My complaint:
Account No. 3772-0752-1845 – now closed. The website Vistaprint dismantled whilst the owners, Parents’ Aid, were still using and paying for it!
Since 2013 Vistaprint had hosted our website, www.parents-aid.org.uk (this was a domain name we purchased; the name Vistaprint allocated to our site was https:parentsaid.vpweb.co.uk). Despite occasional problems, usually minor, the Organisation was happy with the service we received and our website grew over time to contain information about our aims and objectives, the history of the Organisation and the services we offer to our client families. However, when we sought to access the site on 7721, we could neither enter it to make any changes nor find it externally: the site, and all memory of it in the search engines, had vanished. We rang the Vistaprint helpline, 0800 802 1473, only to be told that their technical team would have to be contacted and that they could take 72 hours to get back to us with an explanation. No-one knew how long the website had been down nor whether a backup of it was available. We rang again the next morning, only to be dismissed with the same story, and at that point our trustee board agreed that as we were now without a website (despite the fact that Vistaprint had never ceased claiming direct debit payments for the site) and Vistaprint could not advise us how long it might take to recover it, we should have to go elsewhere for a hosting agency. To all intents and purposes our Organisation, which in common with many agencies has been delivering all services and recruiting volunteers online since the commencement of the pandemic, no longer existed; our reputation for stability with partner agencies and referring professionals (the Organisation has been operative since 1989) had been undermined and all record of our achievements over the years wiped out. We have accordingly purchased another site and transferred the domain name www.parents-aid.org.uk to it.
Suggested solution:
We rang Vistaprint\'s helpline a third time to close our account and was informed that the only refund weI could be offered was one month’s rental for the website. However, our trustees feel strongly that the Organisation – a small charity offering not-for-profit support services to families at risk of social exclusion – deserves to be compensated for the inconvenience and embarrassment Vistaprint’s negligence has caused us and the damage done to our business over the preceding month. We should prefer not to have to take this matter further.
