Fasthosts' market leadership claims banned
'Number one' was talking number two
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Fasthosts has been banned from claiming it is the "UK's Number one web host" in adverts, after a rival complained it was used flawed data and exaggerated graphs to mislead potential customers.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld three complaints against the Gloucester-based firm last week, because it found its claims were untrue and unsubstantiated.
The complaint came from rival GX Networks, formerly known as Pipex web hosting. Fasthosts had used out-of-date data from the research firm Netcraft to support its assertions in print and online that it had "over two times more UK hosted websites than its nearest competitor", the ASA found.
The watchdog also said it was concerned that there was no agreement that having the most domains or hostnames implied market leadership.
GX Networks also complained that Netcraft had collected inaccurate data last year when it was ditching its Pipex branding.
"Because the ads used data for the period in question that had been shown to be flawed and because the ads did not make sufficiently clear the basis of the claims, we concluded that the ads were likely to mislead," the ASA wrote.
Fasthosts was ordered not to repeat its leadership claims in future, unless it had comprehensive and contemporary data to show that by value or volume, it was the top selling web host. ®
COMMENTS
Never use Fasthosts : They are the worst, not best
Never use Fasthosts : They are the worst, not best
They could not damage their clients more or care less than they do.
Trapped resellers with too many sites to move, like us, are constantly battling their sabotage.
Bring sites or their functionality down, with almost comical upgrades and sudden changes to the server settings.
They have never send an email advising on a change and possible consequences.
You only realise... when a 'contact form' that appears to work, doesn't and 'your' clients are facing unknown losses.
Fix it and Fasthosts, change the dam setting back again.
Approaching Fasthosts on it is an absolute 100% waste of time. They can hardly follow a url (link), right!
They never know what they have done (support is don't know past fixes and are , literally, thick), claim no-one else is being hurt (even with loads of FH posts complaining) and basically don't care, anyway.
At free, they will cost you the earth, for any real business/website. It is amazing that people still sign up.
They are not Number 1
Never use Fasthosts : They are the worst, not best
Not just numbers...
Stating "the number one's Web host" implies that they are best for value / quality too.
*polishes her collection of the three latest PCPro Best Web Host awards*
*looks smug*
;)
Kate.
--
Kate Craig-Wood
Da Boss
Memset
Am I the only one......
.......Who hasn't had a problem with them?
My site, albeit a smallish gaming clan site (1 mysql db, couple of mailboxes etc) has been hosted by them for the last 3 years and with only one outage (they seemed very efficient on the phone when contacted about it and had the problem sorted within the hour) but apart from that I've not had any problems with Fasthosts.
Have I just been lucky because there certainly seems to be a lot of bad press about Fasthosts?
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