a name we all remember............Yep, can it be the dreaded "Weaselboy"?

If the domain name is important to you, it might be a good idea to get him to transfer it to you before doing a chargeback. Otherwise he might decide to hold it hostage until you pay him back. :angry:

Me too. I registered with these crooks in 2001. After having lots of technical problems with them, I requested that they cancel my account. They gave me the same run around as other folks, links that would not work etc. I finally got the form to them in February of 2002. Last month I got an email from them stating I owed them money. This week I got a dunning letter, threatening legal action, collections etc. They gave me the same bs about not getting my form in the mail. Based on the many complaints I have found about these folks, I think I will survive this. Luckily, I changed credit cards so they cannot charge my card again. They threaten collections, but I am confident that I will beat this.
Never subcribe with these folks for your webhosting.

John

I too received a cheap and nasty flyer from them a while ago. I was actually thinking about them for a while but decided to take a look on WHT first. By doing a simple search I was amazed at what I found out. There seems to be loads and customers who have been scammed by this business/individual. I am wondering if you all or even a few live nearby it may pay you to meet up and arrange an appointment with a solicitor. If you all go together you can split the fee's and get good advice on where you stand in regards to starting legal proceedings.

At the end of the day Dot Com Avenue and such like continue to get away with it because they feel safe in the knowledge that 99 times out of 100 the customer will give up and do nothing legally. Perhaps if a few Dot Com Avenue customers get together and even get a solicitors letter sent to whoever actually owns Dot Com Avenue it may shake them up a little.

I know from personal experience that threats of legal action does sort problems out. About two years ago I had a small hosting account with 49pence.com. I gave a good friend of mine a sub-domain. One day my friend uploaded Green Day MP3's. My account was cancelled due as I had violated the terms and conditions. I had no problem with that at all and apologized for my friend actions. The next day Mr. Ed Butler telephoned threatening me saying he would be writing to the copyright holders informing them of our illegal actions. Obviously that worried me a little.

The next thing was Mr. Butler refused to transfer a domain name I purchased from him. He said that as we had violated the terms of the hosting he had a legal hold over the domain. I was extremely suspicious of him at this time and got him to tell me his Solicitors name so I could telephone then and sort the problem out. Ed Butler told me his name was "Paul Fuller QC". I am in no way legally trained but even I as a lay man with no legal training know that a QC is not involved at this stage of legal proceedings. At this point I knew Mr Ed Butler was bluffing and was doing all he could to "frighten" me into backing down.

Unwilling to let him get away with this I spent a day on the telephone trying to catch Mr Butler and 49 Pence out and it only took me 30 minutes to ascertain that there was in fact a Paul Fuller QC registered according to the records at Temple Bar (UK legal area in London). I then phoned Paul Fuller QC who confirmed he had no clients in Sevenoaks, Kent and that he would investigate Mr Butlers claims that he had set Paul Fuller QC on us, this alone is a criminal act in the UK.

After putting this to Mr Butler he said that Temple Bar got it wrong and that his lawyer - Paul Fuller worked in his home town of Sevenoaks. I then spent £10 telephoning every single solicitor within a 15 mile radius of Sevenoaks and surprise surprise there was no Paul Fuller QC. Still Mr Butler claimed he existed as a QC and as there was no way he was going to admit to lying I let that matter go.

After 3 weeks he still claimed he owned our domain and so I gave him a ring one evening to sort the matter out once and for all. A Mr Butler did answer but it was in fact Ed Butler's father who told me that:-

"Ed is 19 now he does what he likes, I don't know what he does in his bedroom that’s his Business. If you need to contact Ed please do so and not us".

Now I knew he was 19 it threw into doubt his claims on his web-site that his "company" did work for BT, BA and other major companies for the last six years meaning Mr Ed Butler was BT and BA's youngest ever employee at just 13!!.

I informed his father of his illegal actions and told him that if his son did not release the domain I would have no other choice but to seek legal action. This seemed to sink in and he told me he would speak to his son when he returned home.

The very next morning I got a very very polite E-Mail informing me that my domain would be transferred as a gesture of good will.

I kept all emails and even recorded the telephone calls made to Mr Butler and have read and listened to them recently and it does cheer me up to think that I won the small battle with 49 Pence.

The point of this is that even though at first you feel as though you have no course of action to take if you sit down and think over what you can do there is always a resolution.

Have a think about what you can do but most of all don't like them get away with it.

Best of luck.

David

It all down to rogue companies having so much power. This is unelated to web hoting but I had a poblem when i changed over my telephone provier fromBT to Screaming Net.

I had a major dispute with them over how much money i owed them, this was basically because I was supposed to be getting free internet calls but was actually being charged for them. Tried getting in contact with them several times via phone, email and letters to solve the dispute. But no luck.

So I got BT to change over my telephone back to them, and wrote a letter to screaming net stating that I was cancelling my account.

A couple of months later I got a letter from them stating that I owed them £410 which included a years subscription for cancelling, and that i had 7 days to pay it.

To cut a long story short, I refused to pay. They took legal procedings which severly screwed my credit rating.

It took me over a year to sort everything out and get the court action off my credit record.

But i learnt my lesson, and just to be very careful when signing up to services.

Hey, read this!

http://www.vnunet.com/News/1144248

It looks like the Police are involved now after his latest activity claiming to pre register domain names ending in .eu.

Gordon