Spiral Hosting

We have sent an email to all customers explaining that from the 1st January 2010 we have to start charging 17.5% tax on all products sold to EU residents. Here’s the details:

Dear client,

This is a notice that from 1st January 2010, Spiral Hosting Ltd will begin to charge Value Added Tax (VAT) on all products sold to customers located in the European Union. This notice explains how it will affect you and how you can claim an exception if you have an EU VAT Registration Number or operate as a ‘relevant business person’.

If you are not located in the European Union, please ignore this email as it does not affect you.

Who has to pay VAT?

All customers who reside in the European Union (EU27) must pay VAT. Spiral Hosting Ltd is a registered company in Northern Ireland and will therefore charge the standard UK VAT rate, currently 17.5%.

The EU27 includes: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France (incl. Monaco), Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

If you are located in any other country, we will not charge you any VAT.

Exemption for Businesses

- Firstly, VAT Registered Businesses:

If you are a business with an EU VAT registration number, please email your VAT number to billing@spiralhosting.com and we will change your account so that invoices are VAT-Exempt. You can also enter your VAT number through our Client Area by going to the My Details page: https://secure.spiralhosting.com/clientarea.php?action=details . If you do this, no VAT will appear on your invoices and you will be responsible for paying any VAT yourself directly to your local tax authorities.

Please note:
1) Under EU VAT Directive 2008/8/EC, we will validate every VAT Registration Number and detail your VAT-exempt business expenditure on our EC Sales List.
2) There is an exception for UK businesses. We cannot VAT-exempt invoices for UK businesses and you will have to reclaim any VAT from HMRC.

- Secondly, other businesses:

If you do not have a VAT Registration Number, we can still change your account so that invoices are VAT-Exempt providing you take responsibility for paying any VAT to your local tax authority. To make such a request, please email billing@spiralhosting.com stating: “On behalf of Business Name, I declare that we are a ‘taxable person’ under EC Directive 2006/112/EC, Article 9. I request that you do not charge us VAT on our invoices. We agree to pay any VAT directly to our local tax authority in Country.”

We may ask for additional information to keep on file so that we can prove you definitely operate a business. This may include a company registration number, a certificate from your local tax authority, or copies of your business letterhead, commerical documents or commercial website.

Please note:
1) We will detail your VAT-exempt business expenditure to our local tax authority if they ask why we have not charged you VAT.
2) There is an exception for UK businesses. We cannot VAT-exempt invoices for UK businesses and you will have to reclaim any VAT from HMRC.

When will I start seeing VAT on invoices?

Invoices created on/before 31st December 2009 will not have VAT, and invoices created on/after 1st January 2010 will have VAT. This is regardless of the date that the invoice is actually paid.

Can I avoid paying VAT?

Yes! You can renew your web services with us before we start to charge VAT. Many services can be renewed up to 10 years in advance. Please speak with our Sales Team.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact billing@spiralhosting.com or your Account Manager directly.

Best regards,

The Spiral Hosting Team

Gmail’s junk filter is currently mistaking emails from Spiral Hosting as spam, which is causing havoc with some customers not receiving emails, renewal reminders, invoices, and support ticket responses!

We have sent text messages to all customers with Google Mail addresses to ask them to read this post. Please take 2 minutes to check that your email account is not affected.

To check if emails from Spiral Hosting are getting sent to your Spam folder, first login to Gmail then type into the search box at the top:

This should immediately list all emails from Spiral Hosting in your Spam folder. Hopefully there will be none!

If you find that emails are being sent to your Spam folder, please create a filter so it doesn’t happen again.

You can create a filter by following these simple steps:

1) While reading any email that has been mistakenly filtered, click on the down-arrow next to the Reply link, and select ‘Filter messages like this’ from the menu.

2) On the next screen, type *@spiralhosting.com into the From: box. This will allow emails to come from all our billing, sales, support and staff email addresses.

3) Click ‘Next Step’ at the bottom.

4) On the next screen, select the checkbox next to ‘Never send it to Spam.’

5) Apply the filter to any other emails affected (if any):

6) Click ‘Create Filter’.

All existing emails from Spiral Hosting should now be moved to your Inbox, and future emails too!

