Updated Sept 2010. Yes, RackVM is in deadpool. Servers died by end of August and the website no longer resolves by early September. FAIL.
Ben from RackVM sent me another awesome offer for the LowEndBox readers yesterday. Similar to their previous offer but requires yearly pre-payment. For £20/Year (~USD$31.28, or ~USD$2.68/Month) you can buy the following OpenVZ VPS package using this ordering link and promo code LEB-YEARLY2.
- 512MB guaranteed/1024MB burstable memory
- 30GB storage
- 300GB/month data transfer
- OpenVZ/SolusVM
That’s right — 512MB OpenVZ VPS for less than 3 bucks a month, if you are looking for a VPS in France. Do read our previous threads on RackVM. There are mixed-but-mostly-good reviews on this company.
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The Founder at LowEndBox
The original owner of LowEndBox known as LowEndAdmin or LEA for short founded LowEndBox in 2008 and created the concept of hosting applications on low resource Low End Boxes. After creating the roots of the community that we know today, LEA stepped aside and allowed others to carry the torch forward.
Latest posts by LEA (see all)
- 5 Reasons Why You Want a Low End Box - May 26, 2021
- Dead Pool January 2012 - February 2, 2012
- exit(0); - January 19, 2012
erm, as this offer is in France, you might want to change the title accordingly.
Argh. Thanks for noticing. Fixed it now.
Seem like this is not a recurring offer. But it’s worth for a try.
very nice looking site, I like the colors
Please post an example ip, testfile.
@Dean — they are hosted in OVH which you should be able to find out what the test IPs are.
@LEA Thanks for info. =]
These guys seem to be doing good.
@RackVM: Please come back with the previous offer.
Very happy with my UK based VPS from these guys!
OVH has ipv6 active in their datacenter…do you also have it on these VPSes from RackVM?
Hi No I am afraid we haven’t implemented ipv6 at the moment. The offer is now recurring :)
If it’s recuring, then why do I get a recurring fee of 20 instead of 18?
It shows:
Subtotal: £34.42GBP
16.00 Recurring Discount: £16.00GBP
Total Due Today: £18.42GBP
Total Recurring: £20.00GBP Annually
Can you explain the 16 (while 50% of 36 is 18) and why the recurring is 20 instead of 18?
Never mind my last remark …. misread the offer….thought it was 50% off, while it 20/year…my mistake….
16 minutes between order and setup…nice…
Also great pings to others hosts in Europe!
@Dirk I think they have pro-rota billing, meaning your paying for the “rest of the year” or something.
@Daniel: it’s indeed pro-rata billing. I misread that the offer was 50%, while it was 20/year …so the amounts were correct.
@Ben: thanks for making it recurring
About the ipv6 addressing, is that something that you plan on adding (shortly)?
Last time I took on in uk128 and one in France(384) with earlier offer from Rackvm. My trace showed thru. OVH’s branch of Kimsufi. Anyway it is good but this offer has more space and ram :( as well as good price. I paid $27.68USD/year for 384/25g/250g. :(
only 5dolloar more and I could have bigger ram. Can I be able to switch it:)
@Ben I just kidding about switching, I am happy with what I have:).
Hi
Yes we will add ipv6 soon but I belive SolusVM doesn’t support it in its IP pools.
@Ben: Correct SolusVM isn’t supporting it yet, however that shouldn’t stop you from offering them. Your “collegues” @BuyVM for example offer ipv6 addresses (16) AND use SolusVM too.
Test ip and big file to test download speeds in from your french data centre please.
Hi
Please try http://178.32.50.26/100mb.test
vpn allowed?
Hi
Yes VPN is allowed.
Just placed my order. Thanks for the offer.
What about payment with paypal?
Hi
We have opened this offer to UK also, however there is only currently 10 placements. Order link is. https://secure.rackvm.com/cart.php?a=add&pid=76
Is the offer only available to french people or it just means that the servers are located in France, so I can buy that VPS offer from Spain?
Kind,
Ivan
Why not accept Paypal?
Does RackVM allow IRC?
They do not, atleast not on UK servers. Hopefully they’ll change this policy in future. IRC really isn’t that “bad” :)
I’d srtongly suggest SSL for its control panel.
I have removed the comments between Ben @ RackVM and Daniel. Please move the communication between yourselves.
I’ve wget from pingvps and the result’s below:
Please anybody, Is’t good result? and what’s the proper method for testing?
It’s over now
I am testing RackVM for 30 days, ad I must say that they are slow on suport tickets, above 24 hours to reply, also i had many problems with them like, not working console access, my vps was offline last 3 days, all in all I do not recommend them, slow support and buggy servers.
“Hello
Apologies for the delay all nodes are up and working fully with uptimes of over 30 days.
Please let us know if you are still having issues with your server as from what I can see all servers are working.
I would recommend a rebuild should you server be offline and that there is an issue with your vps.
We provide an unmanaged service which solely includes Level 1 support.
Unmanged services cover network and power.
We full appreciate that some ”
”
Hi
Sorry for the delay please could you try now for me as I have fixedthe console.”
As expected, today they forbid access to my PAYED vps! You can see what kind of people I was dealing with. Dont take chances with them if you have real hosting business.
Same for me….my VPS does not work anymore!
@Goran, @Theduke
I’m having the same problem. VPS is down and not rebootable from SolusVM. I’ve contacted their support but no responds from them.
2 more proofs for my experience with them. My advice to the administrator of Lowendbox, please remove rackVM from the list, they don`t deserve to be mentioned here.
No responses via ticket.
No response via mail.
VPS still down…
fail.
I have the same problems. Since yesterday, my VPS’s is down and RackVM no response to ticket. This is a very incompetent.
I’ve had no response either after all the problems I had last week it’s been down since friday and it can’t be booted in the management console
It’s really frustating…NO RESPONSE and VPS DOWN!!!
If I were the owner of this site I will not host any kind of rackvm offer!
Hey I am the owner of this site, and I do post most offers when I come across them. At this end of market (price wise) there is always a risk — you do get what you paid for, which is just common sense.
