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Dead Pool August 2010 - DiverseWeb, ErectVPS, HostCadet and More...

Damn. I think I am going to take a while writing up this post. What month was that? August? Or Hosting-company-droping-like-fly month? Here we go…

DiverseWeb DiverseWeb

Current Status: Domain not resolving.

DiverseWeb came in to scene back in May with their pre-order of 128MB VMWare virtual servers at 2.5 GBP/month. Who would pre-order a VPS package?! But they did go live in July with their ESXi — which I did not know you can resell. Anyway throughout the course its website has migrated many times (SingleHop->Wholesale Internet->VooServers UK->HostNOC), down a few times, and disappeared into the void on 30 August.

I normally won’t write off a provider that quickly as 30 August was only a few days ago. But their representative at WHT, fast_fusion, is now denying any involvement with it. FAIL!

ErectVPS ErectVPS

Current Status: Domain not resolving.

ErectVPS, an UK based business, was somehow inappropriate named, and it offered 512MB OpenVZ VPS from Joe’s Datacenter for $6.36/month back in April this year. It did not take them long to close down the shop. One of their customer received their close-shop notice in early August. And rather than removing the website on 27th as stated in the email, the domain ceased to resolve on 10 August. FAIL.

AgniHost FastRackServers

Current Status: Redirect to BigBrainHost.com

AngiHost was initially featured on LowEndBox back in June, was a reseller of Virpus and did not know about the relationship between SliceHost and Rackspace. So 3 months after it launched its VPS-reselling business, it got sold to Brian at BigBrainHost, who at the moment is still hosting all the VPS clients in Kansas City. Hopefully all clients are still in good hands.

FastRackServers FastRackServers

Current Status: Domain parked.

Fastrackservers was only featured on LowEndBox 2.5 months ago featuring a pretty generic website and 256MB OpenVZ VPS for $5.95/month in San Jose. WHOIS info of the domain gets masked on 30 August, and now the domain is parked with NameCheap. Interesting the bikers forums at the original Take2Hosting IP are still up.

FiveBean FiveBean

Current Status: Redirect to BlueMileCloud.com.

I have actually been a customer of FiveBean for 9 months, and while I was there it has a great service. Ryan was a great guy. Which is probably why BlueMileCloud bought them earlier in August. Their $6/month 128MB OpenVZ service has been quite stable, while not the cheapest on the market. So yeah, not exactly in the dead pool. BlueMileCloud is also in the low end market with their 128MB OpenVZ for $6.95/month — but with CSICO blades and EMC SAN. All the best!

GetMyVPS GetMyVPS

Current Status: Blank home page.

GetMyVPS was launched on 5 August after posting an ad on WHT. Within hours their already-plain home page turns to a blank page. It turns out selling 128MB OpenVZ VPS in BurstNet for $3.95/month attracts more fraud signups than Stewart has expected. It has been down ever since — but he did mention that he might bootstrap it again, at a different data center.

Fastest fail, but at least he did the “right thing” (rather than hooking customers on yearly plans and then disconnect the server, like some might have done).

HostCadet HostCadet

Current Status: Blank home page.

I looked at HostCadet back in May last year when they posted an offer on WHT for $5.99 Xen VPS with 128MB. Lots of content missing on their website and I just feel a bit suss about their operation. However they did manage to survive that long. Actually I have no idea that how long have they been operating, as I have only been notified when their WHOIS and IP changed on 12 August. It is now hosted on a cPanel server with a directory listing.

Lesson learned — don’t believe straight away if a host says “we are here to stay”.

Ostach Ostach

Current Status: Redirect to Vixile.com.

Ostach, an reseller of Virpus, was featured on LowEndBox in July for their $5.50 OpenVZ VPS with 384MB memory. They were GoLoad.org, moved to Ostach.net in Feb, and then in August got purchased by Vixile, another company that I did a bit of digging back in July. Well, all the best Adam for your next adventure.

Steadcom Steadcom

Current Status: Domain not resolving.

SteadCom got sold to eTecc earlier this year and eTecc has finally turn off the tap on 17 August. The domain is now not resolving. A quick Google search on eTecc+Steadcom reveals not everything is rosy, as people have bad experience with the migration. Good luck to the customers who are staying back.

