Fasthosts Terms of Service for dedicated servers

[sjwright]

Hi there

I have a dedicated server with Fasthosts, and been with them for well over a year. I am considering moving to a different provider, and in their terms of service it states there's a minimum 12 month contract. See: http://www.fasthosts....terms/?page=dedicated

I've read scare stories of people being landed by large bills with Fasthosts upon cancellation of a dedicated server, does anyone know if they can legally do this if I have been with them for 12 months based on their TOS?

Thanks
Ste

[Nibble]

If you act in accordance with their TOS, then as below

Unless specifically stated to the contrary in the details of the Service and/or Package You purchase, all Services for which payment is required annually in advance shall be provided for a fixed annual (i.e. 12 month) term. The contract will automatically renew on its anniversary date and continue for successive further 12 month periods, unless terminated in accordance with these General Terms & Conditions or the Services or Package specific terms, if different to these General Terms & Conditions.

2.3 Unless specifically stated to the contrary in the details of the Service and/or Package You purchase, all Services for which payment is required biennially in advance shall be provided for a fixed biennial (i.e. 24 month) term. The contract will automatically renew on its anniversary date and continue for successive further 24 month periods, unless terminated in accordance with these General Terms & Conditions or the Services or Package specific terms, if different to these General Terms & Conditions.

4 Please be aware that unless You terminate the Services in accordance with clause 3 below or the Services or Package specific terms, the Services will automatically renew on the anniversary date of the contract for a successive contract term and You will be responsible for a further 12 or 24 months Prices whichever is applicable. If you choose to terminate the Services any time after the anniversary date of the contract You will still be required to pay the Prices for the remaining period of the then current term of the contract.

You are entitled to cancel the Services by submitting a cancellation request to our support team via the Fasthosts control panel no less than 14 days prior to the anniversary date of the contract term or the relevant service specific terms & conditions pertinent to the Services or Package you have purchased.

Making sure that you exectly follow their cancellation procedure as follows

1. Once you cancel a hosting package, your website and any email addresses associated with the domain name(s) on your account will stop working and all data associated with that hosting account (including web pages, databases, e-mail configuration and storage) will be removed from our servers. ONCE REMOVED, THIS DATA WILL NOT BE RECOVERABLE, PLEASE THEREFORE ENSURE YOU HAVE FULL AND RECENT BACKUPS OF THIS DATA BEFORE submitting a closure request.

2. You can raise a request to close a hosting package by submitting a support ticket to our support teams. This can be done via the contact form within your control panel. It is also possible to raise a request via telephone; however we cannot under any circumstances close an account or package without first confirming your password. Once a request has been raised you will be provided with a ticket reference number.

3. Your request will be passed to our customer care team, who will contact you to finalize the closure of the package, please note that should you request closure of a package which is still within its fixed contract term. It will not be possible to close the package until the expiry date of this term.