Credit card details on file...

[Robin Somes]

Received an email from Gradwell over the weekend, warning us that our credit card is due to expire.
We ceased to be Gradwell customers in June 2018 when with no warning our hosting was flogged out from under us to Pickaweb. Three years on, and with no other Gradwell services provided, why should they still have our card details on file at all?
Anyone else had the same?
Cheers,
Robin

[Chris S]

Negative. The card they had 'on record' in my case, was ceased in
2019. My account with them was closed at my request in December 2016.
My last conversation (email/ticket) with them began on the 4th
February 2017 when they were chasing me for payment of three disputed
invoices for 2.52, 2.64 and another 2.64 GBP, all for excess disk
usage Nov/Dec 2016. I even paid one lot of 2.64 under protest but then
received a new invoice for the same amount. My final reply to them on
the 22nd February includes the following slight redacted statement:

"So while one part of the account system keeps demanding payment for
£2.52 (Invoice *******), the part that accepts payment appears only to
be aware of an outstanding £2.64 (Invoice ******* the latter which I
have now paid under protest. It therefore seems likely that the system
will continue to take action whatever that may entail to collect a
payment of £2.52 to which I do not owe and have no way of paying.

It is difficult not to draw the conclusion that your account system,
at least the part that relates to legacy web hosting, is seriously
broken."

On the 23rd February the last ticket entry from them included the line
"As I can now see that payment has been made on the account, I have
now passed this to the relevant department to get your account closed.
This will prevent you from receiving any further emails."

I can without any difficulty believe that part of the accounting
system associated with their legacy web hosting service is still
running somewhere in Gradwell towers. I still get monthly reminders
from a Gradwell Mailman list I had set up under one of my domains
hosted at Gradwell. It seems likely that is down to me for not closing
that list down properly but my point is, it is still running even
though the domain referenced in the reminder was moved from Gradwell
in 2016.

In May 2017 a Gradwell email "Welcome to Your New Control Panel"
arrived! Then in June, July and August of that year Gradwell Support
reminded me that domains that were long removed from their remit were
about to expire. That was the last I heard from them; apart from the
Mailman reminders that is.

Chris S
--
Demon Customer 1993 - 2015; Gradwell Customer 2002 - 2016; now with Zen for connectivity and Tsohost
for web/email hosting (last Gradwell hosted domains migrated October 2016).

[Robin Somes]

On Tuesday, 22 June 2021 at 13:02:14 UTC+1, Chris S wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Jun 2021 04:21:02 -0700 (PDT), Robin Somes
> <robin...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> >Received an email from Gradwell over the weekend, warning us that our credit card is due to expire.
> >We ceased to be Gradwell customers in June 2018 when with no warning our hosting was flogged out from under us to Pickaweb. Three years on, and with no other Gradwell services provided, why should they still have our card details on file at all?
> >Anyone else had the same?
> >Cheers,
> >Robin
> Negative. The card they had 'on record' in my case, was ceased in
> 2019. My account with them was closed at my request in December 2016.

<snippery>
I've certainly had disputed bills for services provided after we were ejected; it was all a while ago now so I can't remember exactly what for, but they backed off in the end. We've also had emails related to their VOIP (which we never signed up for, or wanted, while we were customers). Then last year, a flurry of reminders to renew our SSL certificate (which was discarded when we left in 2018).
Regarding the latest issue, I've now had an apology, explaining that "It seems when your services were migrated away that your account was not fully closed. I can confirm your account has now been fully closed and your billing details removed."
I'd like to say that things improved when we were moved to Pickaweb, but their main purpose for existence seemed to be to make Gradwell look good by comparison. In transferring our online shop site, they took a site backup, but then didn't transfer it for 6 *weeks*, so that the full 6 weeks of sales data were lost. No apologies. Our \public_html folder is a disaster zone of nested multiple copies of site folders, which I daren't attempt to rationalise. The only place they proved superior was in the clarity of their billing - Gradwell's was as mad as a badger, and incomprehensible.
Touch wood, apart from the forced and unannounced transfer once again, Hostek has been fairly plain sailing so far...
Cheers,
Robin