AMHNetwork AMHNetwork

Current Status: Domain not resolving.

Australia based AMHNetwork was first featured here 12 months ago selling 256MB OpenVZ VPS in Germany for $6.50. It went up and down like yoyo over the last 12 months, which the VPS operation migrated to VPSSquad featuring multiple locations. On 25 August they have finally turned off server for good, and the domain is no more.

On the Dying Bed…

These are some that look pretty dead at the moment, although not “dead enough” for this month’s pool. If they don’t get resurrected in the next couple of days, we’ll see them in September’s dead pool post.

  • RackVM — what’s going on here, Ben?! Okay. My VPS with them is still working, but others who have servers in Entanet and OVH have their servers down for couple of days — mine at VooServers is dead as well as their website! Their 6/Year VPS was the most commented post here and I have no idea how many people actually bought their low end VPS from RackVM (I can imagine, many). I’ll hate to write this host off. We’ll see how it develops in the next couple of days.

  • VPS BB — Andrew! Your bargain bin host is not resolving at the moment! The webserver still works though — I can still connect to it via its old IP. Time to check whether the zones are deployed properly on your DNS…

That’s all folks. Hopefully there will be less to write about next month.

LEA
Latest posts by LEA (see all)

102 Comments

  1. id:

    one of my blog hosted at vps with rackvm (6 pounds/year) just went down few minutes ago. it’s on Vooservers. Admin, are you sure your VPS with them is still working?

    September 2, 2010 @ 1:12 pm | Reply
  2. wsarat:
    September 2, 2010 @ 1:14 pm | Reply
  3. My RACKVM is down now so is their entire website

    September 2, 2010 @ 1:18 pm | Reply
  4. Vooservers confirmed that the server, on which my VPS was, is now DOWN

    MattP says:
    Yes, the server is down.

    September 2, 2010 @ 1:20 pm | Reply
  5. kimus:

    So, the RackVM is dead? I had 2 VPS there!! Can we ask for a refound?

    September 2, 2010 @ 1:25 pm | Reply
  6. Yes you are right. RackVM @ VooServers died around 20 minutes before I published this post (which was drafted a few hours ago).

    FAIL!

    Since it’s already September I’ll remember to put them on next month.

    September 2, 2010 @ 1:39 pm | Reply
  7. C:

    RackVM websites down for me 2 so is the VPS.
    This can’t be good!

    September 2, 2010 @ 1:41 pm | Reply
  8. Gary:

    It’s crazy to see how much churn there is in the webhosting business, not just the VPS hosting sector.

    Too many kids in this business, but we also have pretty unrealistic expectations a lot of the time. For me, if I’m paying monthly then if a host dies it’s fine. I can migrate my stuff to another box in a matter of minutes, so at worst I’ve lost a few dollars. I’ve already saved more than that by using cheapo VPS providers so I’m still up.

    No way in hell I’d pay more than a month up front though. Actually that’s not true, I paid 3 months up front for my CityNet VPS, but that’s $7.50 a quarter, so barely more than a month at other providers.

    September 2, 2010 @ 2:39 pm | Reply
  9. It is indeed crazy how many companies go out of business on vps market. It is worth to mention though that there are some cheap vps hosts which were around for years with simple pricing model http://prgmr.com and SLA http://url.misza.co.uk/1v . It’s a shame that it is 150ms away from me and I didn’t find anything like that in UK yet.

    September 2, 2010 @ 3:23 pm | Reply
  10. AlexuSSS:

    RACKVM is dead. Скоты блин.

    September 2, 2010 @ 4:12 pm | Reply
  11. Kiran:

    Interesting thing is there are so many kids in hosting business. Two months back i purchased a vps from Xtremepings (seeing post on DP). I paid upfront for 3 months. Interestingly they went off within 15 days.

    I done some research got to know that admin is 13 years old. He was running the hosting without permission from parents. He also posted on facebook page ” Sorry for all who hosted with me”.

    September 2, 2010 @ 4:21 pm | Reply
  12. fuckrackvm:

    my rackvm is routed to 77.75.104.70

    September 2, 2010 @ 4:47 pm | Reply
  13. I guess that’s the name of the game when you give everything for pennies.