Ben has been active here previously, and with a node offline it does seem a bit strange. I am not writing them off yet as I still have a VPS with them and it is still online. We’ll see in the next couple of days.
My VPS is also online since 22 days now
I have 3 VPSes with them. 2 in the UK, with an uptime of 23 and 25 days (which are the same number of days that I have the VPS :-)) The one in France was up until yesterday. Today it’s down.
A couple of weeks ago Ben was always quick in answering tickets. Last week I opened a ticket (to get extra info) that took several days to get a response. The 2 tickets I opened today (opened about 8 hours ago) are “silent”, although one is tagged as being urgents as its about a down vps.
My VPS is now up with an uptime of something like 8 hours. So it was down and I know it has been down since last friday. I’ve had this VPS for 3 months and until the past week it’s been fine (minutes of downtime at most and rectified very quickly).
However no response on my high priority ticket (VPS Downtime) even now and that was also posted on friday.
I have 2 VPS UK.
20:25:57 up 28 days, 18:35, 5 users, load average: 0.00, 0.05, 0.03
My openvz one has been online since it was provisioned with no network downtime, however my xen one seems to keep having issues, atm the control panel for xen and openvz is down along with my xen vps, I’ll keep you posted.
Out of interest, can people post the nodes they’ve had problems with.
I think Ben is arrogant, an he don’t stand criticism of his cuspomers. I didnt get what I was paying for, he banned me because of my criticism, 3 days before my contract with him was expired. I intentionally do that just to see if he was professional, I will open thread about this also in the webhostingtalk.com
Don`t use rackVM.com, you will only be sorry after.
I think it’s about time for Ben to address some of these issues. The accusation that he closed a paying customer’s account before the due date without refund, because the customer criticised the company, is a serious one.
Hello,
Idem for me, my VPS in France Datacenter (OVH) is down since 39 hours now …
No response on any support/sales tickets.
I think I can understand 1 or 2 hours downtime from time to time because I pay low price, but I dont understand so long downtime.
Mykeul
My advise, never put critical websites in a low end VPS. I just use this VPS for my dev/test purpose only.
FYI, I’m in OVH node, France.
Would be nice if we had an update. I have a ticket open since mid-day on 30th Aug. Still no response, but more importantly, no update on the ‘Announcements’ page http://secure.rackvm.com/announcements.php or ‘Server Status’ http://secure.rackvm.com/serverstatus.php or even ‘Network Issues’ https://secure.rackvm.com/networkissues.php
My IP’s are responding to ping requests though (average 56ms), but the management console is no longer working now either http://openvz.rackvmcontrol.com/
Aubs
My UK vps is still offline, ticket opened 17:14 yesterday. Now 3:31am in the morning and still no response, the control panels are still not responding. My vps 2 is still online however.
My VPS is not responding at the moment, but come on guys lets give them a fair shot at this, if they have some major issues then it might take time to fix them.
If its not a huge company then fixing issues may take longer I checked mine yesterday (31-AUG-10) and it was not allowing me in via the control panel, so I will wait till Friday, I have raised a ticket and hopefully it will get a response.
I understand the position of not being ale to access the server but there are some things you can have an impact on and some you cant, lets see what happens. I am on node 3 by the way
Dorian
@Dorian
Yes but customers should be informed whats heppening instead of ignored. Do you not agree?
@Daniel, yes I fully agree with that,but as its probably a small company, the guy who owns it might not even be aware of issues especially if he has employed someone else to deal with the support side of things.
The guy who owns it could be on holiday or something might have happened to him, the point I was trying to make is that with big companies who have lots of staff, things can get sorted out faster, for smaller companies with few or no staff things can take longer.
If it was a big company and I had paid a premium price I would be angry.
Dorian
I’ve been using one of the more expensive Xen packages with RackVM for about 2 months now. It started out ok but recently my server has been going down for 24+ hours straight and on more than one occasion. This is absolutely not acceptable, even for a low end host. I advise anyone to avoid this company.
It being a small company doesn’t mean they can’t communicate with their customers especially when they have the facility to do so in a generic way on their website.
@ RS Of course, you are correct in that statement, but if its a 1 man operation with maybe 1 member of staff anything could happen beyond their control.
I am going to give it till the end of the week then start chasing.
Dorian
1 man operation or not, there is something that isn’t very clear in all of this.
No reply to tickets about those VPS issues.
Fake phonenumber in the whois of the RackVM.COM domain.
Several people on WHT mention strange issues with their VPS, like suddenly pointing to other providers, or other software being installed
@Dirk If thats the case then that opens up other issues
@Goran I am not sure what your story is but most providers will ask you to stop abusing first and then ultimately banning you from their support system for x days etc. I was once angry with Godaddy’s support and they did the same thing to me.
I am on their XEN PV package, its a special 6 pounds/6mo package and it has been running smoothly. My NAGIOS didn’t complained even for a nano second ever since I bought this XEN PV. Uptime 17 days. I cant remember correctly but I think I was on UK01 or UK02 node, cant access SolusVM hence cannot confirm at this stage
I have to say it’s unsual that a response hasn’t been made in over 21 hours of my VPS going offline, it’s really out of character since Ben usually answers my tickets same day. My OpenVZ VPS is still going strong but I can’t say what node it is because of the obvious control panel downtime, lets hope they sort this soon.
Hi,
I have 3 VPS with RackVM, two in France (which have been down now for over 48 hours) and one in the UK which is still up, so it looks like a problem with their French data centre (which they don’t own, so might not have any control over). However, I raised an urgent support ticket 2 days ago about this problem and have heard nothing at all.
A further development today is that I can no longer access the RackVM control panels for my servers, as website seem to be down. Fortunately, one of the servers that is down is on a monthly contract, but the other one is my main VPS and is only 1 month into a yearly contract.
Hopefully, the guys and RackVM will get this sorted soon, or at least give us some idea about what the problem is.
I suggest you all switch host. This idiot is either going to continue having 24 hour blackouts or just decide to throw in the towel one day, wipe his servers and not bother to tell anyone. This is the worst hosting experience I’ve had in a long time – probably ever.