If you still have problems receiving emails from us please don’t hesitate to contact our Support Department.

The Spiral Hosting team wish you a very Happy Easter!

On Easter Monday, customer support will be available all day via our support centre, but we will be operating with reduced staff. Our sales & billing phone number will be closed all day Monday, and re-open Tuesday at 10am.

Did you know Spiral Hosting can help you on Skype Chat?

We are on Skype most of the day – except the odd coffee break – and we are usually on at night too. We can answer any answers you have about any of our hosting packages, domains, SSL certificate and server solutions.

Also, we can solve most technical problems over Skype (some can take a while to work on, and we might ask you to open a support ticket so we can send you a proper reply when we’re finished).

Our Skype username is spiralhosting.com

We are also expanding the hours Live Chat is available, and we continue to offer support by email, skype and phone, including our ‘Let Us Call You’ service.

We’re delighted to announce that Spiral Hosting now provide a UK freephone number for all sales and billing enquiries.

Most enquiries can be solved quickly by emailing us, but we are available on the phone should you need us.

The number is 0800 221 8949

Office hours are 8am – 6pm.

Outside these hours please use our 24-hour online support. Please note we are trialing the freephone number and our primary contact number for UK clients remains the same – 028 9002 5008.

The Spiral Hosting team wish all our clients a very happy St Patrick’s Day.

St Patrick’s Day is celebrated on Tuesday 17th March. St Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland, so Tuesday is a national holiday.

On Tuesday, we will be operating with reduced staff, and our primary focus will be on customer support which is available all day via our support centre. Our sales & billing phone number will close at 1pm, and re-open on Wednesday at 10am (with hangovers).

For your convenience, this is a quick guide of the many ways to make payments to Spiral Hosting.

1. Credit Cards (recommended)
   • We accept all major credit cards: Visa, Mastercard, Laser cards and also 3V top-up cards.
   • Credit Cards are processed by Realex Payments. They are Europe’s leading payment processor with clients such as Aer Lingus and Vodafone Ireland.
   • Advantage: If you wish you can keep your credit card encrypted and securely stored on our client area, we will automatically bill your renewals to save you the hassle or worry of your services expiring.
2. PayPal.com
   • PayPal allows you to pay money from your credit card, bank account or PayPal account balance.
   • Advantage: No need to register (depending on your country). Accepts American Express.
3. 2Checkout.com
   1. 2Checkout is our secondary credit card processor. For many years we used them for all credit card processing, and many customers still choose 2Checkout.
4. Bank Transfer
   1. Some clients prefer to send us BAC/IBAN transfers. If you’d like to do this, please open a support ticket so we can give you our bank account details.
   2. Also, please tell our Billing Dept when you have initiated a bank transfer, so we know to look out for your payment.
5. Mail In Payment
   1. We accept cheques in the post. Please cross cheques and make payable to Spiral Hosting Ltd. Also, include details of the account holder or invoice number! Our postal address is at the top of all invoices.
   2. If you are paying to renew hosting, please ensure payment reaches us in time. To avoid any downtime please allow plenty of time for the payment to clear. We cannot credit your account until the funds have cleared with our bank.
   3. Lastly, it sounds obvious – but our business operates in Euro!
      If you are paying in another currency please send too much money instead of too little! Any change left over will be added to your account balance for future purchases.
      Costs incurred on cashing/converting foreign currency cheques will be deducted from the final amount added to your balance.

Need to contact our Billing Dept?
We’re here to help. Please open a support ticket or email/phone us.

Customer support will be available every day throughout the Christmas holidays 24/7 as normal via our support centre.

Our sales & billing phone number will close at 5pm on 19th December (for our staff Christmas party!) and it will also be unavailable on 25th and 31st December, and 1st January. It will be operating as normal on all other dates.

Customers should note that post to and from our Belfast office may currently be delayed due to the current postal strike. This is only affecting a very small amount of customers, as most of our communication is online.

Also, we are advising customers who normally make payments by cheque to consider alternatively methods such as credit card payment or bank transfer.

Our phone system has been upgraded and we’ve added a new Dublin number. There’s still some fine tuning to do but we are happy with it so far.

So, call Spiral Hosting on 01 657 1821

Our other number (048 9002 5008) is still operational as usual.