Do you own a Web hosting company?

[mattk]

And if so, how much did you spend on you Christmas party?

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article334178.ece

[MinuWeb]

nice :)

Ours cost about £800 :D

[Coding Monkey]

I didn't realise the owner of Fasthosts was so young. Guess I shouldn't be surprised

[Jayne]

I want to work for him now :lol:

We never get a Christmas bash :cry: so it costs us nothing.

Jayne

[Rob Holmes]

ooo - I guess I'm tight them - I sent out £50 cases of wine to people and 4 of us had a meal for £220

So £420 in total (yes I sent myself a case of wine)

Rob

[Coding Monkey]

Aww, Jayne, you mean boss.

[Jayne]

I'm not mean, the staff never want to go..they've got kids and some are older ladies, they prefer a bit of money in their Christmas Cards :D

Jayne

[mattk]

I used to work for a design company who had extremely lavish parties (not The Darkness though). We all got made redundant in the end!

[Jayne]

It's just a way off showing off to competitors, saying...look how well my company is doing, I can afford to put big parties on.

Like driving around in a posh Jag for show, when they cannot afford one :lol:

Jayne

[Coding Monkey]

I'm going to celebrate Christmas on the moon for next year. That'll show my rivals

[bwglaw]

Now I know where all my money went. Fasthost are rip-off merchants! We had a reseller account with them and we were misled on their pricing structure. They charged £60/month for the reseller account and what they did not tell us at the outset was that there would be a charge of £35/domain then there would be a charge for adding MySQL and other databases. If you want to call their support its an 0870 number and find yourself in a queue and then a message saying office is closed!

Off-topic I know, but I am p****d off with them! Avoid them at all cost and get your own dedicated server.

[MinuWeb]

Maybe thats why they are called "FastHosts" clients leave quick :D

Misleading pricing is a definate no no in any business

[mattk]

A £20 million turnover says otherwise. I can't say that I've ever used their hosting, but I have alot of domains with UK Reg and have found that service excellent.

[bwglaw]

I still use their UKReg because as Matt says, service is excellent. However, cannot say the same about Fastbuck, oh sorry, Fasthost! Our websites have performed better since we left. Oh, did they send an email/letter to say 'sorry to see you go'?..nope! In addition to previous post, they also charge you £5/year for a control panel to access your domain hosting. OK, its only £5, but it adds up and is very difficult to keep track of. Fasthost refused to provide us with a breakdown of all charges and when they fall due - they just take it out of your credit card. Subscription-based businesses are very profitable!

Fastbuck also wanted to encourage resellers to 'resell' but they refused to provide us with specs of their servers or any other 'reseller' material. And the cheek of it, they were selling web hosting on their own website cheaper than the resellers and making us work twice as hard to sell hosting.

If a reseller queries a credit card transaction and causes a 'chargeback' Fastbuck automatically suspend the entire reseller account thus causing disruption to other clients/domains. They are developing a bad reputation. Webfusion, their competitor, offer a better service I believe.

I can now afford to sell hosting for FREE!...thanks to our 2.8Ghz servers!

God Bless Fastbuck may you become Fastbust!

[Hayles]

We're going on our Christmas 'do' this evening. 10 ladies (?!), lots of food and wine, and special awards for each of them (ranging from 'The Most Laid Back Employee' award to 'The Best Boobs' award!

Should be a good night.

(So please accept my apologies now if I come on here later and try to answer any posts!!)

Hayles :D

[MinuWeb]

Nice place for a line break, had to read it twice

"ranging from 'The Most Laid"

[Hayles]

Why did you have to say that....? :cry:

What do you suppose I'm going to think of when I read out the award now... :oops:

:lol:

[Admiral Collections]

Jonathan, what was that thread you did on defamation????

Lol

Tell you what, I would collect their debts (if they have any) for free just to be near Johnathan Ross, my ideal guy!

Nic :wink:

[MinuWeb]

What do you suppose I'm going to think of when I read out the award now...

And now the award for the most laid

.................................................. ...............

.............................................. Back





Of course :D

[fastfences]

I'm going to celebrate Christmas on the moon for next year. That'll show my rivals

Good idea. You're on another planet, anyway :lol: :lol:
Cheers, Nigel

[bwglaw]

Jonathan, what was that thread you did on defamation????

Lol

Tell you what, I would collect their debts (if they have any) for free just to be near Johnathan Ross, my ideal guy!

Nic :wink:

Fastbuck would have 'cat in hell' chance of succeeding against me anyway because it is true. Look forward to hearing from their lawyers anytime 8)

Oh..is this Jonathan not good enough?...Im a bit younger than Jonathan Ross!! :P

[Jayne]

Yes, he's not bad for 37.. :lol: :lol: :lol:

Sorry Jonathan, couldn't resist.

Jayne

[bwglaw]

Yes, he's not bad for 37.. :lol: :lol: :lol:

Sorry Jonathan, couldn't resist.

Jayne

37 - thats OK if it makes you feel better that I am in your age group! :P

[Jayne]

lol..i'm not 37 until January :lol:

Don't feel any older than 18, still as daft :lol:

Jayne

[DarrenC]

I've had loadsss of problems with my hosting company, they got a shock this week though when I phoned them to inform them that I was closing all 9 accounts down.

I've moved one domain around five weeks ago, to another host and I only have superb things to say about them - support is top notch!

I'm never too fussy with how much I pay for hosting because I want reliability, but believe me it doesnt pay to go for a large company like fasthosts and ahem webfusion (pipex)

Whilst they are a few risks with smaller companies they support a lot better because they don't want to get a bad reputation, and the people supporting are the ones that own the business.

Sorry end of rant :D

[10 Yetis]

FastHosts are based near me and I have heard loads of things about them...

The young chap who owns the company was so impressed by the skills he learnt about business in his business tudies class, when his company first started doing really well he poached his business studies teacher for a senior management position...

The reason that the company parties are so OTT:
Near to FastHosts in Gloucester is another company that started at roughly the same time called Star Internet who have grown up to be the well and truly global brand that is Messagelabs. At the start FastHost and Star were kind of direct competitors as Star was an ISP.

The two bosses of the two companies had competitions to out do each other for celebs at their staff Xmas parties.

I was lucky enough to go to a Messagelabs one where Derren Brown was the entertainment along with some then famous pop band. A few years earlier they hired Peter Kay and once they even had the Russian State Circus I think... anyway, this is why Fast Hosts parties are so grand, more about competition than loving its workforce. I know of plenty of people around Glos who have worked for Fast Hosts and are not that complimentary about how the company is run... but hey, the guy is a gazillionaire, so who cares.

[crus]

Hmm,

Interesting, if the Operations Director post is still available, I'd have a crack.

D