My UK based VPS has also been down for nearly 2 days now so it’s not just the French servers.
Maybe someone needs to contact the upstream? My UK VPS has VooServers as the owner of the IP address. Maybe upstream provider can give us some status on those servers.
Seems like there are people on WHT having problems with their dedicated servers as well.
And no response from them yet.
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?p=6988106#post6988106
2 cents – unpaid servers are shutting down, if you still have access to your server like uk8 BACK UP IMMEDIATELY!
@tom Are you saying that they haven’t paid for the servers and they are being shutdown in the datacenter? Please explain what you’re on about.
My 2 cents guess, as you can see servers are going down every few days and all that gone down never went back up.
My IP appears to belong to entanet who offer collocation and by what Ben has told me before all their severs are collocated, I’ll try to contact them.
Same problem here. Got the UK offer a week ago and the VPS has been down for the last three days, and no response to tickets whatsoever. For 20 quid a year i’m not expecting 99.9% uptime, but this is pretty much unacceptable.
@LowEndAdmin is your VooServers vps still online? My vps that is in that datacenter is still working but the one in Entanet is not and I presume that’s there other location.
Ok, confirmation from VooServers, they have not suspended any Servers there so I believe if your IP belongs to them you shouldn’t be experiencing any issues with your VPS. However Entanet (haven’t got hold of them yet) must have either an issue with their datacenter or the agreement between them and RackVM.
@NoName
I doubt all of there servers are colo. I am 99% sure the france vps is on a kimsufi server.
@Daniel
Ok, but I think the UK servers are collo but obviously we can’t believe everything we’re told.
From what I’ve gathered so far, assuming it’s correct, RackVM would appear to be running on this service: http://www.vooservers.com/kent-colocation/. What people are paying would barely cover the cost of bandwidth so NoName may well be correct about the servers dropping one by one. I wonder how much Ben has cashed in for on this little stunt.
Hosting really should become a regulated activity. There are way too many a-holes like Ben, not too mention cheating Indians and 12 year old resellers. The really annoying thing is that even when his current business dies from the reputation it’s getting here – he can still very easily set up a new one and do it all over again.
Lol I’ve just noticed the RackVM website says “Dedicated 24/7 Support Staff”. What a huge joke that is. How does a one man band stay awake 24/7?
@NoName — Yes mine is with VooServers and currently 31 days of uptime.
Looking at my IP address tracking of RackVM.com
– 3 May 2010 — Giga-Hosting in Germany
– 11 May 2010 — VooServers in UK
– 12 May 2010 — Giga-Hosting in Germany
– 24 May 2010 — Star-Hosting e.K. in Germany
– 25 May 2010 — Giga-Hosting in Germany
– 18 June 2010 — Entanet in UK
– 22 July 2010 — VooServers in UK
Is it common for web hosting companies to move its web sites around?
Odd to move from Giga to Voo to Giga to another company to Giga to another company then back to Voo.
Are you seeing the results of some weird load balancing or something? Are all the Giga IPs the same? Likewise with the Voo ones?
@Gary — all the Giga-Hosting’s IPs are the same. It has already been repurposed for a web hosting company in Brazil. The current IP @ Voo is different from the one from May though.
@LEA – Brutal :(
There has been a lot of concerned users on WHT wondering what’s going on, as well as a few people asking me to bring BuyVM to Europe =P
Francisco
Thats 2 companies failed this month, First diverse web and now rackvm. i might send Ben a email to see if hes interested in selling :)
Is there any confirmation that more gear is going offline? last I read was only UK2 & “UK3” were offline.
Francisco
http://openvz.rackvmcontrol.com/
http://xen.rackvmcontrol.com/
are both down here.
@Daniel — both at Entanet. I guess we have to wait for them to confirm whether they have indeed turned off Ben’s servers.
I have to go work today, so haven’t got time to contact Entanet so if someone else could try getting hold of them by phone, they won’t be able to give much information away because of data protection but they might be able to tell you if they have suspended any servers or not. And @LowEndAdmin then I guess my theory of the VPS’s hosted on the Entanet side being down would be correct, thats the 188.39.*.* branch. And with their Control panels both being located there it seems there is an issue there. Also the price of the collo at VooServers is indeed a lot more than is covered by the price quoted here, unless of course he was putting 80+ people on one box.
Mmmm… :(
RackVM admin could have moved the control panels to another host: if He didn’t do anything until now I suppose it’s not a temporary problem.
He could have also informed his customers through his Twitter account and in the Announces section of his website, but now seems really disappeared…
If what is said on http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=973507&page=2 by olie122333 then they are answering support tickets. Maybe just those that are not about problems :-(
This guy is a full blown prick. He’s just a cheat and a fraud.
If the master is down, they won’t be able to easily remake it unless they pulled backups. I dunno, it sounds like bad news all around.
Francisco
I’m on UK02 and it’s been up since late on Tuesday. Though it’s not in the 188. range (although it used to be) I’ve had my VPS moved 4 times.
@RS – “moved”? Like IP swaped or just migrated to different nodes?
Francisco
My IP has changed four times in the the 2 – 3 months I’ve had the VPS. At first it was because they said they were changing from Xen to OpenVZ, then it was because I an eth failed so moved me to another node, then that node appeared to fail (they didn’t actually say it had) and I was moved from UK04 to UK02
Each time I was moved my IP address was changed. The previous IP to the one I have now was a 188. one
It sounds like you got moved around DC’s as well, what a mess :(
Francisco
I’m in the 188 range too. Raised a support ticket yesterday but no answer as of yet.
My domain points to one of my RackVM IP’s which is in France just gave me this response, after I left it trying to load. It’s taken a long time, but is this a good sign? It knows at least I was using Ubuntu …
Bad Request
Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.
Apache/2.2.14 (Ubuntu) Server at myDomain.co.uk Port 80
I do have the some problem with my VPS.
My server stopped working Monday evening (same IP class, 188.x.x.x).
Now I don’t think this is temporary.
