UK2 Major Change...

[devolution]

Just got this email - if you have a credit card on file, remove it now...
They are now charging for 'catch all' email services - the princely rip-off of £4.99 a month. Most domain services provide this for free.

Here is the email I got:

Dear Customer,

I am writing to let you know of a change in the UK2 e-mail service provided with UK2 Domain Names.

Catch All Forwarding is an e-mail service provided on most UK2 Domains. This has been a standard part of our service for many years and can be very useful, but more recently has been abused by spammers. What Catch All Forwarding means is that all messages sent to any variant of e-mail address at your Domain Name (i.e. anything that precedes your Domain Name such as sales@yourdomain, example@yourdomain, blahblahblah@yourdomain) are delivered to an alternative email address. If you are actively using Catch All Forwarding this will be an e-mail address that you chose, or if you are passively using Catch All Forwarding this will be [email protected].

The new price for Catch All Forwarding is £4.99 per month and is already a chargeable option for new Domain customers. However, as an existing customer we are giving you a month of service for free while you decide on the best way for you to manage your e-mail. On Saturday 12th May 2007 the charging becomes applicable for existing customers.

If you would like to keep Catch All Forwarding:
If you're happy to continue using Catch All Forwarding as a paid for service, you don't need to do anything and our auto renewal system will start to bill you £4.99 per month for Catch All Forwarding. The first payment will be requested 7 days before the renewal date which is Saturday 5th May 2007.

If you would like to remove Catch All Forwarding:
If during your free month of service you would like to cancel Catch All Forwarding and remove it from your Domain Name, you will need to follow these simple steps:

· Go to http://www.uk2.net/login and log into your account

· Click on “Renewal Calendar” · Choose the “View by Domain” option

· Select the Domain Name for which you want to disable Catch All Forwarding

· You should see the following:

Service
Expires
Renew
Period

Catch all e-mail forwarding
12-May-2007
(tick box)
1 month - £4.99 + VAT


· To disable Catch All Forwarding make sure the tick box in the “Renew” column is blank, which means on Saturday 12th May 2007 the service will expire and you will not be charged

· Don’t forget to click "Update auto-renew settings" to confirm the change

· This process needs to be carried out for all UK2 Domains. However, if you have multiple UK2 Domain Names and you need assistance with switching off Catch All Forwarding in bulk, please let us know.

The reason why we are withdrawing free Catch All Forwarding is that there is a growing amount of spam being delivered to UK2 e-mail addresses (have a read of this post on our UK2 Blog http://blog.uk2.net/general-stuff/by-andy/spam-the-essentials/). However, we have introduced a number of replacement e-mail services which will ensure a better quality of service for all our customers.

All UK2 Domain Names now include a free POP3 email account. You can also upgrade to 5 extra accounts for £0.99 per month (free with any UK2 Web Hosting Package), or 100 extra accounts for £1.99 per month. This is on top of the standard 5 E-mail Forwarding addresses per Domain Name. If you prefer to forward your e-mail rather than store it on our servers, you can upgrade to 500 E-mail Forwarding addresses for £1.42 per month. If you wish to continue using the Catch All Forwarding service this will be available at a cost of £4.99 per month.

If you have any queries or require further information, please do not hesitate to contact our Support Team. You can call us on 0905 168 0086 between 9.00am and 5.00pm, Monday to Friday (calls charged at 50p per minute) or you can submit a ticket at all times via our online support system located at http://www.uk2.net/support.

May we take this opportunity to thank you for your custom now and in the future.

