Edian Design Blog

Lat year we published three articles about Savastore aka Watford Electronics. One of them was about our own experience of purchasing an Aries notebook, the other two were based on this and other peoples’ experiences of dealing with them.  You can read them here.

A year later we received the following email from Mr Hills at Savastore:..

“Dear Edian Design
http://www.ediandesign.com/blog/savastore.php

I find both the posts on this page to be untrue and harmful to our business.  Please get these removed without delay and let me know by reply.  We are prepared to take legal action if necessary to get this removed, as you state in your terms that you are not responsible for the posts please provide me with contact details of the people who did make these posts.
The pages in question have been downloaded and printed as evidence should we require it.
I hope you can assist.
Regards
Mr Peter Hills
Customer Services Manager ”

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We didn’t reply because we were abroad. Less than a week later another email arrived:

“URGENT

I have sent 2 emails to you with out reply about abusive and incorrect blogs on your website about Watford Electronics and SavaStore.com.  If you continue to refuse to get back to me then we will commence legal proceedings without further notice.

Your urgent attention is required.

Regards

Mr Peter Hills
Customer Services Manager”

————— 

I was still abroad so I sent him a letter:
“Dear Mr Hills,

Firstly, according to our mail box you had only sent one previous email to us.  Secondly, you should have received an automated reply informing you that we were not available until the 9th June. This and your previous email were forwarded to my personal email account. We are currently away and unable to reply from our business email accounts.

I find it extraordinary that you, who hardly ever reply to customers’ emails & requests, threaten us with legal proceedings for not responding to your email within a few days! Please get your priorities right and focus your energy on dealing with the nightmares your company seems to put their customers through.

In your previous email you mentioned that you objected to two posts on one of our pages - then you said you wanted “both pages” to be removed. This is confusing. What exactly do you object to?

You also said that the posts are untrue. They were certainly true at the time they were published - we have enough evidence & witnesses to prove this. Upon my return to the UK I shall check with our lawyer and may change some of the wording if he so advises. Until then I am unable to change anything.”

——————–

So we are now back and we are disinclined to change the posts that were published on our blog last year. Instead we’d like to invite Mr Hills to comment on these posts and explain what he thinks is untrue or misleading in these posts. As far as we are concerned these posts were true at the time they were published.

If Customer Services at Savastore has improved since, we’d like to invite people who were satisfied with Watford Electronics to say so below. However, according to other forums - such as Grumbletext, Stormloader, Watford Blog & Reviewcentre - Customer Services at Watford Electronics is still appalling. Many of the posts published on these sites are far more critical, personal and potentially damaging to their business and off-putting to new customers than the posts on our blog. Is Mr Hills going to sue all those who dare warn others against buying things at Watford/Savastore? Perhaps this is what he’s been doing rather than concentrating on providing good customer care for those who shop at Savastore.com.

If you’re looking for domain names, be careful as to where you buy them. We purchased a domain back in January from domainsarefree.com (owned by Globat) for only $3.99. We just wanted to secure the name for a few months before creating a website for it. However, as it turned out, the domain was not registered despite having received a receipt & confirmation of our order. I noticed several months later that the domain was registered by someone else. I was shocked and wrote an email to them:..

On the 21st January I registered the domain XXX.com with you.
Below I have attached the confirmation invoice you sent me at the time.

Last week I noticed that the domain is not owned by me, but by GoDaddy, who registered it on the 28th April. How could this have happened?
Having received your confirmation of my order, I assumed that the registration was complete.
You sent me a strange email the following day regarding your web hosting services, although I had not purchased any of your hosting plans.

I just don’t understand why the registration didn’t get through properly and, more importantly, why you didn’t notify me of it.
Also, why do you send an invoice/receipt before an order is completed?

Obviously I am rather unhappy about losing this domain, which I was just about to get hosted. I am very dissatisfied with your service.
What are you able to do in order to get this domain name back?

Their response was:

“Your account was never registered with us because you did not want to verify your information with us.”

I replied:

I’m not sure what you mean by never registering an account with you.
I registered a domain name. I paid for it. I was sent a confirmation of its registration. I even checked on the internet and it was no longer available to register by anyone else.

