Information on the way accounts and billing are handled at the Lounge Network.
Are your prices excluding GST?
Can I customise the payment duration for my hosting account?
Can I get a refund if I haven't been using my hosting account?
Can I pay my invoice by installment?
Do you have an Automatic Payment Form I can download?
How do I cancel my hosting account?
How do I make a payment into your bank account from overseas?
How do I pay my Web Hosting account?
I have changed my bank, and I need to re setup my Automatic Payments?
I have let my domain expire, why am I still being charged for web hosting?
My company has changed ownership, what do I need to do?
My web designer wants me to switch to their hosting services, should I?
What are your Bank Account details?
What happens if I get behind in my payments?
What happens if my account has been suspended for non-payment?
What is the difference between Account 'Suspension', and 'Termination'?
Why haven't I been receiving monthly invoices for website hosting?
Are your prices excluding GST?
Yes, all our prices exclude GST. Most of our customers are GST registered, so it makes sense to show our prices excluding GST. Therefore you will need to add GST to any price.
Can I customise the payment duration for my hosting account?
Yes you can, although it depends upon the hosting account you have signed up for. Many of our hosting plans can be paid either monthly, quarterly, half yearly, or annually.
Some of our low cost plans are only payable annually.
Can I get a refund if I haven't been using my hosting account?
When we setup hosting accounts, we allocate an amount of diskspace and resources on the server especially for that particular hosting account. Therefore it makes no difference to our costs, whether the hosting account is being used or not, as we are still paying for that hosting account from our upstream suppliers. Therefore we don't provide refunds if your hosting account isn't being used.
Please note that it is the clients sole responsibility to inform us if you would like to cancel your hosting account, as per our Terms of Service. If you don't inform us, you will continue to be billed for the hosting account.
Can I pay my invoice by installment?
We don't allow payments by installment. Full payment of the invoice must be paid.
Do you have an Automatic Payment Form I can download?
Yes we do, and it can be downloaded via the link below. Please note that you DON'T need this form to setup automatic payments, as you can also get a similar form from your bank, or can be done via online banking, however this form may make it a little easier for you.
For an Adobe Acrobat version of the form, click here.
How do I cancel my hosting account?
To cancel your hosting account, clients are required to fill in our ´Hosting Account Cancellation Form´, which can be found by clicking here.
Hosting accounts are not cancelled automatically at the end of a billing cycle or domain registration period, as website hosting is an ongoing service contract of an undefined length. Therefore you will continue to be billed for your website hosting if you don´t cancel it.
We need to receive your cancellation request, at least 10 days before the end of your current billing cycle, otherwise you will be charged for the next months hosting. For your reference, our billing cycle starts on the 1st day of the calendar month, and ends on the last day of the calendar month, and is paid for in advance. Please note that we don´t provide pro rata refunds, for any unused month/s or part month/s of hosting.
Please note that we are unable to accept cancellations by email, due to security and due to email not being 100% reliable. Also we require you to agree to the terms on the cancellation form so you fully understand the ramifications of what occurs when a hosting account is deleted, including the deleting of all your data and DNS settings from our network. Therefore any cancellation request must be made via our cancellation form.
How do I make a payment into your bank account from overseas?
We can accept payment by credit card. However clients will be charged an additional fee for this.
Clients can also make payment by direct bank transfer into our bank account. When making a deposit into our New Zealand bank account from an overseas bank, you will need the following bank details:
Account Name: Design Lounge Ltd.
Bank Account No: 06 0501 0900613 00
Bank: ANZ Bank New Zealand Limited
Bank Address : 170-186 Featherston Street, Wellington
Bank Swift code: ANZBNZ22
Bank IBAN No.: 060501
Reference: Your websites URL
You will not usually need an IBAN number.
There will also be a international bank processing fee that you will need to add onto your amount. This will usually be NZ$25, but it may vary depending on your location. Banks may have also changed their fees since this page was published. Please check with us first.
