Judge rules in favour of Fasthosts partner

Hosting provider forced to cough up compensation to partner UK Mobile Media in relation to downtime issues

Managed hosting provider Fasthosts has been forced to pay £1,500 damages to partner UK Mobile Media for failing to meet its customer service guarantees.

UK Mobile Media claimed that - despite paying Fasthosts a £15,000 annual fee for its dedicated infrastructure - its dedicated servers suffered 22 per cent downtime and therefore led to a loss of business.

It is not the first time Fasthosts has faced the wrath of its channel partners in recent months. In December, angry resellers contacted CRN claiming Fasthosts had left them to pick up the pieces after one of its servers suffered a network intrusion.
Hampshire-based UK Mobile Media took the firm to Southampton small claims court where the judge awarded it £1,212.68 damages and £220 in fees and loss of earnings, which Fasthosts has until 15 September to pay.

Matthew Rahman, managing director of UK Mobile Media, said after several attempts to contact Fasthosts about the system failures, he received no response.

“There will be further claims taken to court against it, because the court has realised that poor customer service is not an excuse. It is not about the money, it is about the lack of customer support.”

UK Mobile Media switched from Fasthosts to Hosting UK nine months ago.

“Hosting UK has provided a very good service so far – with Fasthosts we lost some very big customers in the US,” he added.

Fasthosts did not appear in court and told CRN it was unable to comment on the case.

Chris Daley, director of web hosting service Dwebs, claimed that many of Fasthosts’ customers are moving to Dwebs due to the lack of support it offers.

“Dwebs cares about its customers instead of money - Fasthosts has grown too big and its customers are being let down.

“We can only judge by what customers have told us, but most have moved to us because problems such as downtime are not resolved quickly. Fasthosts claims to be the UK’s number one, but it appears to lack interest in its customers.”