I have raised a ticket for a refund :(
Regards,
/Sorin
My IP is in the 178.33.*.* range. Still shows as
Hostname: 178.33.*.*
ISP: Ovh Systems
Organization: RackVM Providing low cost vps servers.
using http://whatismyipaddress.com/ip/178.33.*.*
Yet another “me too” comment…
I have two rackvm VPSes. The one on 188.39.22.* has been down for a day and a half; the second one on 91.216.93.* is running fine (although I’ve now deleted any personal stuff). No answer to support tickets.
On a more positive note, at least it’s given me motivation to automate my deployment process….
A lot of companies are willing to arrange a month (or more) trial service these days due to fierce competition. Has it occurred to anyone that this guy has just been moving his customers around every time his trial expires?
This little venture of his has probably outgrown his ability to upkeep it and he’s just decided to cash in and disappear. I guess the only reason why the main domain is still up would be to catch a few extra customers who haven’t bothered to read any reviews.
There goes my VPS too (XEN PV) on UK01/02 node (cant remember)
***** Nagios *****
Notification Type: PROBLEM
Host: UK
State: DOWN
Address: 194.0.252.125
Info: CRITICAL – Host Unreachable (194.0.252.125)
Date/Time: Thu Sept 2 18:07:06 PKT 2010
Well mine is down again now too, and so is rackvm.com! Looks like the whole thing has gone bump.
Vooservers confirmed that the server, on which my VPS was, is now DOWN
MattP says:
Yes, the server is down.
LEB dead pool here we come!! lol
Mine too (91.216.93.*) went down hours ago.
How long should I wait before filing a Paypal dispute?
2 VPS down here!!! refund? how?
@Bart
Paypal wont help you. They usualy help scammers….
I paid them using Google Checkout. How to dispute? Any idea?
I only ever saw payment with Nochex or maybe google. Don’t remember paypal? … I’ve already raised a query with Nochex. Will raise one with my credit card if they don’t play ball.
They did accept paypal.
Recently, RackVM have incurred numerous problems with one of our payment gateways (PayPal).
While we discuss the above issues with PayPal, We ask existing clients to move to another one of our payment gateways. We have now enabled Google Checkout as a payment method which should enable the vast majority of our clients to make their payments with minimal fuss. Furthermore, clients who pay via MoneyBookers need not worry as we will continue to offer this option.
We are continuing to work closely with PayPal to resolve our current issues and hope to have this rectified as soon as we can.
We would like to apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.
Way to have money back with google checkout?
My 91.212.* RackVM vps on UK00 just went down an hour ago and hasn’t come back up. Well, I paid $8.56 (for a year) and got a bit over a month of service.
Also mine (91.216.93.*) VPS is down!
:( :(
I used nochex too, but can’t submit a support ticket – just get a 403 error. I think I’m going to try my bank. They’re usually pretty good with things like this.
“Vooservers confirmed that the server, on which my VPS was, is now DOWN”
Did they say why? Lack of payment I assume??
@Rob: Take a look at http://esupport.nochex.com/ – This morning, it has yesterdays date on so my guess is maintenance work over run.
@Aubs: Thanks for that, I’ll submit a ticket once they’re up and running again.
Now their DNS servers not working too.
Someone’s going to get a lawsit i guess.
@DrokDR Just curious to know what you had with them?
Did anyone notice that the invoice came incredibly early this month? It’s almost like he planned this in advance and made every effort to collect up the last bit of cash he could get.
Ben Harper – you complete and utter c*nt. You will burn in hell for sure.
Well I paid mine through paypal opening disputes now, hopefully should get over 20 quid back
I guess the address is as fake as the phone number? Well, not completely fake as the address exists, but I don;t see why a 1-2 man VPS hosting company would rent office space somewhere like that. Maybe he has some connection to the address??
registrant-street1: Venture House, Silver Court
registrant-street2: Watchmead
registrant-pcode: AL7 1TS
registrant-state: HRT
registrant-city: Welwyn Garden City
registrant-ccode: GB
registrant-phone: +44.19929049049
registrant-email:
Yes. My invoice came early too. And I paid for another month of service with them, and only got 1 day out of it…
Ben sounded like a nice guy. Just shows that “nice guys” can turn out to be complete dicks.
I kinda feel sorry for all these people, maybe if I can get enough support I could try to get a low end deal up on a cheap dedicated server, and then hopefully provide a service at £2/month, but I need to raise funds first.
I’d do it if everyone on the planet gave me £2 each. Then I would set up a million servers and give everyone in here one each.
I am such a lovely guy, please believe me, all my friends like me. blah blah blah.
Sorry, no one online can be trusted 100%. Reputation, accountability and longevity are the key. There’s too many scammers going around, sadly.
Well, guess you have to find out the hard way as so many of us did with Ben, I’ve lost £40 to this jerk.
Fortunately I only lost out by £4 and a couple of hours work (no backup). I do feel for all those who have lost more though as I was tempted to go for a £36 package.
And considering I’m only 16, I don’t have that sort of cash to just spend again, so I now have to go the hard way and tbh the only way for me to cover this cost is to start hosting my own VPS on cheap dedicated servers with like 10 people on a box. But that depends if I can find the funds.
My OpenVZ VPS on 194.0.252.x went down at 1311hrs UTC today. Thankfully I opted for the monthly payment.
Maybe if enough people make claims at Paypal, we will posibly get a partial refund. As for the service, luckily i got another vps with buyvm, so my site it still up, a shame on RackVM.
Forgot to subscribe.
@Dorian I paid for 12 months of service not 2. I had important files with them that I lost.
Prior to this happening (about 10 days prior) Rack VM sent out an email requesting people did not choose paypal as an option to pay for their VPS. They claimed they were having issues with paypal that they were looking to rectify.
Late in August the option was removed to be able to use paypal.
I strongly suspect they had issues with chargebacks or disputed payments and paypal locked their account. This could have also meant that his money was tied into paypal and was unable to make payment for the servers. This is of course guesswork however.
I received 20 invoice reminders within 1 hour , 2 days before it was due, and after I paid them, servers go down.
