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By - Darren Straight

Lycos Europe closing Email portal service and Tripod Web hosting

The Well known (or less known for some) Internet company Lycos is shutting down its email portal service and web hosting service Tripod, both services will be discontinued as of February 15 2009. Bellow is a copy of the emails being sent out!

Email portal Service:

Dear User,

We regret to inform you that our parent company has decided to discontinue all unprofitable activities.

One of the activities that will be discontinued is our E-mail business division. For this reason, we are hereby terminating your account as of 15 February 2009. Currently, we are still working on finding a solution to provide you the service through another provider. If we should succeed to do so, we will inform you within the next 4 weeks. But as this is currently doubtful, we would like to ask you to assume the end of the service.

Prior to this date, you may continue to log in to your e-mail account and receive and send mail as usual. After this date, however, we will close your account and delete all content and access authorizations stored with Lycos in relation to your e-mail account, in accordance with legal requirements.

You will then no longer be able to receive or send e-mail under your e-mail address. The contents of your mailbox will also no longer be accessible. For this reason, we ask that you back up all important data from your Lycos e-mail account in the next few days and switch to another e-mail provider.

Should you still be entitled to services for any additional paid options, we will of course reimburse the balance to the bank account you provided.

We regret this measure and would like to thank you for the trust you have placed in us.

Kind regards,

Your LYCOS Mail Team

Lycos UK Ltd., 35 Vine Street, London, EC3N 2AA, UK
registered in ENGLAND AND WALES | Registration No. 03923511 | VAT number: 756796467

Copyright © 2009 Lycos, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Lycos® is a registered trademark of Lycos, Inc.

E-Mail: mail-support-uk@lycos-europe.com | Tel.: 0906 784 4 784 (1£/min.)
http://www.lycos.co.uk

And Tripod Webhosting:

Cancellation of your Tripod Account and your free Tripod Homepage

Dear User,

as announced on the 26th of November 2008 the portal and webhosting activities of the Lycos Europe GmbH will be discontinued. Unfortunately, the free hosting service Tripod is effected. For this reason we are hereby terminating your Tripod Account as of 15th February 2009.
Until the 15th February you can use your Tripod account and your Homepage as usual. After this date we will close your account and delete all your content which was stored on Tripod in accordance with legal requirements.
After this date it will be ímpossible to view your Homepage in the internet or to do a Backup using FTP from your page because the content will be unrecoverably deleted. That is why we advise you to to backup all necessary data in the near future from your Tripod Account on your hard drive and if wanted to upload it to another homepage provider.
Please keep in mind that we do not offer any support for the free homepages neither by phone nor by email for upcoming questions. Because of this reason we created a short description how to backup your data.
We regret having to take this step and we want to thank you for your confidence in the past.
Currently, we are still working on finding a solution to provide you the service through another provider. If we should succeed in doing so, we will inform you within the next 4 weeks. But as this is currently doubtful, we would like to ask you to assume the end of the service.
Despite the sad news we wish you and your family a successful 2009.

Best wishes,
Your Lycos Tripod Team
Data Backup

Attention:
We cannot guarantee and /or take over liability for the correctness of this “How To”. For the case that you lose your data because of following this “How To” you cannot claim Lycos for damage. You are alone responsible for the backup of your data. Because of this reason please import / upload your data to your new Web space, test it extensively and check if really all relevant data were saved.

Step by Step “How To”:

1. Create a folder, in which you want to save your data.

Create a connection over a FTP-program:

FTP-Server: ftp.members.lycos.co.uk
Username: Name of the site (f.e.: username)
Password: Login Password of the site
Connection-Typ: passiv

2. Mark all dates, that you want to save and draw them into the folder which you have created in point 1.

3. If you have data in your mySQL Database, you have to save it in an additional step. For this you have to login to www.tripod.lycos.co.uk and click on the left on “online tools” and after that on “open PHP4U”. A popup will open. Please choose under the point “Dump”, “Structure and Data” and press then on “Send”. Then press “OK”. You will get a SQL File, which you can save on your Harddrive.

4. Add-ons like Guestbooks, Polls, Statistices and Counters are not able to save and you have to save them manually, if you need that data.

Lycos Support UK, 1 Stephen Street, London W1TAL, United Kingdom
registered in ENGLAND AND WALES | Registration No. 03923511| VAT number: 756796467
E-Mail: tripod-uk-support@lycos-europe.com
Copyright © 2008 Lycos, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Lycos@ is a registered trademark of Lycos, Inc.