Yours faithfully,
Ditlev Bredahl
Managing Director UK2

 

[Pred]

yeah, got the email. an outrage.
tried ringing them to double check all my renewals are cancelled.
they truly are in the cesspit ofg registrars. 1 & 1 look good compared
any newbies reading, never, ever reg with uk2

 

[domainking]

yeah, got the email. an outrage.
tried ringing them to double check all my renewals are cancelled.
they truly are in the cesspit ofg registrars. 1 & 1 look good compared
any newbies reading, never, ever reg with uk2

Hi Predator

I would have thought a guy like you would have his own tag and also own servers

 

[Pred]

Hi dude,
yeah, it probably is the way to go, i admit.
However got all my .uk's out of uk2 a while back.
I thought they were pulling their socks up as the support staff seemed much better trained & they have introduced a freephone number which is a great move.
All my uks are at 123 now & although have moaned much about them, i am very happy with them past 6 months & have had no problems at all, seems they are much improved.
I will think about a tag i think in next year .

cheers
Predator

 

[Paulsco]

complain to Watchdog

Having just managed to avoid a massive bill from UK2 for £4.99 per domain (I have about 20 domains!) "well do basically sod all with you email and charge you cash for the priviledge", and discovered that they have charged over £110 to my card in the last three months without my authorisation, I suggest that we encourage everybody to write to BBC Watchdog and get this publicised.

UK2 will make a fortune out of lots of people by this method unless we warn them.

 

[scooter]

I still have over 180+ names with them. I emailed them to ask how to do a bulk transfer out.

To which the reply was:
We currently do not have a feature to transfer out multiple domain names. This will be a feature we hope to incorporate at a later stage. I'm afraid the transferes will have to happen one at a time via our system.

I'm off to Nominet for a TAG change. Well worth the £15 + VAT

Goodbye UK2


.

 

[zee]

The way I read it ,they are charging for 'catch all' part of email forwarding, I'm with 123 and do not use that part, just 3 or 4 redirections, according to that uk2 message,they allow up to 5 free , or have I misread it?...z

 

[devolution]

The way I read it ,they are charging for 'catch all' part of email forwarding, I'm with 123 and do not use that part, just 3 or 4 redirections, according to that uk2 message,they allow up to 5 free , or have I misread it?...z

The catch-all service is a standard service provided with all domains at UK2.net. Previously, it was free but they are now going to charge. There will be tens of thousands of people who won't understand what is going on and get a bill for £4.99 a month PER DOMAIN.

They are relying on people's ignorance to make money... They could simply stop the service on people who don't want to pay for it... It's the UK version of RegisterFly...

 

[retired_member27]

UK2 have always been the worst in the business when it comes to add on charges. I transfered all my domains away from them back in 2000 when they tried to charge me £20+ just to change nameservers on one domain.

My advice to everyone is transfer your .uk domains to another registrar such as Heart Internet, for all your other domains you can administer them for free at joker.com if it says that your registrar is joker.com in the whois. Full instructions to transfer a .com away are here.

 

[Pred]

UK2 have always been the worst in the business when it comes to add on charges. I transfered all my domains away from them back in 2000 when they tried to charge me £20+ just to change nameservers on one domain.

My advice to everyone is transfer your .uk domains to another registrar such as Heart Internet, for all your other domains you can administer them for free at joker.com if it says that your registrar is joker.com in the whois. Full instructions to transfer a .com away are here.

cheers apd
where uk2 catch you out is they have themselves as the admin & technical contacts, so don't think can go the joker route & change/transfer away.
can't use their email address
plus to transfer out info & com you need auth codes which they don't supply
for the tlds, once you have renewed them over 2 years i.e in their 3rd year of registration they can be transferred out free
i spoke to someone recently at uk2 who said they are working on changing that soon
thing is with the email charges, looks like they are increasing charges :???:
as far as i can find, & have done, (like you say bulk tagchange via nominet), cheap & simple. i transferred all mine out some time ago too.
cheers
Pred

 

[retired_member12]

Anyone can take the Nominet route to change the tags for a charge usually less then UK2's.
However, it's a load of crap really. it should be free for any owner to change the tags through their Nominet logins.

 

[Pred]

Anyone can take the Nominet route to change the tags for a charge usually less then UK2's.
However, it's a load of crap really. it should be free for any owner to change the tags through their Nominet logins.

