Complaints Procedure

A complaint is different from a support ticket. A ticket asks us to fix something; a complaint says we have already handled something badly. Both are welcome, but they are worked differently and this page is about the second.

You do not have to use the word "complaint" or fill in a form. Telling us we got it wrong is enough to start this, and we would rather hear it early than read it in a review.

1. Stage one — the team that handled it

Reply on the existing ticket, or open a new one from the client area. If the matter never had a ticket, email info@hosting-n-domains.com or use the contact form.

You get an acknowledgement within one working day and a substantive answer within five working days. Where five days is not realistic — because something has to be reconstructed from logs, or a supplier has to answer first — you get an interim update inside that window explaining what is outstanding and when to expect the rest.

2. Stage two — a review by somebody else

Unhappy with the stage one answer? Ask for it to be escalated, and say what specifically you disagree with. It is then looked at by somebody who was not involved the first time.

A stage two review is answered within ten working days. The answer sets out what was reviewed, what we found, what we are doing about it, and — if we are declining to do anything — the reason. This is our final position, and it will say so plainly rather than leaving you to guess.

3. Stage three — going outside

If our final answer does not settle it, nothing here limits what you can do next. Which route fits depends on what the complaint is about:

• Personal data. The Information Commissioner's Office, at ico.org.uk, takes complaints directly and you do not need our agreement to go there. See GDPR and your data rights.
• A domain name. The registry that runs the extension sets the dispute process — Nominet for .uk, ICANN's UDRP for most others, and PKNIC for .pk. Registry decisions on ownership are theirs, not ours.
• A payment. Your card issuer or PayPal has its own dispute route. We would rather you raised it with us first, because a chargeback takes longer and freezes the account while it runs.
• Anything else. The courts of England and Wales, which is where the terms of service place jurisdiction. If you are a consumer, your statutory rights are unaffected by anything in those terms.

4. What helps us answer properly

• the domain, service or invoice number the complaint concerns;
• the dates, and any ticket numbers already in play;
• what you expected to happen, and what happened instead;
• what you would consider a fair outcome. This one saves the most time.

5. What we do with complaints once they are closed

They are recorded with the outcome and reviewed for patterns. A complaint that turns out to be about something written unclearly gets the page rewritten, not just an apology — several sections of these policies exist in their current form because somebody complained that the previous version was ambiguous.

Records are kept for six years alongside the account, in line with the retention periods in the privacy notice.

6. Complaints about content, not service

Reporting a website we host, rather than something we did, goes through abuse reports. Copyright complaints have their own route in the copyright and takedown policy.

7. Who this is with

Hosting & Domains is a trading name of UK Health Care Support Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales under Company No. 15042717. Registered office: Office 4648, 58 Peregrine Road, Ilford, England, IG6 3SZ. Complaints go to info@hosting-n-domains.com.