You will need to make sure that your payment is made in New Zealand Dollars (NZ$).
IMPORTANT: Please email us before you make any international transfer into our account to confirm that you are depositing the correct amount, and to confirm the international bank processing fee.
How do I pay my Web Hosting account?
The easiest and preferred way to pay your hosting account, is to setup monthly automatic payments. When you join us via our hosting website, we will send you our account details allowing you to set this up.
However you can also pay by cheque but we require that payments are made quarterly instead of monthly, with three months payment in advance. Please make your cheques out to Design Lounge Ltd. Please note that there is a time delay with sending cheques through the mail, so it could be up to a week before your account is processed.
Important: Our billing cycle begins on the first of the month, and finishes at the end of the month. Therefore if you join within a specific billing cycle, a pro-rata (percentage of the month) payment is required, plus the monthly fee for the next whole month. Confused? Don't worry, we will work all this out for you.
To pay one off fees such as domain name registration, you can either send us a cheque, or direct credit the amount into our bank account, and send us a brief email to inform us that you done this.
If you have any billing related queries, please contact us via our email form.
Please note: If you make a payment into our bank account with no reference identifying that the amount came from you, we will not be able to credit the amount to your account, until you inform us of the deposit. Please always make sure that ALL direct credits and deposits include a reference (your domain name), to allow us to match the amount with your account. We are not responsible for suspended or cancelled hosting accounts, when we are not able to match your payment with your hosting account, and no refunds will be provided if no reference is used with your payment.
Bank Account and Payment details can be found on this page by clicking here.
Please be sure to contact us to let us know that you have made payment.
I have changed my bank, and I need to re setup my Automatic Payments?
All you need to do is setup automatic payments with your new bank, for the amount you were previously paying with your old bank. Automatic payments should be made on the first of the month, for the month in advance that you are paying for. eg If you are paying for Aprils hosting, then that Automatic payment should be made on the 1st of April or a few days prior to this. If you need to find out our bank details, they can be found at www.web.loungenetwork.co.nz/payment.php . Please use your domain name (eg yourdomain.co.nz) as the reference with your payment.
I have let my domain expire, why am I still being charged for web hosting?
Domain Name Registration and Web Site Hosting (including Email and DNS hosting) are two separate and isolated services that we provide. Therefore if you let you domain name expire, your web hosting account will remain active and you will continue to be billed for it, until you contact us to cancel your web hosting account.
Some reasons why we don’t automatically cancel hosting accounts when the domain expires are:
- Many hosting accounts use multiple domain names.
- Hosting accounts can also be used without a domain name, using the servers domain name.
- Sometimes clients forget to renew their domain, or leave it to the last minute, and need to renew it after it has expired (after they have discovered their website isn't working without their domain).
- There is also no way for us to know what domains have expired and when, as domain email expiration notices are automatically sent only to the client, and many clients also register their domains with other domain providers.
Therefore hosting accounts cannot be automatically cancelled when a domain name expires otherwise it will permanently delete all the data in including email from the server, without the clients permission to delete this data.
Hosting clients who don't require their web hosting account anymore, are therefore required to fill in the following form, www.web.loungenetwork.co.nz/hostingcancellation.php
Filling in this form is also a condition of our terms of service when canceling an account.
After you have filled in the cancellation form, please make sure that you cancel any automatic payments that you may have setup with your bank. Automatic payments must be cancelled by the client.
My company has changed ownership, what do I need to do?
If you sell your business or website, it is taken over by another company, or your company changes it's name, there are number of things that you as the client, are required to do.
For your web hosting account/s, you are required to fill in the following online form web.loungenetwork.co.nz/cod.php . This is a change of ownership form for your website hosting account. If there is anything else we should know, please list it on that form. Please note that if payment for the account is not up to date, the original owner is responsible for arranging payment to us. The old owner also must provide the full login details of the hosting account to the new owner.