And for any spanish readers out there, a copy in Spanish which I recieved a day before the UK one!

Cancelación de tu cuenta Tripod y de la página web Tripod gratuita (15.01.2009)
 
Estimado usuario:

Como ya anunció nuestra empresa el 26 de noviembre de 2008, lamentamos comunicarte que vamos a suspender algunas actividades comerciales de Lycos Europe GmbH. Entre estas actividades se encuentra el servicio de hosting gratuito Tripod. Por esta razón, te notificamos la cancelación de tu cuenta Tripod con efecto a partir del 15-02-09.
Hasta este día podrás seguir utilizando como de costumbre tu cuenta Tripod y tu página web. A partir de esta fecha, cancelaremos tu cuenta y borraremos todos los contenidos y derechos de acceso relacionados con tu página web que hayas guardado en tu cuenta Tripod tomando en consideración las disposiciones legales vigentes. Desde ese momento ya no te será posible ver tu página web en Internet o hacer una copia de seguridad de la misma por FTP, ya que los contenidos se borrarán de forma definitiva y no podrán recuperarse. Por este motivo, te rogamos que guardes en los próximos días todos los datos importantes de tu cuenta Tripod y cambies a otro proveedor de páginas web.
Por favor, ten en cuenta que no podremos atender telefónicamente o por correo electrónico tus posibles preguntas relacionadas con las páginas web gratuitas. Hemos preparado para ti una pequeña guía paso a paso (véase más abajo) para ayudarte a guardar tus datos.
Sentimos tener que adoptar esta medida y te agradecemos la confianza depositada en nosotros.
Actualmente estamos trabajando para encontrar la forma de proporcionarle el servicio mediante otro proveedor. A lo largo de las próximas 4 semanas le informaremos en caso de éxito. Pero si esta posibilidad no se produjera, el servicio se dará por finalizado.
Pese a estas desagradables noticias, te deseamos a ti y a los tuyos un buen comienzo de año y prosperidad para el 2009.

Atentamente,
El equipo de Lycos Tripod
Copia de seguridad de datos

Atención:
No nos hacemos responsables de la exactitud de estas instrucciones. En el caso de que tus datos se pierdan por haber observado las mismas, no se podrá reclamar ningún tipo de indemnización por daños y perjuicios u otro tipo de reclamaciones a Lycos. Tú eres el único responsable de la copia de seguridad de tus datos. Por este motivo, te rogamos que vuelvas a copiar los datos guardados en tu nuevo sitio web y compruebes minuciosamente si se han copiado todos los datos importantes.

Guía paso a paso:

1. Crea una carpeta en el ordenador para guardar posteriormente todos los datos de la copia de seguridad.

2. Establece la conexión a través del programa FTP:

Servidor FTP: ftp.usuarios.lycos.es
Nombre de usuario: Nombre de la página (p. ej.: nombre de usuario)
Contraseña: contraseña de acceso a la página
Tipo de conexión: pasiva

3. Marca todos los datos que desees copiar y arrástralos a la carpeta creada en el punto 1.

4. En caso de que tengas datos en una base de datos mySQL, deberás hacer una copia de seguridad de los mismos por separado. Para ello, entra en www.tripod.lycos.es, haz clic a la izquierda en “Herramientas online” y, a continuación, en “Abrir PHP4U”. Aparece una ventana emergente. Bajo “volcado esquema”, selecciona “Estructura y datos” y “Enviar”. Seguidamente, haz clic en “Siga”. Recibirás un archivo SQL que deberás guardar en tu disco duro.

5. Los add-ons como libros de invitados, encuestas, estadísticas y contadores de usuarios no pueden guardarse y deberán ser copiados a mano en caso de que los necesites.

Lycos Support ES, Carl-Bertelsmann-Str. 29, 33332 Gütersloh
Inscrita en el Registro Mercantil de Madrid, Volumen 15.008, Secciõn 8a, Folio 130,
Hoja M-250243, Inscripción 1² | País de registro: España | CIF: B-82.571.092
E-Mail: tripod-es-support@lycos-europe.com
Copyright © 2008 Lycos, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Lycos@ is a registered trademark of Lycos, Inc. 

