Fasthosts email down?

Anyone else with fasthosts?

I can't access my emails...
The connection to the server has failed. Account: 'mail.mydomainnamehere.co.uk', Server: 'mail.mydomainnamehereco.uk', Protocol: POP3, Port: 110, Secure(SSL): No, Socket Error: 10060, Error Number: 0x800CCC0E

https://admin.fasthosts.co.uk/SystemStatus

Monday 16 Nov 16:10

Under Investigation: Email Log Entry 969
Customers may be currently experiencing intermittent issues trying to access their email via POP3/IMAP and our Webmail service. Our engineers are investigating this issue as a priority.

This issue is presently under investigation:
Systems Affected:

Fasthosts UK Shared Hosting Network

It was down for most of today as well, which is a very poor show. OK, so they are giving status updates, but the flakiness of the system is worrying - good job it isn't my primary email service.

Be warned - a friend has move her hosting because of FH's uselessness - and they are refusing to cancel the contract.

In reply to a post by ian_c:

Be warned - a friend has move her hosting because of FH's uselessness - and they are refusing to cancel the contract.

What's the nature of the contract? AFAIK I'm only on a monthly contract.

Not sure - trouble is she is using her debit card (presumably on continuous authority).

If anyone does happen to have experience of cancelling Fasthosts contracts, would be interesting. Taking a look at a site on one of their windows servers for a friend, hard to configure this much worse.

Rang their tech support, very pleasant and completely clueless. Need to get him out of there.

They will do al they can to avoid cancelling. My friend is taking them to Trading Standards.

"They" are not the only ones, I was with a company for seven years, but it was bought out in the last two of that, we were given promises of better service etc, but it just bombed and went from OK to bad, to worse then just plain unacceptable.

They made the last month, hell, trying to move 50 odd domains across was an absolute nightmare, they really didn't want me to cancel and they put every obstacle they could in my way, in the end I had to call in a few favours to get the job done, but they finally released it all.
If it wasn't for the patience and expertise of my new providers, then I don't think I could have done it on my own! I would still be waiting on trading standards, who haven't yet answered my first letter, however, it is my intention to persue it because I had paid them up until the end of March 2010 so in my eyes they owe me in so many ways I am not going to go into.

Just make sure that whoever you go to now, has a clear way of getting out of them, in other words, can you order your own EPP keys for .com domains and can you unlock them yourself? Rather than have to wait on someone else to do it for you.
I found moving the .co.uk much easier because there is a very friendly and helpful support desk and once I had explained I think they "pushed" the move of the .co.uk's. However, there are so many "holders" of .coms that it is a nightmare, so make sure you can order your own EPP's and unlock them yourself !

Not me, a friend.

The problem was specifically non-performance of webhosting and email. Now sort after I finally badgered her into talking to my own provider (who has the great advantage of living two doors down the road from me).