Ben Harper appears to be a scammish fag.
20 invoices reminders WOW!! Its a real shame this happens it makes other low end providers look bad…
@Rob Vooservers said they cannot comment on the client’s account status or the reason behind the server going down since this is condifential. I asked him just tell me is the server on which my VPS was is down? He confirmed
I talked with my lawyer. If they do not be online in 48 hours we will proceed with a lawsit against them.
A lawsuit for £20? and you dont even know his address. but good luck :)
A lawsuit for $30? Talk to paypal, talk to your credit card company. Make enough fuss and they’ll refund you. Threatening to get lawyers involved seems a bit silly.
A lawsit for my files.
And actually there were so many people which lost their files.
I’m sorry for the Ben guy or whatever his name is.
If they were still up-and-running you would see from their TOS that they are NOT responsible for backups and as such not responsible for your files at all. If those files are important then you and only you are responsible of having a back-up of them.
I agree with @Dirk, when playing with small, cheap boxes especially ones from a totally new provider, alwasy take periodic backups. I take rsync backups to two different VPSes every 6 hours to protected my data. Thats the same reason I didn’t bother to backup RackVM data when my VPS was alive since it was all taken care of in the backend.
Fighting in court over data protection is a weak lawsiut in my opinion.
Makes me wonder where all the money he’s been making has gone too.
To build a case against Ben would take time, But remember we don’t even no if his name really is Ben, He cleary moved stuff around to avoid patterns etc… Plus I paid via paypal several times and I just looked back while making disputes and noticed they changed paypal accounts, they have one called RackVM and one called RackVN Billing. I kind wish i picked up on this sooner, I could of warned people.
Yes I noticed the rackVN name in Paypal when I opened a dispute for my other VPS. It was still linked to billing@rackvm.com though
admin-c-firstname: Ben
admin-c-lastname: Harper
admin-c-street1: Venture House, Silver Court
admin-c-street2: Watchmead
admin-c-pcode: AL7 1TS
admin-c-state: HRT
admin-c-city: Welwyn Garden City
admin-c-ccode: GB
admin-c-phone: +44.19929049049
Ring that number, do you get an answer? Ask for Ben but don’t directly mention the VPS servers, first establish if that’s his real number and his real address, once you know this you can start working on whatever u plan to do
Its an invalid number. Just tried it now.
I’m not surprised, so it’s likely the address is leading to some random office building somewhere as well. Infact @LowEndAdmin Do you log IPs on this blog, if so you could have a link to finding him (depending whether he was clever enough to use a proxy) I guess contacting the ISP and trying to find out like that would be the only way.
@NOName
I doubt Bens ISP would tell LEA any info, however it is easy to tell if hes using a home or office connection.
That’s the problem, with so many data protection laws it’s very hard to track someone like Ben down, btw 91.216.93.247 is still up so There must be atleast one VooServers dedi still online.
And now it’s not!
Just had a thought, it’s quite likely that Ben had each one of these servers on for a month and then claimed on the 30 day money back guarantee
Theres a lack of transparency and reputation checking for low end vps providers.
Too many fly by night operators like Ben out to scam people.
Tempted to start a site to properly review VPS operators so this kind of situation can be avoided.
In the meantime theres not much to do but hope Paypal sides with the customer for a change…
http://www.novaloca.com/property-details/18950?search=true
That address has to be fake as well. If you alert nominet, they will make sure he puts correct details up there, otherwise they can take the domain down. (or so i’ve heard)
Just noticed…
Reverse Whois: “Ben Harper” owns about 68 other domains
Email Search: xenuk1@gmail.com is associated with about 21 domains
I wonder if any of his other domains have valid address details?
RACKVM is very very bad guy. чтоб ему гореть в аду сцукованину.
@NoName: Anon already thought of that :-/
http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/rackvm-20-gbpyear-512mb-openvz-vps/#comment-8776
@Aubs I guess he did, didn’t see it. mybad =-[
My VPS is back up and running with the same IP as it has always had.
http://rackvmcontrol.com/ is back up, but none of the other sites is up and can’t get to http://openvz.rackvmcontrol.com/ either.
$ uptime
21:20:59 up 3 days, 15:21, 2 users, load average: 0.35, 0.28, 0.23
Anyone know how I can find out which node I’m on?
@Aubs – What’s your IP? You can blank out the last digits but the first bit we can at least see what DC you’re at.
Francisco
@Francisco Dias:
Is this enough?
http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/rackvm-20-gbpyear-512mb-openvz-vps/#comment-8763
My IP is in the 178.33.*.* range. Still shows as
Hostname: 178.33.*.*
ISP: Ovh Systems
Organization: RackVM Providing low cost vps servers.
using http://whatismyipaddress.com/ip/178.33.*.*
One of my French servers just came back via SSH and claims to have been up for over 15 days (i.e. since I bought it). The IP is 178.33.8.* Other two are still down (French one 178.33.27.*, UK one 91.216.93.*). Is Ben getting things back on track? rackvm.com and openvz.rackvmcontrol.com are still down.
Mine is up now !
3 mins uptime
UK03 Node
OVH FR DTC
178.33.28.x
I guess we’ll have to wait and find out, but in all honestly, I doubt many people will still want to use the service after the events that have unfolded after the last few days. Plus there’s still the unexplained fake details etc… So I wouldn’t get your hopes up.
Yes, clearly, I am tarring my files to copy them to another VPS.
I bloqued payments on Paypal and filed a dispute about RackVM
Phil you seem to be correct. Mine wont allow ssh access, it immediately terminated the connection when you enter the password.
I can however access sites still pointing to it.
My 178.32.70.xxx VPS (that in France) is again accesible via SSH and shows an uptime of 16 days.
The 2 VPSes is have with them in the UK (91.216.93.xxx for both) are still not accesible via SSH and don’t respond to pings either)
In the recent XVPS thread there appears to be some connectivity issue with OVH in France. So maybe that was the cause? But whatever, if you see your VM coming online, grab your files and run as fast as you can :)
Although I do have Ben’s IP addresses I do not think I should disclose them here. Yes he has an UK IP address from a local broadband company.
