Complaints Procedure

There is a difference between a complaint and a support ticket. With a ticket you are asking us to mend something. A complaint tells us we have already dealt with something badly. Send either one, gladly, though the two follow separate paths, and this page describes the second.

No form is required, and you need never use the word "complaint" at all. Say that we got it wrong and the process starts from there. Hearing it from you early beats finding it later in a review somewhere.

1. Stage one, back to the team involved

Write back on the ticket you already have, or start a fresh one inside the client area. Where no ticket was ever raised, 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. Sometimes five days is not realistic, because a sequence has to be rebuilt from logs, or because a supplier has to answer before we can. In that case an interim update reaches you inside the same window, setting out what is still open and when the rest will arrive.

2. Stage two, reviewed by a different person

Not satisfied with the stage one answer? Ask us to escalate it, and be precise about the part you disagree with. Someone who had no hand in the original decision then takes the whole thing from the top.

An answer to a stage two review lands within ten working days. That answer covers what was reviewed, what came to light, and what we intend to do about it. Where we decline to do anything, the reason is given. It is our final position on the matter, and the letter will say as much in plain words rather than leave you guessing.

3. Stage three, taking it further

Should our final answer leave the matter unresolved, nothing on this page restricts what you do next. The right route depends on the subject of the complaint:

• Personal data. Complaints go straight to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk, and you need no agreement from us before going there. See GDPR and your data rights.
• A domain name. Whichever registry runs the extension sets the dispute process, so it is Nominet for .uk, ICANN's UDRP across most other extensions, and PKNIC for .pk. Rulings on ownership belong to the registry, not to us.
• A payment. Your card issuer runs its own dispute route, and so does PayPal. Come to us before you use either. A chargeback drags on for longer, and it freezes the account for the whole time it is open.
• Anything else. The courts of Canada, which is where the terms of service place jurisdiction. Consumers keep every statutory right they have, and nothing written into those terms touches them.

4. Details that speed up our reply

• the domain, the service or the invoice number in question;
• the dates involved, plus any ticket numbers already open;
• what you expected to happen, held up against what actually happened;
• the result you would call fair. That last line saves more time than anything else.

5. Where a complaint goes after it has been closed

Each one goes on record with its outcome, and we read the set for patterns. Where a complaint turns out to be about wording nobody could follow, the page itself gets rewritten rather than met with an apology. Several sections of these policies read the way they do because a customer said the earlier version was ambiguous.

We hold those records for six years beside the account, matching the retention periods set out in the privacy notice.

6. When the complaint is about hosted content

To report a website we host, rather than an act of ours, use abuse reports. Copyright matters follow a separate route, laid out in the copyright and takedown policy.

7. Who this is with

Hosting & Domains is a trading name of Azaanex Inc., a company registered in Canada under Company No. 1766541-5. Registered office: 5-145 1/2 Church St, Toronto, Ontario M5B 1Y4, Canada. Complaints go to info@hosting-n-domains.com.