Very true.
However i think i tag changed about 350 domains for the princely sum of £25 or whatever it was
Nominet were 100% efficient & speedy & was very happy with it
Great thing about uk domains there
The idea of tld pushes is wonderfully simple but is a nightmare when you get a rogue registrar like uk2 bending rules, yes in the conditions of service etc, but to my knowledge, no other registrar has a 'sytem' like them
I am with about 20 registrars too for pushes etc & ease of buying & selling as tlds are my main bag really
uk2need to clean up this area imo
cheers
Pred

 

[scooter]

All my .coms with UK2 were registered in 1999 and I have transferred plenty out through joker.com as APD describes.

That was until December last year. UK2 then took it upon themselves to sneakily change the admin contact on all my .coms to themselves, so now the only way to get your coms out is to go through them.

There is good news:
I sold a .com last month and they did release the name to me within 2 hours of me following the procedure here: http://amail.co.uk/moveaway.htm

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

I should have moved my co.uk's away from them yonks ago, but it was just down to laziness. The boot up the backside for me is this new rediculous stealth charging.

I cannot understand their business model. When I got my first PC back in 1999 they were the market leaders. But they have continued to operate in the "pay for everything" mode while others are now flourishing by doing the opposite.

UK2 could have consolidated the market even today if they had taken the same approach.

Good to see you can actually contact them now. Bad to see you pay premium rate phone price for the privilage. (It wouldn't be so bad if they talked dirty to you at the same time. :mrgreen: )

I remeber they always used to show how many domains they had registered on their main page. They took this down long time ago. I wonder why




.

 

[retired_member11]

I just received the UK2 catch all email charge notice ...on a domain I moved away two months ago!

So if I hadn't set the account to 'do not renew' my credit card would have been charged...even though the domain is on another Tag. This really isn't on.

Sharks.

 

[Pred]

All my .coms with UK2 were registered in 1999 and I have transferred plenty out through joker.com as APD describes.

That was until December last year. UK2 then took it upon themselves to sneakily change the admin contact on all my .coms to themselves, so now the only way to get your coms out is to go through them.

There is good news:
I sold a .com last month and they did release the name to me within 2 hours of me following the procedure here: http://amail.co.uk/moveaway.htm

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

I should have moved my co.uk's away from them yonks ago, but it was just down to laziness. The boot up the backside for me is this new rediculous stealth charging.

I cannot understand their business model. When I got my first PC back in 1999 they were the market leaders. But they have continued to operate in the "pay for everything" mode while others are now flourishing by doing the opposite.

UK2 could have consolidated the market even today if they had taken the same approach.

Good to see you can actually contact them now. Bad to see you pay premium rate phone price for the privilage. (It wouldn't be so bad if they talked dirty to you at the same time. :mrgreen: )





.

i just push the names if i sell as finally they got that bit fixed & seems to work fine.
i'll renew the good ones ship on out for free after
already got the uk's out
the phone number is now freephone:
08006122142

 

[capt_cornflake]

Hi, just registered here because of this outrage.

Given that the only thing I use my domain for is mail forwarding in exactly this way, I guess this mean I'm gonna have to move to someone else.
Being meaning to do it for a while, but never actually bothered to research who's any good (although probably most companies are better than uk2...).

apd recommended heart internet previously, and they look pretty good from their website.
Anyone else got any experience of them or can recommend anyone else? All I want to use the domain for is email forwarding, so any other extras aren't really required.

 

[devolution]

It's even worse then I thought -- I just got an email regarding a domain I've already transferred out of UK2, they're still going to try and bill me for email service on a non-exist domain! (Luckily, the credit card they have on file is expired), but thousands of others will be stung by these a-holes...

We would like to inform you that one or more of your UK2 services are due to
expire within the next 14 days.