And sorry guys I think I am partly responsible for this fail. Head stopped working when I see things too good to be true :( I also got a VPS there which I paid 6 pound for, although it has nothing but work files that I used to write the previous tutorial on Git/Trac hosting.
Not your fault LEA. People should be responsible for their own actions.
Before spending any money on anything people should really do their own research about the past and future of a provider. If they didn’t bother, they clearly weren’t that bothered about losing the money. Personally I’ve taken advantage of a couple of offers from here that I just can’t imagine are sustainable for he provider. Perhaps they’re loss leaders to build up a customer base and get themselves some reviews, or perhaps there’s a less acceptable reason for these packages being so cheap, but if any of my VPSes go down I won’t be too bothered. They’re cheap and do the trick right now.
There aren’t many providers I’d be happy to pay a year up front with…
I don’t think it’s LEAs fault at all. I only risked $8.56, and I knew there was a possibility it wouldn’t last. I have automated daily backups, so there’s no data loss for me, and I wasn’t using it for anything critical anyway. I realize that’s not the same situation for everyone, though.
From my support emails with Ben, I don’t get the feeling that this was intentional. I don’t know one way or the other but that’s just my feeling. I hope Ben is ok. If he knew things were ending, it would have been nice to at least get some kind of notice, though. Even 24 or 48 hours would have helped many people, and if I’d known for sure they were closing shop, I would have wiped my data off before it went down, and gotten DNS changed earlier.
@David
You hope ben is ok?
He is a fraud!. chances is his whois address is invalid. Phone number invalid… shall i continue? Any company that hides this information is clearly insane and should not be trading.
This is what i have to say as a competitor aswell as a rackvm customer.
@Daniel, yes I hope Ben is ok. Maybe I’m too trusting, but I’m working under the assumption that he didn’t intend for this to happen, and something unfortunate happened. If it’s largely a one man show and something happens to the one man (accident, in the hospital?), then the show may stop.
Yes you are correct david, but not in this case as he has actualy been replying to tickets he has also sacked his staff.
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showpost.php?p=6990146&postcount=63
@LEA It is not a connection problem with OVH, I live in France and I have access to a direct peering with them. The first thing I tested is the connection.
My VPS (node UK03 I think) does not show 16 days uptime, but 11 hours as of now.
Mykeul
Living in France and your ISP peering with them doesn’t matter if it’s an internal OVH routing problem. Not saying this is the case with RackVM, but that’s what XVPS attributed their hour or 2 of connection problems to.
OVH/Kimsufi is fine. i have a few boxes with them myself.
Again, internal problems wouldn’t necessarily affect every part of the datacentre. I doubt this is what’s happened to RackVM mind you, the guy just sounds like a scammer.
Hi Guys,
I’ve been in touch with Nochex and they’re going to try to get in touch with Ben. If he hasn’t replied by Monday, they’ll take further action (i.e. offer me a refund).
I’ll let you know how I get on.
And who is Nochex? And will they refund other VPS customers of Ben too?
Nochex is a method of payment like Paypal. I’d imagine that if you paid via Nochex, they’d refund you too. The more people who complain to paypal/nochex/whoever, the more chance there is of all-round refunds.
@Dirk If you paid by credit card (which was only available to UK customers), the payment was processed / arranged by Nochex – essentially you pay Nochex and they pay RackVM. This means that for UK credit card customers, Nochex is the first port of call (see your credit card statement for their number), followed by your credit card company.
They were really helpful, so we’ll see how it goes.
Not in the UK…but in Belgium.
Paid parts with PayPal and part via Google Checkout.
Disputed opened with both, paypal directly closed it as it was not above real goods. However if they receive a lot of complaints we still might get a refund via Paypal.
@Dirk, I’ve claimed on paypal many times for VPS issues, so I don’t know why some people say that it doesn’t work, I now have 2 cases open since yesterday, still open and waiting for response from Ben, if no response auto refund. Lets see ;)
@NoName: this is what I got back from Paypal, less then 1 hour after opening a claim with them:
“Our investigation into your claim is complete. As stated in our User Agreement, the claims process only applies to the shipment of goods. It does not apply to complaints about the attributes or quality of goods received. Therefore, we are unable to reverse this transaction or issue a refund. “
@Dirk
Perform a chargeback, it may piss paypal off but you will get your money back.
@Daniel: you mean via the CC company? To be 100% honest I can’t request a full charge-back as I received about 1.5 months of service on the 12 I paid for (that’s why I “only” requested a partial refund too).
Well personally i would request the full refund. As he has failed to even provider 3 months. Or find yourself a new Host that you can trust.
@Daniel: don’t want to be to greedy…will already be happy if I get something back.
I wouldn’t say it was greedy. Your time’s worth money too, and you’ve already spent more time than I’m sure you’d like to have spent trying to sort out this mess.
Remember that a lot of hosts refund you for downtime too, at a higher rate than pro rata. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a full refund, given several *days* of unexplained downtime.
That being said, with your time being worth money, you have to ask if it’s worth putting effort into chasing a refund for a few $…
@Gary: exactly, that why I just filled the claims with PayPal and Google Checkout. With some luck they will get enough requests to see that there realy is a problem and they will do something with it, else well bad luck….
Pure scam! Even their website is down now.
Hello,
Am I the only one who have a VPS up and running since yesterday ? (I had 92 hours downtime before)
I entirely migrated to another VPS hoster, but I wonder what will happen in RackVM …
Here is the link for google checkout:
https://checkout.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=claimb&ctx=contact3_report_another_order
No you’re not the only one :-)
My VPS in France is again running (SSH login is very slow but still it works).
My 2 VPSes in the UK are both still down.
how can I ask for the money to paypal?
My UK server went offline yesterday (2 sept), today it isn’t back yet.
My VPS with RackVM has had very poor to no performance for the last week. It worries me that the server running their website is down as well. On top of that, I’ve not received any replies for support tickets. I’m about to cut my losses and find another host.