6 thoughts on “Lycos Europe closing Email portal service and Tripod Web hosting

Paul Macdonald January 22, 2009 at 5:17 pm

We’re putting together a backup Lycos Email service now, in the interim it will allow any users a facility to dump their POP emails. We can also setup new accounts with mail migrated as required. More info on http://www.ifdnrg.com.

Crypticmiss January 22, 2009 at 10:56 pm

My husband has several domains which he renewed recently with Lycos and he is now going to have to pay again. These were for 1 and 2 years – how come Lycos did not refund the money? Are any of the directors of Lycos involved in the ‘recommended’ transfer company? Why are they waiting till the last minute to give transfer codes, as my husband wants to go with a different company but Lycos ignore all emails. He is going to go with trading standards and also check with the credit card company to see if he can get any compensation. Anyone else have this same problem?

Frederick February 14, 2009 at 1:58 pm

With reference to Crypticmiss, I have many domains with Lycos, quite a few of which were renewed recently. They have been putting out misleading statements on their webhosting site claiming that they are working with a German company called strato.com to ‘automatically’ transfer the domains to them. I phoned strato.com yesterday and they said that I would have to pay them as if starting from new and claim any refunds back from Lycos, which, incidently, Lycos have promised to do on their website. However, the simplest thing to do would be to transfer the domains to another comapny, who would hold them at no charge and then bill the customer at the next renewal.

Jan May 12, 2009 at 8:30 pm

Switched over to STRATO by the end of last year without any problem, though I had to pay from that moment as a new STRATO customer…
Lycos, who repeatedly sent out e-mails that I had to switch and that I would get a refund, NEVER contacted me again after they discontinued there “terrible” services… So up till now (more then 4 months later), i still am waiting for my refund money…
I have sent out several e-mails to Lycos-Europe, but just found out that this e-mail address is no longer valid.
So F… LYCOS. Just fill in the three dots yourself 🙁

Paul Wilson May 21, 2009 at 3:22 am

Lycos moonlight flit – Can i claim from USA section?

I had a website hosted by Lycos Web Hosting UK/Europe (seemed to vary which, depending on what part of their interface you went to). As you may be aware they have now closed down.

From the very start they sent repeated assurances that money paid in advance (mine is about 6 months worth) would be fully refunded into ones bank account. It was stated that this would happen within 28 days of the end of February.

A crucial aspect that should be made clear is that they repeatedly asked for one not to make any contact over a refund during the 28 days they quoted.

I’m getting worried now as appearing all over the web are posts asking if anyone has had a refund. There are no links for support (as expected) on the Lycos website page.

I’ve seen someone elsewhere ask if it is any use to contact Lycos USA. I’m not sure if the main headquarters of the company is in Germany, France or the USA. Most people in posts seem to be saying they have given up on their money and don’t in a million years expect to get it back!!!

Does anybody know what i can do (apart from whistling in the wind) to get my money back?. I did as they asked and avoided contacting their (at the end of February closed down) support over refund queries. Now there is nobody to contact.

Are there any overseeing bodies be it in this country, or governing the internet etc i can contact. Once i establish who owns the company, be it USA or wherever, will i be able to chase them up for the money?

One of the most recent emails i sent (waiting to see if it bounces) to mail-support-uk@lycos-europe.com

ARE YOU STEALING MY MONEY AND/OR INTENTIONALLY COMMITED FRAUD

Hello,

As you know you closed down your webhosting service earlier this year.

You sent repeated emails saying that all monies paid in advance would be reimbursed within 28 days of the end of February.

YOU REPEATEDLY ASKED FOR CUSTOMERS NOT TO CONTACT YOU DURING THAT PERIOD. I duly obliged with your request as i appreciated you would be overworked. Lo and behold come the 29th day no refund and all contact details were dead.

PLEASE NOTE IT IS NOW THE MONTH OF MAY AND I HAVE NOT BEEN REFUNDED MONIES PAID IN ADVANCE. I have had absolutely no reply from a couple of previous emails on this matter.

Please give me my money back as promised. If you ignore this i will take legal steps for recourse (and expenses incurred in doing so) at the highest level of your company, wherever that may be based.

Thanking you in advance of a reply,

megavnn January 24, 2011 at 11:09 am

Hello, i think that i saw you visited my weblog so i came to “return the favor”.I am attempting to find things to improve my website!I suppose its ok to use some of your ideas!!

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