Webnax - site taken down 3 times - then web site and domain name lost permanently

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RE: Webnax - site taken down 3 times - then web site and domain name lost permanently

I signed with Webnax to build an online website and was sold the package with hosting, a free domain name. In the subsequent months I had my site taken down by them 3 times, for no other reason that they had not updated their records after a change of credit card.

Being an online site builder you have no back-up of the site to be restored and being computer illiterate, we paid someone to do it for us, we when had to pay them again to put Webnax's mistake right. It followed numerous emails requesting immediate attention to this matter, all of which where ignored. No compensation was paid, or even credited for the hosting time that was being paid for whilst the site was down. In October 2003, our site went down permanently. After I contacted Mario, I was told that they had shut their doors and were no longer trading. He says that a member of staff destroyed all his back-up's and that we could not retrieve any data.

I then signed up to another company to forward our domain to get us up and running again, only to find out that Mario had registered the domain to himself, so the FREE domain was a ploy to tie to Webnax and not a gift. However, he was not going to leave us in lurch (what a joke) he was willing to release our domain name to us for $49. In order to get this we had to sign up at his new site (also Webnax). After putting us through hell and costing us all this money, I cannot believe that he still trying to bleed us dry and hold our domain names to ransom. We have a hotel and 3 self catering apartments which we let in Margate, Kent and have paid for a lot of advertising and all of our stationery to be printed with that domain on it and our losses have been vast. We have lost so much business over this matter, that I think that he has a nerve to ask us for money to have our own domain name. So I warn all you unsuspecting people out there, be careful. If you have had any problems with webnax, please let me know. I will be pleased to find out if this is just me being unlucky or whether anyone else has had the appalling treatment from them as we did. Yvonne Forbes (The Elonville Hotel)