@Jesse
Join the club :)
I just fill in the dispute form at Google Checkout, seem like I need to wait another 5 business days..
Dear LEB Readers,
I thought I would pop on here to try and resolve some of the questions that are being asked as there have been a number of people on our live chat and e-mailing our support desk for details or to recover their data.
First of all please note that the details we hold for RackVM will never be released to anyone unless it is through a court order due to data protection.
As far as VPS’s that are down we operate on the following range’s and the VPS’s on these range’s through RackVM will currently be offline as the servers have now been turned off. If your VPS is on another IP range then it was not hosted in our facility and you should speak to the provider who operates your IP range.
194.0.X.X
91.212.X.X
91.216.X.X
For data recovery we are currently seeking legal advice as although it may be your data our contracts are with RackVM and therefore from our legal standing at the moment the data holder is RackVM. The second issue here is data protection as we do not know who was operating each VPS so providing access to any VPS or it’s data is going to require some form of verification which we will have to work with our lawyers on to determine a suitable form.
Lastly I would just like to state that we will do everything in our power to help those people who have VPS’s offline and need to recover data etc however due to the legal complications it is not going to be an easy or a quick process.
If you have any queries please feel free to contact me directly on matt[at]vooservers.com. Please note however that our priority is supporting our own customers who have active contracts but I will ensure that I get back to you within a few hours if you e-mail me.
Best Regards,
Matt Parkinson.
Managing Director.
@Sei Kan , how do you file a dispute at Google Checkout?
@Daniel
I’m using this link:
https://checkout.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=claimb&ctx=contact3_report_another_order
@Matt
What was the point in telling LEB readers what they already know? Can you help or not its simple realy.
Daniel, no need to be rude. They’re trying to help RackVM clients when they don’t have any obligation whatsoever.
@Fuxor
I wasnt being Rude. I was simply stating a point. if you have a problem with my comment i suggest you contact LEB admin..
@Matt
Could you not switch the servers back on for a short period of time so LEB readers can get backups?
I was simply posting the official word so people knew exactly what was being said rather than speculation and to prevent people from contacting my support staff who should be dealing with our own customers who are our number one priority.
The problem we have with turning them back on is that not everyone will know they are being switched on so then we will repeatedly get requests to turn them on. We have tried this approach in the past and it just didn’t work.
Fair play to you Matt, you’re doing what you can to help out someone else’s customers. There are plenty of DCs who would just reformat the boxes and wash their hands of it. You obviously can’t say, but the chances are that RackVM have screwed you guys over a little as well, so to leave those boxes offline, still not earning their rack space, is good of you.
I agree with Gary.
Matt is doing something *very* valuable for *FREE*, keeping busy resources that He could sell to his clients, just to help people (that aren’t his clients!) that have important files in the RackVM space.
That’s very professional, the opposite of RackVM owner behavior…
@Daniel No need to jump on him. He’s trying to help the RackVM customers – something which he’s doing out of goodwill.
Just an update. Those mentioning that the French servers were back up. They appear to be down again.
okay maybe not, it appears to be unstable. was down for me for a while but back up atm.
Anyone doing refunds via paypal, just say you did not receive the item and even if its virtual it should process, aslong as the dispute is within 45 days of purchase (i think thats the time range), you can’t however say the virtual good wasn’t to standard, if you didn’t get a years of service you didn’t get the item! simple as that, so you select that and gl to you.
@NoName: they don’t process it for Virtual goods. Tried it as virtual good and service :-(
However it’s still a good idea to file the claim. If they see that there are a lot of claims they might still do the refund (even for virtual goods or services)
2 of mine still open wand waiting for response from ben, I’ve claimed many times for virtual goods, the only one that got closed was the one thats now past 45 days. And btw I’ve never lost a claim that’s within the time range.
And just woke up, checked my mail, I won both and paypal refunded me.
@NoName
Good to hear that. Hopefully Google will contact me soon as well.
Yep, I got my £5 back from Paypal too! Now it’s just the £45 I paid through Nochex…..
@NoName,
How exactly did you get PayPal to refund you? My dispute got killed immediately because it were virtual goods.
Good work PayPal. Got my £23 back :)
Now going to search for a reliable vps company.
I asked Pay Pal for a partial refund pro rata and got a full refund so am very pleased, well done Pay Pal my opinion of Pay Pal is restored
Dorian
@Pascal, i opened it as payment not received and as virtual good, and since they were both paid under 45 days a go it stayed open and then I got a refund this morning, I also think paypal are onto this guy now because I was refunded fast when usually you wait so many days for a reply from seller. So I guess his account is now frozen and they’ve refunded everyone.
Hi guys, I just get a full refund from Google Checkout.
Dear LEB Readers,
Please find below the e-mail which I have sent to users who have e-mailed me directly with the official legal stance that we have been advised to take. I am still trying to arrange release of your data which is explained below:
I have now been able to clarify everything with our lawyers but unfortunately at this time we are not able to release the data ourselves. We have been told that due to our contract and terms of service the eyes of the law would see the data on the servers as RackVM’s and allowing access to that would be a breach of data protection and confidentiality which could potentially land us in a lot of trouble. I do have plans to raise our own legal case against RackVM before the end of the week so the outcome of that may put me in contact with Ben and therefore I may be able to get written permission to release the data from him.
As I have said before however this is not going to be a quick or easy process to resolve however I am trying to ensure you can get your data back but we must address the legal aspects from our side first of all.
If you have any queries please let me know and I will be happy to help.
Best Regards,
Matt Parkinson.
@Matt Parkinson
We really appreciated your efforts, we understand it’s not your job to do this and we really really do appreciated it. Thanks
@Matt Parkinson, but didn’t Ben violate your TOS by doing illegal activities.
@Daniel, Even if our terms of service have been violated it still does not permit us to release data it purely permits us to terminate the service and pass data over to the correct authorities if it is requested for a case.
@Matt Parkinson
“I do have plans to raise our own legal case against RackVM before the end of the week”, Can I ask what’s your case going to be, just out of interest, I really hope Ben gets what he deserves.
