3 years of business deleted 24hrs after changing hosting company!

Yes that's right. within hours of moving my site to Webfusion after 3 years with Othello, I realised I had not downloaded my database. When I contacted Othello they told me they had deleted it - manually! Everything was gone. almost 3 years of changes and amendments - gone. No backup to retrieve. No policy of retaining customers data for 28 days - or even a week after cancellation of contract. Not even a hint of any sympathy, "Well it's deleted, it's gone. What do you want us to do?"

This company is truly awful. I cannot remember the last time I have been incensed to the brink of committing arson. Truly awful customer service. Actually, the term 'customer service' is an epic misnomer with Othello. To give you an idea of just how shoddy this company is, you call their 0871 customer contact number and the whole of the recorded message is created by that computerized voice you get from an Apple Mac speech program. You initially think it's a kind of joke and they want it to sound like a female Stephen Hawking - a slight nod to science and technology perhaps? But when you speak to the humanoids on the other end of the phone at Othello Tech you realise that they don't have a sense of humour - they barely have a tonal inflection their voice!

Othello provided a cheap hosting option for a short time, but if you're not technical they talk to you like an idiot. I say talk, theirs is the 'submit ticket' version of dealing with enquiries. You could write 1000 words explaining your problem and they would reply with two sentences with no punctuation or grammar; two sentences that will automatically assume that you also spent 10 hours a day looking at monitors and HTML and PHP code and never get out and socialise with other humans. When you ask to explain a little further you get the same type of response - flat, non-descriptive, un-emotive - cryptic almost - but just unhelpful.

After hurling a tirade of threatening abuse down the phone at Othello, three days later their owner emailed me telling me that I 'might' be able to retrieve a copy of my database from their archives - but it would cost me £30! Great service that eh? Leave me to sweat for 4 days whilst my company is offline then charge me £30 for a data download... make your own mind up, but for me, the only power a consumer has in a consumer society is the right of choice, and I'd rather pay twice as much for my hosting than use this company.

Biggest Pro: You don't have to stay with them
Biggest Con: Their interpretation of 'customer service' - which doesn't exist