For about a year now my site, including this blog, has been hosted with Weycrest. During that time, their service has really, really sucked.
First, there is the down-time. For months my site would randomly go offline for a few hours and then come back. Messages to tech support via the ticketing system or direct email were always ignored. Things got really bad when I tried to set up automatic backups in WordPress, which would take the site down at the time of the backup for about an hour. Even with backups disabled, a few hours of downtime a week was not uncommon, and it was often during peek times.
Even when the site was up, speeds were pretty poor, especially PHP stuff like the blog.
I have already mentioned that the support staff just tend to ignore you. Eventually I did get a reply, when a misconfiguration caused my mailbox to grow to over 900MB. I don’t actually use the Weycrest mailbox, I just have a re-direct, but it turns out that if you don’t specifically disable the inbox then copies of all re-directed messages end up in it. Eventually they finally responded to an email about this and I was able to fix it. Their response was by no means quick though.
On the subject of configuration, the Plesk control panel they picked is crap. It’s slow, it takes ages to navigate and the layout is far from helpful or logical.
The final straw came when my email was down for a day, as near as I can tell. I send repeated messages to Weycrest, but got no response, so decided to move to kNET Hosting. More on them in a moment. While I was moving all my stuff over, Weycrest finally responded. The email was a bit surprising:
Paul
We will no longer provide support for email forwarding. If it works, fine, it doesn’t well its hard luck I’m afraid.
From now its case of “your mileage will vary” and “use at your own risk” as we cannot guarantee mail delivery to every provider in the world.
This madness has gone on long enough, and its getting kind of ridiculous what we are expected support for £14.99 per year and provide the web hosting as well! We spend more time resolving mail issues than anything else.
It also highly likely that by the time your account comes up for renewal, email will require an additional support package costing at least £15.00 per annum.
Sorry, but as it stands, its just not commercially viable.
Easiest solution for the time being is for you to switch all your email hosting over to Gmail (ie Google apps for your domain) rather than forwarding to it and use your domain with Google. This can be done by adjusting the the DNS settings in Plesk.
Failing that we are happy to cancel on a pro-rata basis, however you have only another month or so left to run.
Best Regards
Paul Lee
Weycrest.Com Limited
So, they basically gave up. What worries me is that the usual way this works is you provide an expensive but reliable service for businesses. You then sell off some excess capacity as cheaper hosting plans, with limits to prevent them ever interfering with your business customer’s service. The cheaper accounts benefit from using the same high reliability services are the business guys, and you get the benefit of extra income and maybe even some early warning of any potential problems (since you have a more diverse set of users, more people looking at things etc). We do something similar with tech support systems where I work, and it’s a good system.
Needless to say I have cancelled my account and am waiting for a refund.
Now, on to kNET. I paid by PayPal (should have used card, PayPal fees are ridiculous, sorry guys, next time) and a human being verified and set up my account within half an hour. I moved everything over, changed the DNS settings and waiting. Small panic when the MX records changed but I was still not getting test emails. kNET responded within 5 minutes, at around 21:30 in the evening. That’s what I call tech support.
The move has gone smoothly. kNET use cPanel, which is a lot better than Plesk. Their server seems fast and reliable. It’s early days, but fingers crossed I have found a good hosting company.
102 Comments
They just took our website down with no notice and vanished, http://www.weycrest.co.uk/ isnt up anymore… our company as just lost all our booking in database with no way of retrival.. though you might like to know that…
Wow, that’s terrible. The site looks to be back up again now, but it wouldn’t be the first time it was down for an extended period.
Let me know who you move to.
I receive daily emails from weycrest stating that I am using loads more bandwidth etc on my account. My site is currently under construction for the last 2 months as I’m building it.. I emailed them about it and received this lovely email from Paul Lee.
Mat
>
> I don’t know. Check your webalizer or awstats statistics. Should tell
> you where the traffic is coming from or going to:
>
> Stats are usually available from:
>
> http://yourdomain/webstat.
>
> Obviously replace “yourdomain” with your actual domain name.
>
> This will be password protected so set a username and password using the
> protected password facility within the control panel.
>
> I can assure you it isn’t some conspiracy by us to make you go over
> limit, but bear in mind all traffic is counted, including email, ftp etc..
>
> –
> Best Regards
>
>
> Paul Lee
> Weycrest Admin Team
Cheeky twat… I have made a complaint but doubt I will get a response.
I will be moving my site to another hoster next year for sure.. and yes I agree with you Plesk is totally stupid and makes no logical sense.
Mat
It is a bit much to count email as part of your allowance. DDOS’ing your website is as easy as sending a few hundred emails with small attachments.