    September 2, 2010 @ 5:11 pm | Reply
  14. What a shame. I think everyone had high hopes of RackVM. I signed up a few days ago unaware of their technical situation (VPS systems going offline and such), and Ben is still active as he sorted my invoice out but I never got what I paid for. I still think he may be able to turn it around and get the service stable again, but with the customers out the loop it is difficult to say.

    Good luck to everyone including Ben who is involved with RackVM, be it staff or customers.

    September 2, 2010 @ 5:34 pm | Reply
  15. Not at all surprised on RackVM & DiverseWeb. It’s funny because Diversweb kept going on about how they aren’t shady and are in this for the long haul :P

    RackVM on the other hand set off red flags when I saw their latest offering. Whenever I see offers like that, it screams ‘We need capital, *NOW*’. There are users on WHT screaming about doing chargebacks, but at this point I think its been too long :(

    Francisco

    September 2, 2010 @ 5:53 pm | Reply
  16. Oh woops, I forgot to move VPSBB from chicago to Fremont. Sorry about that. I’ll get it back online shortly :-)

    Not going to be hard since it was only ‘1’ page and the cart was hooked into 123Systems, Thanks for letting me know!

    -Andrew

    September 2, 2010 @ 6:00 pm | Reply
  17. @Francisco Which offer you talking about ? RackVM £20/Year 512MB OpenVZ VPS seems very similar to Andrew’s $21.60/Year 256MB OpenVZ VPS :)

    September 2, 2010 @ 6:37 pm | Reply
  18. @Adam

    UK£ 20 = 30.80400 U.S. dollars according to Google. That and the RAM offerings are very different between 256MB and 512MB.

    September 2, 2010 @ 6:40 pm | Reply
  19. Trent Challis:

    My £6 VPS has gone offline and so has RackVM’s main website and control panel. I knew it would come to this but at least I got a good few months out of it.

    September 2, 2010 @ 7:19 pm | Reply
  20. when you see unbelievable offers, that’s a sure sign host will not last long.

    September 2, 2010 @ 8:27 pm | Reply
  21. @Adam

    RackVM has nothing to do with us, So i don’t see your point. 123Systems has a lot of credibility throughout Webhostingtalk and lowendbox. where as RackVM doesn’t.

    September 2, 2010 @ 8:55 pm | Reply
  22. @Andrew

    My point was that just because a host provides a good offer for annually payment you can’t judge them, because of hosts like RackVM :) I hope you understand.

    September 2, 2010 @ 9:12 pm | Reply
  23. @Adam

    I get your point, But what I’m saying is that our offer is completely aside from RackVM’s. If you’ll check WHT threads and the date their offer was posted they was having issues before the offer was posted. Therefore it would give (francisco) the hint that they needed the capital to come out of the hole. 123Systems however has no internal issues as of right now, We have in the past but we tend to enjoy our credibility so we pull ourselves back up without causing any problems client-side. I see a lot of hosts that wait until it’s too late to fix their issues within the company and in return it effects a ton of clients. As you can see we have offered numerous Yearly offers on WHT throughout the past 4 months. We do this for the clientele not for the capital. Our most RECENT offer was not meant to be advertised as a yearly offer. We originally wanted it to be a month/month/month offer but the STOCK0 promo attracted the yearly feel, So that is how it was advertised.

    Like i said, We have issues just as any other provider does. It is how we deal with the issues that makes us different from the fly-by-night’s that you are staring at in this blog post. A good relationship between your sponsorship boards and your clients is a good thing to have and as far as i know we are in good standing with Lowendadmin and Webhostingtalk. If you’ll check back at nearly ALL of our WHT posts they all have annual/biennially Promotional codes held within them.

    —->Side Note<—-

    I restored the Backup from Chicago to VPSBB and it should be resolving now. Like i said the issue came when we moved the Site from Chicago to Fremont so that China users had a better experience when viewing our website versus having to go through a VPN and we forgot to transfer VPSBB over when we done this. But it is all resolved now and it should be back up.

    -Andrew

    September 2, 2010 @ 9:24 pm | Reply
  24. Gary:

    Good to see a host who’s active in the community, and will happily discuss things like this with customers/prospective customers.