For your domain name/s, if the registered domain registrant of the domain needs changing with the domain registry, you are required to download and fill in the following 'Change of Domain Registrant' form at web.loungenetwork.co.nz/ChangeofRegistrantLoungeNetwork.pdf . For example, this form must be filled in if your Company Name changes, or if another company takes over the ownership of the company. This form must then be scanned in and emailed to us (email address on our contact page), along with the administration fee, and any other documentation we need. Please note that all the contact and ownership details associated with the domain name must always be kept up to date at all times by the client, and is a legal requirement of having a domain name. You don't need to fill in the 'Change of Domain Registrant' form, if the registered domain registrant doesn't need changing. eg The company name associated with the domain name remains the same. Instead you can update the address and phone details yourself, from inside the self service Domain Manager, at www.domains.loungenetwork.co.nz. You can find out the domain registrant details of your domain, by using our 'Whois Lookup' tool, at www.loungenetwork.co.nz/whoisnz/
The domain owner must also provide login details for the domain to the new owner.
We require all correspondence regarding ownership changes, in writing for auditing purposes. Also as we deal with multiple providers, we need this information in writing, so each provider has got a copy of the correspondence, should they need it.
My web designer wants me to switch to their hosting services, should I?
Clients should be wary of web designers that require you to switch your web hosting to their own servers, and you need to ask them why they have this requirement. As our web hosting is compatible with almost all types of websites, including both linux and windows software languages, there is usually no reason why our hosting services can't continue to be used with any web designer of your choice.
We also usually recommend that clients host their website independently of their web designer. This is mainly because many web designers not having the support resources and experience to support their clients for hosting and email related issues. Also if your web designer ever goes out of business or moves on, this could mean your website also disappears without warning. We have seen this happen in the past, and often when that happens, the website is lost forever! We have seen this happen before, and usually there is no option but for them to have their website rebuilt from scratch.
There is far less of a risk of this happening when using an independent hosting provider, as two different independent companies would have copies of your website files. So even if your web designer did disappear, we would still have your website files on our servers. Also often web designers buy cheap inferior reseller web hosting services, where your website could end up being on a single server with thousands, if not tens of thousands of other websites, negatively affecting it's performance and speed. They also may not have the features we offer. For example we provide all our clients with a full featured hosting control panel, as well as POP, IMAP,SMTP & Webmail for email. Business websites should always be hosted on Premium Quality hosting, such as the premium hosting plans we offer.
Some web designers use proprietary CMS content management systems which they don't allow to be hosted on other companies servers. People should be wary of using these types of web designers, as it means that you don't own the backend of the website, meaning that you are effectively leasing the website. So if you do need to move it to another provider in the future, it will usually mean rebuilding the entire website again with the new provider. We recommend asking your web designer to design your website on an opensource CMS. Our hosting supports mosts CMS including most open source ones, and open source CMS's can usually be easily moved between different hosting providers, without rebuilding the website.
We regard our Premium Quality Web Hosting services, as being some of the best in the New Zealand hosting industry. Our premium hosting plans can offer superior reliability, stability and performance over most other provider. We have also been providing Premium Quality Web Hosting to the NZ market since 2001, making us one of NZ's longest serving hosting providers.
If you do still want to move your web hosting elsewhere, we do require clients fill in our hosting cancellation form. Information can be found here.
What are your Bank Account details?
Bank Account and Payment details can be found on this page by clicking here.
Please be sure to contact us to let us know that you have made payment.
What happens if I get behind in my payments?
As long as you let us know that you may have difficulty paying your account, we will try to work out the best method of repayment for you.
However if you don't let us know, and your account remains unpaid, we will suspend your account after 14 days of non-payment. After 21 days of non-payment we reserve the right to delete your website and all data from our servers. If we still do not receive payment we may be forced to recover debts through the use of a third party, and all additional costs will be added to your account. However we will send you plenty of warning before we are forced to this.
