A complaint is generally from a person that ‘cares’ enough about the company to want to go out of their way to give you the ‘advantage’ of knowing that something is wrong, while they may not be the best thing to receive they do give you a opportunity to put things right. Here are a selection of complaints we have made or we have been made aware of about other companies that we will add to going forward:
1, Bad Drivers – I was today cut up and sworn at by the driver of your van [Registration Number]. While waiting at the traffic lights at the bottom of Mierscourt Road in Rainham I kept the ‘Keep Clear’ box free, only to have your van overtake me and cut in front, parking half on the ‘Keep Clear’ area. I beeped, and your driver opened his door, stepped out and aggressively raised his middle finger to me. Is this the company image you are trying to portray? I certainly would not use a company with that kind of employee, and it was noted by other drivers – one that I know remarked on his behaviour when I saw them later.
2, Oversight of Qualifications – We received a complaint about you “misrepresenting” yourself based on web page link below. I am sure this is just an oversight from the change-over between you and the previous website owner. I thought I’d bring it immediately to your attention so that it can be resolved on your part and ours informally and without any fuss by changing or deleting those references.
3,Trading Standards – This department has received a complaint involving the taking of monies from a consumer in order to pay for ‘materials’ following an unsolicited visit by the comapny. Following payment of the monies the trader has not provided any cancellation rights, other contractual paperwork or returned to carry out the works. Consequently there are probable breaches of the Consumer Protection Regulations as well as the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations. I am therefore requesting the details of the persons/company behind the website and I enclose a Data Protection Act request for those details. I am empowered to request this information by the above legislation and failure to provide it could constitute obstruction under the above Act.
I would be grateful therefore if you could provide those details as soon as possible.
Also, on flyers distributed by the company, an address was provided and I note that, according to Whois, this is also the address provided for the registrant. This is an address of a mail forwarding and virtual office and the owners have stated that they are not aware of this company as a client, so it is believed that this address is being used fraudulantly. Having reviewed the web site it is also clear that the site is not complying with the requirements of the Electronic Commerce Regulations in that no geographic address, VAT number etc is provided. In light of this I would request that you give consideration to suspending this website forthwith. I look forward to receiving your reply, however if you wish to discuss this further please contact me on the number below.
4, Domain Registration with Nominet – We have a client who has the following 3 domains with their previous website designer who has incorrectly set the registrar to himself. The website designer is refusing to update the tags as he is attempting to extort monies for each domain from my client. Therefore we need you to update the IPS tag to ENOM on all three domains above. The legal and correct owner is given below.
Answer – The three domain names are registered to the website designer. As he is the legal registrant you will need to contact him and ask him to transfer the domain names over to your client. If you wish to have a .uk domain name transferred, it can only be done in one of three ways:
- using our transfer process (which requires the consent of both sides and payment of a fee)
- order of a court of competent jurisdiction; or
- via our Dispute Resolution Service (the DRS: see below, for further information).
We do not transfer domains on any other basis. This email does not recommend any one of these options to you. Note that Nominet UK remains neutral in any dispute: we can advise you how the DRS works, but we cannot advise you which option you should pursue or what you should say in any complaint or legal case you bring. If you want to obtain a court order, you should obtain independent legal advice. If you are considering the DRS see below, and on our website at
5 Website Purchased by a competitor – One of our competitors has purchased a domain with the same name as ours and put offensive content on it.The website I am objecting to has now removed the offensive content but is now offering the website for sale, I feel that as this company is a competitor in the same village they have no reasonable business case for buying a website name that is closely resembling mine and then selling it I believe this to be immoral and illegal and trust you will remove this domain as it could indicate to my current / future clients that I have gone out of business if they stumble across a website bearing my company name that says ‘for sale’
Answer from Nominet – We have received your complaint. We have not yet sent the complaint to the registrant of the disputed domain name, and are inviting you to review your case. We do this when we receive short complaints, or complaints which do not have supporting evidence. If you wish to withdraw your complaint and submit a new one, please let me know. If you would like to add more information and evidence to you current complaint you can email it to me and I can add it for you. If I do not hear back from you I will send this complaint to the registrant.
I also noticed that you had requested the suspension option if you were successful with your complaint. I just wanted to make sure you understood the implications of the suspension of the domain name. The domain name will get suspended until it’s renewal date and then it will be cancelled. When it is cancelled it becomes immediately available to be re-registered on a first-come, first-served basis. Which could mean that you may have to go through the DRS process again if another party registers the domain name. Generally, we find that complainants request the transfer of the domain name so that they can take control of the registration if they succeed.
Please let me know if you would like me to change the possible outcome to transfer or to leave it as suspension.
We are unable to just remove the domain name, we have a process to deal with these sort of allegations and that is the Dispute Resolution Service (DRS).
This is a formalised complaints process which balances the rights of the rights holder (to get domains removed) with the rights of the registrant (not to have potentially valuable or important names summarily removed without fair consideration). We cannot just act on allegations – no matter how “open and shut” they might be presented to be by the party contacting us because (a) not all disputes are what they appear to be at first sight and (b) deciding what is or isn’t an “obvious” case actually requires a level of investigation and work at least equal to the DRS itself. If you still wish to pursue this through the DRS you need to prepare your case in accordance with the DRS Policy and Procedure.
6 Website Design company copying our website – I am not sure if you are aware… but it has come to our attention that your site seems to have copied some ‘exact elements’ from our website… In both design elements and text content. We would therefore like to remind you that we are members of ‘Copyscape’ – the plagiarism monitoring service and are protected under there ‘Premium Service’.
Please Note: We are NOT saying you are aware that you have copied our site, since we know sometimes web designers will use other sites that look good for ideas etc. But we would politely ask you PLEASE edit your text etc. to make it not look like a copy of our site. Please do not take this the wrong way but we have spent a lot of money having this site made in order to have a unique looking website, and not look like the run of the mill. In addition to all text being written by a professional proof-reader, in order to give it that added touch of class. If you wish to discuss this at all please do not hesitate to give us a call… otherwise I would like to thank you in advance for your help in this matter.
Website Designers said ….This is both embarrassing and awkward for me as they contacted the client directly and has left me looking like an amateur. This may lead on to legal action so fast action is required. I cant believe you have used ‘exact’ elements and text from this site, the site is a direct competitor and it was only a matter of time until this was found out. I have done a text comparison match and there is matches coming up as you left their about us page on the aboutus page as well as the testimonials page as well as leaving the same bullet points on the site
I have changed the text on the bullet points and changed the about us / testimonial page test but you need to review this site again and perhaps change the bullet points – the design / colour of the bullet points and anything else to make it look not like a ‘copied site’ Please can you then review all the sites you have done and give me the website where you copied them from – thanks