Most places don’t count email, especially if it’s re-directed. If they do count it, it’s usually separate to the web side of things and they usually have better tools to allow you to control it.
I’d hate to be a company locked in to using Weycrest. At work we support some multi-million pound turnover companies up in London who are stuck with Easynet because their parent company mandates using them. They have no end of problems because of Easynet but can’t escape, even when it costs them tens of thousands of pounds because they were unable to work for half a day.
SWITCH TO KNET GUYS YOU WON’T REGRET IT. A KNET CUSTOMER.
I too am with weycrest , I kinda get the idea that its a 1 man band with limited server skills and using his home broadband.
You get what you pay for I guess.
My mail’s been down since Saturday (it’s Tuesday now). I’ve sent numerous support tickets and have even left a message on their answerphone.
So far… nothing :(
Any idea how I can transfer my domain instantly to another company? Weycrest no good. Website dissapeared, emails just hit and miss wether they arrive or not.
The problem is that you need to get them to authorise the transfer. It’s a security measure to prevent people stealing domains.
You will just have to keep on at them I’m afraid. Their web sites goes down a lot, not exactly what a web hosting company needs.
Hey guys. Just wondering if you mojo or anyone else is still with Knet and are they still providing you with a good service?
I am also with weycrest at the moment and like rob I havent had any email or site service since Saturday (Its now Wednesday); I’ve also sent numerous emails and received no reply. So as soon as I get a chance to cancel, I am getting out of there.
Thanks
Welshy
Just FYI:
I am in the process of getting out of Weycrest through Nominet. This is costing 10+VAT but is the only option as I obviously can’t get Weycrest to change the tag.
Going to transfer one domain to UK2.net.
No problems with them over the past 3 / 4 years for a few other domains.
Alun
I am still with Knet, in fact this very blog is hosted on their servers. So far I have not had any down time at all (monitored by Monastic) and no issues with speed, bandwidth or anything like that.
I can’t fault them at all.
Hehe, thanks for the advice guys. I sent weycrest a final “fix this or I am off” email and as if by magic my site and mail server is back online…interesting. Probably just going to cancel and move anyway.
Thanks again
Welshy
I have been with Weycrest for some time (unfortunately) Paul Lee is the most rude and insolent of people to deal with if there is a problem Stating “what do I expect for 15 a year” Problem is I have spent more like 200 on the many domains I have. I could have gone for a solution that would have worked and was supported for this kind of money. I say if they cant afford to support their service at the price they sell it. They should stop or price it so that they can. What kind of an idiot sells something for less than it costs them? Needless to say I am looking for a new server to transfer everything to ASAP. I wont be parting with any more money to them. If they try to argue Ill take them to court. Please, avoid at all costs people!
PS I wouldnt give them a link back to their site on your home page. They dont deserve it!
I think the whole “what do you expect for 15″ argument is bollocks. The idea is that the run sites for major companies who pay a lot of money for them. Adding some extra private sites with low bandwidth, CPU and space requirements is then just a matter of using up some of the un-used capacity from the same servers.
Thus you have to assume that if they can’t even manage small sites then the big guys must be being screwed by them too.
I totally agree. I think he just can’t be bothered to look into it. I am looking at now getting a VPS 300 a year for my 10 domains and supporting it myself lol. Its cheaper than losing orders AND paying for a rubbish hosting service
To be honest I think I would prefer a managed server. I have a real job and we do some server management at work. It’s a right pain when you are trying to manage servers provided by other people, especially if there is a problem with one of their service providers. We had an issue with a SmartHost server that was down to an Easynet link further up the chain. Easynet are… Well, I don’t even want to think about it >_<
Well I guess part managed is OK… anything is better than I have now. I have problems again today with permissions on accounts hosted on my server. I have sent an email but I am not hopeful of a useful reply…
Well its approaching 24 hours since I made the complaint of one of my sites being inaccessable and guess what… no reply so far!
I wouldn’t hold your breath. As I said in the original post, Weycrest’s position is that you didn’t pay enough to get any kind of support so they are going to ignore you.
Thing is, if you are going to be a service company then it helps if you actually provide a service. If you don’t think it’s worth doing, don’t do it.
Well its now 48 hours since one of my sites has been down and no reply. It is a good job that its not an important one, but thats not the point really. Its a problem on a server where I host a few others too.
It is now 6 days and I have not had a reply. The website has been down for all of this time and they havent even made a murmur! Weycrest really are very poor. It is now my mission to tell the world!
Have you considered registering weycrest-suck.com? Just don’t use them to host it or no-one will ever see it.