However, do not worry, as we will automatically renew your contracts using
the credit card details we hold for you. This will occur approximately 7 days
before the contracts expire, to make sure you don't lose any of your
services.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your continuous
support and loyalty to UK2, and we can't wait to show you all the new
products and services we have coming within the next few months.

You may have noticed that our level of support has improved lately, and we
are now better than ever - with 24 / 7 support and less than 1 hour 30
minutes average response time. And this is only the beginning, the new UK2
will strive to keep on improving, to ensure that you receive excellent
customer service and great value for money.

The UK2 services that are due to expire and are scheduled for auto renewal
are as follows:

On 12-May-2007:

xxxxxx: Catch all e-mail forwarding
4.99 GBP + VAT = 5.86 GBP

The card we have on file for your account is xxxxxxxx. This is due to expire in 05/05.

Please note: This credit card has expired.

If you would like to update these details as a result of changing your main
credit card, or if you've received a replacement or new card, then please log
into your account control panel at
http://amail.co.uk/cgi-bin/account/login.pl
and provide us with your new details.

If you have services with us that you wish to discontinue, please log in to
your account control panel and go to "Renewal calendar". There you can choose
to let specific services renew or expires. Please note that if you let
domains expire they are free for others to legally acquire your online
identity.

If you have any questions about this Auto Renewal Reminder email or anything
else relating to your UK2 service, feel free to contact us via our 24 / 7
support service at http://support.uk2.net - we always answer within 24 hours.

Once again we would like to thank you for your support, and wish you the best
in your online endeavours.

Kind regards,

Your team at UK2

Domain Names. Web Hosting. Dedicated Servers.

 

[olebean]

I find it odd they have given two weeks notice and taking the money prior to the actionable date

 

[Ditlev]

UK2 and Catch all

Hi Guys,
A few notes on our new catch-all policy:

If you have read the blog posts, I hope you understand why we had to make this move. 91% of all mail going through our system is catch-all related spam - this naturally takes up a lot of resources from our system, but more importantly it causes the UK2 mail servers to be blacklisted in spamfilters in all the major free-mail providers world wide. Please give me a moment to explain how/why this happens:

UK2 has around 7 million mails going through our system on a daily basis, and as mentioned earlier 91% of that is catch-all related spam. Most of that spam is forwarded via our servers to clients freemail accounts such as hotmail/gmail/virgin/.mac/etc. Problem is that when clients open their hotmail account, and see all the spam being sent to them via the UK2 catch-all mail, they click the "spam-button" in the hotmail system, and the mail will be deleted/sent to junk folder.

However, and this is the real problem, hotmail can not see that this mail was forwarded, so they actually think that UK2 was the sender, since that is the last place of origin. Result is that hotmail/gmail/yahoo/etc puts a 100% block on all mails being sent/forwarded by UK2 - also the legit mails that our clients actually wanted to read. Clients are naturally furious about this, as they expect their mail to end up in their inbox, and not the spambox. So while this is easily filtered on your side, the problem is much bigger than just that.

We had two options regarding the implementation of the new price model:

1) Either we let catch-all expire for those clients not paying for it when the free month we have given you is up. Result would be that if you were away from your computer for a few weeks, or if you have very aggressive spam filters (which is very likely if you actively use catch-all) or for some other reason did not read the mails we send out about this change, then you would suddenly start loosing mails, as mails sent to your catch-all mail would bounce. This could be very important mail, and UK2 would surely be accused for any losses related to our clients not receiving their mails. Some clients depend on the mail as a daily tool, and losses to not getting it could be significant.

Or

2) We can auto renew catch-all and ensure that no mails are lost.
Before doing that we send out 2 mails dedicated to this, we mention it in our regular newsletter. We post notices on this blog, on the login on mail.uk2.net and on the main page of the control panel.
What if we auto renew someone who actually does not want the product? Or if someone has missed all the notices/mails/posts about this?
We would naturally issue a full refund!

Those not using catch-all will naturally not be renewed for it.


This is the main reason for the new catch-all policy, and I hope this
is clearer now?