As you can read from my email sent to you on the 22nd Jan I did not want any WEB HOSTING services. Your email sent to me after the registration requiring proof of identity did not mention anything about the registration of my domain. I bought the domain from domainsarefree.com - there was no formal indication that Globat was involved in the registration process or that it had any right to request more information about me. The confirming email from domainsarefree certainly didn’t say so. The email from Globat requesting proof of identity didn’t say so either.

I also find it rather strange that you didn’t inform me when the domain registration did not go through properly. Why? Surely if a customer is sent a receipt it means that an order has been completed?

I’ve now lost an important domain that I thought I had registered five months ago. It is just unacceptable.

They replied:

“Please read my previous reply.  You did not want to verify your
account with us, thus the agent handling your account frauded it out.  It had nothing to do with web hosting services.  It was a verification that you were the person who created the domain account.  Your account was never debited for the amount and you can double check for yourself on your account.”

My response:

I HAVE read your previous email properly. Perhaps you should read mine.
This is the email I received from Globat after registering my domain:

Dear E:

Thank you for your recent order of a Globat.com web hosting account. We appreciate your business.

Due to certain security precautions regarding online ordering we need to verify some information before we can finish processing your order. Please call or email our billing department with a working telephone number and a good time to reach you. You may leave a message as well.  If we cannot connect over the phone then we ask that customers paying with a credit card,  fax a copy of a valid picture ID and the front of your credit card to the fax number listed below. For customers paying with Paypal, you can fax a copy of a valid ID and confirmation of your paypal payment with the paypal email address. For customers paying with Echeck please fax a copy of a valid picture ID . This aids in the quick identification and application of payment to activate your account.
—————————

You say that your verification request “had nothing to do with web hosting services. It was a verification that you were the person who created the domain account”

So where exactly in this email are you asking me to verify my ID regarding registering a domain??? I didn’t even know what this email was about, as it mentioned nothing about the domain I had purchased.
As I said before, domainsarefree sent me an invoice and a confirmation of my order. That normally means that an order is completed, does is not?

Their reply:

“No, I would not think that as being confirmed. You need to confirm it via phone with our billing department for an account to be provisioned and confirmed.  We can no longer register this name for you.”

At this point I got rather pissed off:

“I think you’re missing the real point of this issue.
Let me outline the problem simply.

1, I registered a domain from domainsarefree.com
2, I received a confirmation of my order & a receipt letting me know that the registration was successful.
3, the WHOIS database showed that the domain was taken (i.e. by me)
4, domainsarefree did not ask me to verify my identity in order to complete the registration of my domain.
5, I was sent an email from Globat asking me to verify my identity for a “web hosting account” I had supposedly ordered. But I had ordered no such thing. In this email there was no reference whatsoever to the registration of my domain. I though this email was just spam.
6, I therefore assumed for six months that I was the legal owner of the domain. I was sent no notice or warning that the registration had not been fully processed.

The questions remain - why was I not informed about the registration not being completed? Why was I sent a receipt of my order being completed? Furthermore, if registering a domain requires verification of identity - why was this not clearly indicated during the registration process?

I don’t know any other registrar who operates like this and misleads customers. I have registered dozens of domains via different registrars - none of them have required verification of identity without clearly stating this on their registration form!

Their reply:

“I appreciate you taking the time to explain what the situation is.  I fully understand what you are stating but when I check the WHOIS info, it is not registered by you.  If you state that the WHOIS info when you first registered the domain stated your info, then there is no way that the domain would become free and be taken by someone else.”

This was sent on the 22nd May. Obviously what I meant was that I checked the WHOIS database just after registering the domain - it said that the domain was taken but details were not yet available. I checked the database again in April - this is when I discovered that the domain was not owned by us! This is why I was complaining to them…

I got bored with the whole thing. They just don’t want to accept responsibility. We will never buy a domain or any other hosting services from Globat. Neither will we recommend them to any of our clients. We warn anybody wanting to register a domain to stay away from this company and other ones that offer domains at a too-good-to-be-true price!