Yes I had… only problem is it may be a liable case? I will find out if it is a trademark first I think. Needless to say I still havent had a reply and the site in question is still not working.
Try doing what I did. Go to the tickets section and create a new one.
Send them a ticket that says something along the lines of “If this is not fixed within the next 24 hours, I will be closing my account and moving to another company”.
Within a few minutes my site and mail server when back online.
I have tried that, even threatened to go to trading standards to complain that I am not getting the service I have paid for. That was on Monday.
I tried to make a backup of the databases on the servers and it just doesn’t work its terrible.
Well I have sent tickets asking for weycrest to close my account and for them to change the registrar over to UK2.net.
Got up this morning and my web servers were down again and have been all day, that was the last straw. Just waiting for weycrest to update the registrar and I am good to go with UK2.net. (Hopefully they will actually do that, so I don’t have to go through nominet)
Dont hold your breath…
Yup…held my breath and passed out. Went through nominet and got it changed. Weycrest basically ignored my requests. Got everything set up with UK2.net now.
Thanks for the help and advice guys.
Emails playing up again , think I feel small claims court comming on
Just move, put it down to experience.
I do think people should make a stand though. We pay for a service and get nothing. It isn’t fair, at all.
One of my other sites is down now. They are so unbelievably cr*p!
still no email ….
POP3 is still down , both websites..
Weycrest.com is listed in companies house as dissolved
They have still managed to send me several invoices recently…
website is down as well now
Of course, they would never let the billing system go down. It’s probably the only part of Weycrest that has 99.9% uptime.
Indeed. They are having a laugh if they think I am paying it.
Well if as Darwin says they are dissolved then you can ignore any invoices. To be honest I’d ignore them even if they were still going.
Looks like the problems at Weycrest were much deeper than even I suspected. I knew something was seriously wrong, but even so. I suppose the pathetic level of service must have lost them too many clients to keep paying the bills.
http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk/ca97990e3d390622ee8bf7c8e007b4a6/companysearch?disp=1&frfsh=1270929598#result
Linky :-)
they actually trade under Weycrest Solutions Limited which is the one listed under weycrest.com.
Looks like they did the usual thing of fold one company, screw all their creditors and start anew with a similar name and all the same people/equipment.
The good news is that you can definitely ignore all old invoices (you can bet they are).
Just signed up with KNET , now to move all my stuff
Well I have now signed up with KNET who helped me get started straight away. I have gone for a VPS. I haven’t requested a name server change yet for my domains as this may trigger Paul Lee’s delete finger. Next on the agenda is to host Weycrestsuck.com I hope to see you all there as members :)
Well feel free to copy/pasta this thread onto your new site. To be honest I have put Weycrest behind me now and want nothing more to do with them.
It’s all just a bad memory.
Does anyone know how much it costs for Nominet to change the registrar details? Or if there is a way of avoiding having to pay as I have quite a few domains.
Phil its 10.00 + Vat
Thats going to cost me about 135 :( ouch!
Isn’t it free if you do it yourself? Otherwise just send an invoice to weycrest, or ask your bank to reverse the payments you made for service they didn’t supply.
I didn’t think you could do it yourself? If you know how let me in on it :) I have more chance of riding a Unicorn to the bank with my 56 million lottery cheque to pay in than getting anything out of Weycrest.
You can ask the bank to reverse the charges, especially if you paid by direct debit or credit card.
Otherwise you are screwed. They have done the old “fold the company and start a new one in the same place with the same people but none of the debt” trick. It screws all their suppliers and customers over. I’m surprised anyone gives them network service any more, but perhaps the co-lo was the only one they kept sweet.
I meant changing the registrar details actually. But good news is that if you have several domains in your account its just a flat 10 fee.
Boy, i was just about to sign up for Weycrest’s hosting so i am so grateful to you Mojo for putting this online. cant imagine how horrific it would have been to deal with this awful customer experience with Weycrest. Can’t we report them or something?Its not right that they are still allowed to get away with this!
Phew you dodged the bullet there mate. I moved to UK2.net and they’ve been great. I am sure mojo will agree that Knet is also very good.
All we can really do is try to spread the word. I was tempted to use Small Claims Court but as it happened I only had 1.5 months left with them when I gave up so it didn’t seem worth the hassle.
Have to say have had no problems with weycrest for 3 years and Paul has been a real sweetie but paid up for another year 2 weeks ago and now all my sites are down since last night and the plesk site is down and think they are probably in real trouble :-(
Sorry to hear about your sites but if they have gone is was only a matter of time , you cannot give people a really awful service and treat your customers with contempt and actually expect them to come back for more.