We have lowered the price for current clients to £19.95/year, and if you have 10 domains or more the whole lot can get catch-all for 39.95/year. Which is
quite lower than the 4.99/mo new clients has to pay

My hope is, however, that catch-all can be phased out over the next 3-5 years.

Best regards,

Ditlev Bredahl
MD, UK2.net

 

[Pred]

Hi Guys,
A few notes on our new catch-all policy:

If you have read the blog posts, I hope you understand why we had to make this move. 91% of all mail going through our system is catch-all related spam - this naturally takes up a lot of resources from our system, but more importantly it causes the UK2 mail servers to be blacklisted in spamfilters in all the major free-mail providers world wide. Please give me a moment to explain how/why this happens:

UK2 has around 7 million mails going through our system on a daily basis, and as mentioned earlier 91% of that is catch-all related spam. Most of that spam is forwarded via our servers to clients freemail accounts such as hotmail/gmail/virgin/.mac/etc. Problem is that when clients open their hotmail account, and see all the spam being sent to them via the UK2 catch-all mail, they click the "spam-button" in the hotmail system, and the mail will be deleted/sent to junk folder.

However, and this is the real problem, hotmail can not see that this mail was forwarded, so they actually think that UK2 was the sender, since that is the last place of origin. Result is that hotmail/gmail/yahoo/etc puts a 100% block on all mails being sent/forwarded by UK2 - also the legit mails that our clients actually wanted to read. Clients are naturally furious about this, as they expect their mail to end up in their inbox, and not the spambox. So while this is easily filtered on your side, the problem is much bigger than just that.

We had two options regarding the implementation of the new price model:

1) Either we let catch-all expire for those clients not paying for it when the free month we have given you is up. Result would be that if you were away from your computer for a few weeks, or if you have very aggressive spam filters (which is very likely if you actively use catch-all) or for some other reason did not read the mails we send out about this change, then you would suddenly start loosing mails, as mails sent to your catch-all mail would bounce. This could be very important mail, and UK2 would surely be accused for any losses related to our clients not receiving their mails. Some clients depend on the mail as a daily tool, and losses to not getting it could be significant.

Or

2) We can auto renew catch-all and ensure that no mails are lost.
Before doing that we send out 2 mails dedicated to this, we mention it in our regular newsletter. We post notices on this blog, on the login on mail.uk2.net and on the main page of the control panel.
What if we auto renew someone who actually does not want the product? Or if someone has missed all the notices/mails/posts about this?
We would naturally issue a full refund!

Those not using catch-all will naturally not be renewed for it.


This is the main reason for the new catch-all policy, and I hope this
is clearer now?

We have lowered the price for current clients to £19.95/year, and if you have 10 domains or more the whole lot can get catch-all for 39.95/year. Which is
quite lower than the 4.99/mo new clients has to pay

My hope is, however, that catch-all can be phased out over the next 3-5 years.

Best regards,

Ditlev Bredahl
MD, UK2.net

welcome to acorn Ditlev, thanks for taking time to post

couple of questions i have, are you not bothered that most people i know it seems are disgusted in general at uk2 ?
it's not just the email forwarding.
as far as i'm aware you're the only people extorting money from people who wish to move their domains away from you.
in particular tlds where it's normal for any other registar to give an auth code & then the domain owner pays the receiving registrar a years renewal normally.
your £12.95 charge is a scandal & a nightmarish process designed to prevent people moving.
i'm sure you'll tell me its in the terms & conditions, but the non-functionality of your site, awful customer support (recently improved) inability to push names for months, unanswerred support enquiries etc are not either!
i moved about 400 .uk domains from you recently via nominet (not payoing the individual fee as you would have liked lol)
maybe if you read through some other uk2 posts here & other forums you will grasp a better idea of your 'reputation'
you have a lot of domains registered with you.
i would be interested to see how many you have in 18 months
look forward to hearing from you
cheers
Pred