Please let us know if you have difficulty paying your account, as we don't like deleting peoples websites :)
What happens if my account has been suspended for non-payment?
Your hosting account will be suspended if payment isn't received by the due date. Full details are available in our Terms and Conditions.
You will know if your account has been suspended as you won't be able to receive email, and your website address will display a 'suspended' page. You also won't be able to connect to to your Hosting Control Panel, or via FTP. Please email us immediately if you find that your website has been suspended, so we can arrange the best payment method. If payment is still not received, the account and all data stored, including websites, databases, email, etc will be deleted and won't be able to be retrieved. A unsuspension fee will also apply for unsuspension of a hosting account, or if you want the hosting account setup again as a new account.
What is the difference between Account 'Suspension', and 'Termination'?
Account Suspension:
A hosting account will enter temporary suspension mode when an issue occurs with a hosting account. Suspension may occur when you are over your allocated storage or bandwidth limits for your account, or you are breaching one or more of our terms of service. For example, you haven’t made payment by the due date, the account may enter suspension mode, and then once it has been paid, the account will be unsuspended and fully operational again.
When a hosting account is put into temporary suspend mode, most services associated with that account will cease operating as they normally would. This means that website and email access to the server will temporarily cease working until the issue that is resolved. Once the issue has been resolved, the account will be unsuspended. As suspended hosting accounts are still using server resources, (eg. hosted website and email files are still using server storage space) all suspended hosting accounts continue to be charged as normal while they are in this temporary suspension status.
Account Termination:
A hosting account contract will be terminated when either party (either us or the client) terminates the hosting contract. If Hosting clients no longer require their hosting account, they are required to fill in our hosting cancellation form, in order to terminate the hosting contract from their end. www.web.loungenetwork.co.nz/hostingcancellation.php
Hosting account termination is permanent, and once it takes place all files, resources and settings (including website files, emails, database files, domain settings etc) will be permanently deleted from the servers. Once deleted a hosting account cannot be restored. Although we can reset up a blank new hosting account, there will be a charge for this service.
The only way to stop being billed for your hosting account, is to terminate the web hosting contract by following our cancellation process at www.web.loungenetwork.co.nz/hostingcancellation.php . Any charges you have incurred up until the scheduled date of cancellation / termination will need to be paid.
Our Process:
Our normal process is to first suspend a hosting account if there is an issue with it, and the client will be contacted when this occurs. For example if a client fails to make payment on time. Exceeding your diskspace or traffic allocation may result in the suspension occurring automatically by the server, and the client may or may not receive a warning depending on how their notifications are setup, or how quickly the resources are used up. However clients can monitor their usage from inside their control panel.
In most cases the account will be unsuspended once the issue has been resolved, e.g. paying the account, or purchasing more server resources for your account, or resolving any issue with the account. However if the issue is not resolved, and the account remains in suspend mode, after a period of time we may then write to the customer, to say that we will now be terminating their account. Any charges you have incurred up until the scheduled date of cancellation / termination will need to be paid.
In extreme cases, we may write to the client to terminate the hosting account immediately. This will occur if their hosting account is causing problems for other clients on the server, they are abusing the network, we are ceasing to provide a particular service, or for some other unforeseen reason. No refund of any pro rata hosting fees will be made if this occurs, unless we are unable to provide a service for some reason
Why haven't I been receiving monthly invoices for website hosting?
Whether you will receive a monthly invoice, depends on the payment term you signed up to. If you signed up to pay monthly, then the first invoice we sent you will be a recurring monthly invoice. This recurring monthly invoice shows the amount you are paying per month for tax purposes. We don't send any further hosting invoices unless the amount you pay changes. Please note however that for amounts under $50, we are not required to provide any invoice. If your payment interval is for multiple months in advance, then you will receive an invoice approximately 2-4 weeks before it is due to be paid.