Has anyone managed to retrieve their data? I hadn’t backed up our club wikis for a little while, and whilst I am sore at losing money with these jokers, I am REALLY sore at losing stuff people have added to the wikis in good faith.
Any top tips here GRATEFULLY received!
I am talking to Coreix at the moment (Weycrest’s server company) to see if they can help. I have tried to back up the data from the databases I have several times but it just doesn’t work. Even KNET couldn’t migrate it. The problem is that now Weycrest have 13 servers down I doubt Coreix have a clue how they are going to help. The two servers that have affected me host over 400 sites therefore there are a lot of peed off people! I will keep you posted and let you all know if they are of any help.
Phil
Just had another company recommended to me:
http://www.onepoundwebhosting.co.uk
Am moving first thing in the morning!!
I set up daily backups of all my site and databases when I was on Weycrest. Unfortunately every time they ran the site seemed to go down to a few hours, but at least I didn’t loose anything.
Who knows, maybe I crashed the server once a day. We are only talking WordPress backups here.
Here’s Paul Lee’s flickr album showing Weycrest HQ:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/weycrest/sets/72157600271652563/
After looking at the pictures, I think maybe the outages aren’t a result of Weycrest going out of business.
It’s just that Paul has to unplug the server rack to make a cuppa :-P
Corex have been trying to contact Weycrest for ages now with no responce , oddly enough I did see a Mini Cooper howling towards london an hour ago Reg number P4 LEE. (I am Serious)
It all becomes clear. Hmm tes or up time, tea or up time… TEA! What a joker. Paul Lee wouldn’t rush if his life depended on it. I have a feeling that the servers that are down were “on site” servers and Coreix won’t be able to help.
Did not heed the warnings earlier this year when my sites were unavailable.
Now they may be gone for good.
I’ve had my web site hosted on Weycrest for 2.5 years now.
I’ve had some small issues (i.e. last time they renewed my domain late even if I paid them a month beforehand).
Now my site has been down for more than 2 days and, as everyone else, I haven’t got an answer to any email / phone message.
I’m not that expert in web matters… could someone explain me the steps to move to another host? Keep in mind that (unfortunately) my domain has been registered with Weycrest too.
Many thanks
Roberto
You need to get in touch with Nominet about having the domain registration moved. You will need to get another host obviously. Whoever it is try asking them for assistance moving the domain.
There seems to signs of life at Weycrest.
One of my sites is back.
Only 5 servers instead of 13 are down now.
Hopefully I will be able to move my sites without loss of data.
Maybe Coreix have taken control back over the servers? Plesk isnt working correctly though. Hopefully it can be up long enough for people to back up their data.
Here is the link to check status of the servers:
http://www.pingdom.com/reports/cczq0qb5ds7t/
mine unfortunately on one that is down but keeping my fingers crossed so that I can save my email
Also if you are having problems with your admin email being your weycrest email you can contact the registrar and they may be able to help. UK 2 net were very helpful
Our website went offline for 5 day near the end of May 2010. No reply from repeated phone calls, emails, supports tickets. In the end Tucows were very quick to force transfer the domain away and I was un and running on another host fairly quickly. Wycrest are rubbish and nobody should use them!
Anyone on Weycrest needs to keep an eye on this situation and preferably get away as soon as possible.
A similar thing happened in 2008 with an ADSL ISP and they did everything in their power to prevent people from leaving (like taking forever to get MAC codes.)
If everyone leaves then not only will the business fail but it won’t be saleable because it has no customers. The ISP in question wanted to sell it’s business as a going concern so had to keep it running while looking for a buyer.
Coreix have been VERY helpful. It looks like they have taken control of the situation and brought the servers back up. They have told me that this is only temporary so guys get all the info you need now!
I agree with mojo… Get out while you can! :)
3 more servers just come online – am so glad I hung on to save my clients emails:-) Backing up then moving quick sharp!
Hope everyone has their sites back now
5 down now but different ones – you need to be quick if you are going to get your email saved!
http://www.pingdom.com/reports/cczq0qb5ds7t/
You can safely say that Weycrest have gone. Coreix have stepped in and helped me no end. They have fixed a problem which has been on going for almost a year. An FTP issue meaning I couldn’t back up files. I am downloading my files as I write this. It isn’t really their responsibility to help as the sever(s) are managed by Weycrest (or not in this case). Coreix have been a massive help!
A real can of worms.
WEYCREST.COM LIMITED (Company No. 03752025) of Leicester was dissolved on 16/03/2010
Prior to 14/11/2007 it was called WEYCREST SOLUTIONS LIMITED.