@NoName, Unfortunately until our case has been founded and presented I cannot release much but as I have more information become available for release I will be sure to keep you up to date.
@Matt Parkinson
Ok I’ll keep checking back :)
Dear LEB Readers,
Another update for you today! We have now been able to speak to Ben and we are making arrangments for these servers to be switched back on for a few hours for data to be recovered. Data recovery will be down to the individual clients however, all we are doing is powering the servers back up and we will not be able to reset any passwords or rectify any problems with VPS’s. Once I have arranged for these to be turned back on I will make another post to let you know.
Best Regards,
Matt Parkinson.
Thanks Matt, you’re awesome!
All of the nodes have now been powered up and are online. We will keep these running for at least 4 hours.
@Matt –
Thanks for your work :) Probablly you are the most generous host on the world ;)
– even though I am not one of RackVM’s customer :)
@KLIKLI, Thank you for your kind words, it’s what makes the effort worthwhile :).
@Matt, thank you for this. I was able to login to my old vps and wipe my data off it.
@Matt
Thank you for all you’ve done, when you were talking to Ben did you find out what actually happened?
@NoName, From what Ben said RackVM wen’t bankrupt and no longer exists.
Poor business plans with these people…. Most annoying part is probably not the servers being down its not being updated from the Owner/ Was rackVM actualy a Registered business?
@Matt : Thanks for switching up the nodes. Although I am on a OVH one, I think it is necessary to thank these type of way of thinking, very generous.
Mykeul
@Daniel, I am not too sure on whether RackVM was registered or not but it’s not a limited company as it’s not on companies house. As we have the infrastructure to do so we are trying to see if we can put together some VPS solutions ourselves as we have had quite a lot of people expressing interest in us offering them alongside our dedicated servers.
@Mykeul, Thanks for your kind words especially as you are not on one of these nodes. It does mean a lot to us that people have shown their appreciation.
@Matt
Thanks, if only Ben had told us that himself ;)
@Matt Wow, thats extreme customer (and non-customer) support. I would love to be a customer for one of your VPS offerings, if you ever do that. +1 for that
Totally Brilliant!
@Asim, we now have a couple of nodes online. If you want to shoot me an e-mail (matt[at]vooservers.com) I will arrange a trial VPS free to the end of September for you.
The same offer goes for any other old RackVM customers however there is a limit on the number we can accept. We have been around since March 2005 so we won’t be disappearing a couple of months down the line :).
@Matt Parkingson: will you have ipv6 on your VPSes? How will your pricing be?
@dirk, at the moment we do not have support for IPV6 as our upstream providers do not yet support it. If you want to shoot me an e-mail I will drop you our price list as we have not posted them on our website yet as we are only making this offer to previous RackVM customers at the moment to try and help them out a little bit.
@Matt
Are you using XEN or Openvz?
@Daniel, At the moment we are using Xen PV however we have another couple of nodes being delivered next week to offer Xen HVM and also a Windows Server 2008 node for Hyper-V Windows VPS’s.
@Matt thanks, dropped you an email just now
Ive dropped a email too :)
Thanks. It may take a couple of minutes to come through the greylisting on the spam filter however I will reply as soon as it comes through :).
Me too!
Hello Mate i just drop an email :)
Mee too ;)
Thanks for the e-mails. Everyone should have had a response within a few minutes of them being sent however if you have not heard back please re-send your e-mail as there have been quite a lot.
check it out, this could be “Ben” surfaced here!
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=982144
their domain is registered July, 2010.
Well I don’t think he can really register a limited company, as I believe him to be a college kid.
@John
The address is totaly different at companies house so it probably isnt Ben
Name & Registered Office:
AKISOFT LTD
SUITE 638
CHYNOWETH HOUSE
TRURO
CORNWALL
UNITED KINGDOM
TR4 8UN
Company No. 07361026
@KLIKLI
If hes 16 or older he can Register a LTD company.
@Daniel: and the address used for the domain is something else then the one used for the LTD:
Registrant’s address:
60 Windsor Avenue
Dalton House
London
SW19 2RR
United Kingdom
The domain being registered before the collapse of RVM doesn’t mean it’s not him, but why do you think it IS him? What evidence led you to that suspicion?
Domain name:
akisoft.co.uk
Registrant:
Akisoft LTD
Registrant type:
Other UK Entity (e.g. clubs, associations, many universities)
Registrant’s address:
60 Windsor Avenue
Dalton House
London
SW19 2RR
United Kingdom
Registrar:
Webfusion Ltd t/a 123-Reg.co.uk [Tag = 123-REG]
URL: http://www.123-reg.co.uk
Relevant dates:
Registered on: 07-Jul-2010
Renewal date: 07-Jul-2012
Last updated: 24-Aug-2010
Registration status:
Registered until renewal date.
Name servers:
ns3.akisoft.co.uk 66.96.206.154
ns4.akisoft.co.uk 66.96.206.158
WHOIS lookup made at 19:12:23 18-Sep-2010
Dalton house is a virtual office – http://londonoffice.co.uk/
And the “Other UK Entity” registrant type when it’s clearly a business is against Nominet rules.
Saying he’ll donate 50% of proceeds to charity seems a bit off too. If I want to donate to charity, I will.
His registered office is a virtual office too.
http://www.scanmypost.co.uk/
Yes, I would like to see the proof that this is Ben, please. Enlighten me.
ya, trust again, and get ripped again.
Look at the pattern, can you survive with $15/yr offer? Honestly?
@john
But this doesn’t mean it’s Ben ;P
I have to say that the writing style of the akisoft.co.uk post on WHT does seem very similar to Ben’s.
Also, it truly seemed like Ben genuinely gave a shit about his customers until he realised he was going bankrupt. I think desperation led him to try one last (illegal) shot at making some cash – which was a yearly payment offer, which he never intended to deliver on.
My theory: it worked very well (I for one never got a refund) and now he’s back for more of the same. Even if I’m wrong I’m 99% sure that whoever is running that operation is out to scam people – quite simply because you cannot provide the service he’s offering for $15/year unless you’re aiming to make a huge loss.