Magmahost seems to be a good lesson to us all. There are some lessons as to the types of background checks that should be made if you want to enter into a long term contract with an internet company, and also what action you should take.
Luckily I only signed up to 12 months development hosting in December 2009, and I decided to move host in about April 2010 for my sellmyretro.com auction site, retaining magmahost hosting for just a test site.
The test site (sellmyretro.co.cc) was down for 5-6 days in August and has been down since 15th September 2010.
a) They no longer respond to emails or support tickets. I have therefore written a letter to both the address on their website and their registered office address.
b) They are still a UK registered limited company (Magmahost Limited) and their website and invoices breach the terms of the Companies Act 2006, by not providing their registered company number and registered office address. Companies House, who have written to their registered office and not received a response, so have now (I understand) written to the directors' home address. Interestingly, the UK company was supposedly only registered on 16th January 2010, although they were issuing invoices under that name in at least December 2009.
c) I have notified Trading Standards in London, PayPal, 2Checkout.com, Moneybookers and
econsumer.gov - Your site for cross-border complaints. as they still appear to be accepting payment, despite the fact that they do not appear to be providing any service (and are no longer contactable).
d) I am signed up with Google webmaster tools and reported the site as spam (does not respond to contact / telephone number is not theirs) - using
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en
e) I have reported the issue with Norton 360 as an unsafe site with a short review to say why
I can't really think of much else to do - see if you can raise a paypal dispute (depends how long ago you made a payment) - it is not worth going to the small claims court for me, as the total paid was only around £50.
---------- Post added at 01:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:50 PM ----------
Interesting that if you now try and make a payment for webhosting to magmahost.com, you are provided with a paypal link to pay
[email protected]
Luckily PayPal don't allow payment to that merchant either!
I have sent an email to that address to ask how they are linked to magmahost, so we shall see...