Nothing fishy so far, apart from NOT informing the customers.
WEYCREST SOLUTIONS LIMITED (Company No. 06919762)of ROMFORD,HAVERING was set up on 01/06/2009
The company name and number on
http://www.weycrest.co.uk/contact.php
is identical to this, apart from the address.
What is going on?
They folded and set up a new company with a similar name and carried on trading. Probably avoided paying their suppliers etc. Date’s seem to coincide with the deterioration of their service and server response times etc.
It’s a common trick. The company racks up massive debts (quite often tax bills, National Insurance and PAYE etc.) so folds and fucks all it’s creditors. The management then set up another company with a similar name and the same people, buys all the equipment from the old company and carries on as if nothing happened.
There are some down sides which I’m sure they will be hoping people don’t realise. For a start anyone who is a customer is no longer tied to them as all contracts were with the old company. What that means for domain names I’m not sure.
It also means that they are probably having trouble getting credit. Their address and directors may have been blacklisted. B2B suppliers won’t touch them, all the good staff want to leave etc. Saying that they seem like pretty much a one man operation or not much more.
Just to let you know that I went thru Tucows and got the auth code from them. I’ve signed up with HostPapa and they’re in the process of moving my domain name on their servers.
Roberto
My site is finally back online on HostPapa! Weycrest seems to be still down, can’t access via FTP or Plesk
Roberto
Just so everyone knows, I’ve spoken with Coreix (yes they are helpful) because I wanted my photos to be deleted from the Weycrest servers.
The guys at Coreix told me this:
“Hi Roberto,
I can confirm that we have reclaimed these servers and they will be permanently cancelled and wiped later today (we left a 7 day window for clients to contact us if they needed access to remove their files).
Yours Sincerely,
Alan Dean
Coreix Ltd”
Roberto
@Roberto: Do you know is a way to get files back? I did not do backups :(
Janusz
Janusz,
try contactin Coreix at this email:
support@coreix.net
They are quite helpful and you may still be on time. I do not think Weycrest can help.
Cheers
Roberto
If you need to recover files from a dead site try the Wayback Machine at archive.org. I rescued a friend’s web site from there after NTL cancelled his account by mistake.
I just found out weycrest have folded today.. My site has been offline for 3 days now and I decided to do a search only to find this place..
No warning so I never got my mySQL databases backups downloaded and now i am stuffed . i have my site but in desperate need of the db’s
I just email coreix in the hope that something is possible.
The least they could of done was send an email to all clients!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If they sent out an email then all their customers would leave and their business would be worth nothing. They probably needed to sell their servers and customers on to cover debts or maybe just line their own pockets.
If a company that bad can be sold god help us all! I just hope that not too many were hung out to dry by them.
Some Good news.
Coreix were unable to help me.
After only 5 server down, things got bad.
Even weycrest site was unavailable recently for a few days.
The end!
Weycrest site is back up but 12 servers are down.
The good news?
My server is finally back after 2 weeks and I have just backed up my database.
Hopefully, after changing the nameservers, I will be able to save my Drupal customisations, as I have forgotten what i did.
I don’t expect my server to be up for long.
Keep looking and you might get lucky.
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/paulmlee
Recommended by 1 person , everyone else thinks he is a cnut.
Hi to all,
Thanks for the blog and to all of you for the information. The same problem have happened to my website. It’s down and no answers from Wyshite. It seems like this company does not give a toss about anyone.
They are still listed under 2 names on nominet.
1- WEYCREST: Weycrest Solutions Limited t/a Weycrest
2- WEYSOLMEDIA: Weycrest Solutions Limited
http://www.nic.uk/registrars/becomeregistrar/taglist/
So be aware not to use any of these. Good luck. I am gonna use nominet to change registrar.
Hi everybody,
Same case.
How I can do for changing the registrar and recorver my website. Some idea?
Need help, thank’s.
If you don’t have a backup of the site you could have problems. Try archive.org to see if they have a copy, but that won’t include any dynamic stuff.
Hi,
Thank’s for your answer
No problem at all for the backup (BTW apparently Weycrest (Paul Lee) already put offline all the hosted websites, like mine).
For me the question is:
— Who is the official registrar for my website, and how can I transfert this non-fonctionnal hosting to another hosting company? Can I do it, without any agreement from Weycrest? If yes, what is the process?
Contacting Nominet is probably your best bet.
Thank’s for your kind response Mojo, I will try this.
Cheers !
Weycrest Solutions Ltd are recommended for striking off as per Companies House.