    September 2, 2010 @ 10:11 pm | Reply
  25. @Andrew

    It seems like you got me wrong, I tried to make the point that a host can make annually offers and still be trusted and people should not fear a host, because of cases like RackVM :)

    September 2, 2010 @ 10:22 pm | Reply
  26. @Adam I totally agree with you and I totally understand your point

    @Andrew That long post was so uncalled for. I know you have been here since years unlike RackVM and other piece of junk so dont be defensive, no one is comparing you to them. Keep up the good work and keep sending us amazing offers bcoz this is what LEB is for

    September 2, 2010 @ 10:25 pm | Reply
  27. @Adam

    I understood the post i was just sharing my side of the story for other readers who might mistake what you said the wrong way. I was in no way trying to attack your post, I took it the wrong way and other readers might do the same. By me posting what i posted it ensures other readers that we are in no way heading down the same path.

    @Asim Zeeshan

    Read the above, I was not trying to make a big deal out of what adam said. It’s the fact that readers as did i might take what was said in the wrong context and i wanted to clear all of that up. I appreciate your comment though. We do our best :)

    September 2, 2010 @ 10:32 pm | Reply
  28. Sandro:

    I wasn’t expecting RackVM and ErectVPS! Does he also mean people lost their data?

    September 2, 2010 @ 11:37 pm | Reply
  29. Damn! My RackVM system was up until yesterday, but is now not responding :(. Come on Ben, we all had high hopes for you!

    September 2, 2010 @ 11:44 pm | Reply
  30. scyllar:

    Hi RackVM victims, I’m a little lucky that I quit very soon and got the money back.
    I think if you can still use the paypal dispute because paypal allows you to dispute within 45 days from purchase.
    I remember why I quit, maybe an outage, but basically I found their non-ssl control panel raising a huge red flag. I posted after that post here on LEB but nobody really cared about it.

    September 3, 2010 @ 12:59 am | Reply
  31. I agree with what Adam says — companies offering yearly discount does not mean that they are shady. However better measure needs to be in place for new companies. Company registration details for example that can verified on a government site. *Actual* phone number of address where the business is conducted.

    Or like 419 Eater that gets Nigerian scammers to send in their photos, we might want new companies who claim to “own their own equipment” to send in photos of their servers in co-lo DC :)

    September 3, 2010 @ 1:00 am | Reply
  32. scyllar:

    Typo above:
    I remember why…
    =====>>>>>>
    I don’t remember why…

    September 3, 2010 @ 1:01 am | Reply
  33. I was really rooting for RackVM. I was under the impression that they had potential. It’s sad to see them fail like this and I hope they come back. If not, I guess I’ll be shopping for another UK VPS. Too bad I prepaid for their services.

    September 3, 2010 @ 1:03 am | Reply
  34. scyllar:

    @123Systems – Andrew

    May I have a question for you. Why you run out of stock on your website for normal deals (ie $6.95, $12.95 etc) when you actually sell a lot of stock0 for less? Just because you don’t like more money?
    …kidding…just curious…

    September 3, 2010 @ 1:07 am | Reply
  35. @Scyllar

    The stock was toggled as sold out for the normal plans due to how we knew this new promotional would go. This promotional is going to fill up the chicago location period. Which it’s rounding home base now, We have already turned the last 2 reserve nodes online. It’s not that we don’t like money it’s that we are wanting to stock the Chicago location fully so we can get back to Focusing on Fremont (Which might i add has been sold out for a while.) This promotional was intended to close up shop for selling in Chicago for a while so that we could put full focus on Fremont stock versus shuffling stock between the two locations. The Fremont location has been a high-demand since we released it a few months ago and we need to put more focus into getting stock available in that location.

    Hope this answers your question.

    -Andrew

    September 3, 2010 @ 1:17 am | Reply
  36. OH,my god!

    September 3, 2010 @ 5:47 am | Reply
  37. You Can do some investigations before subscribing to unknown VPS Hosting Provider

    1- Check how long they are in business. 2 Years or more is fine (Check domain name records and little Google)
    2- Check if they are using there own IP addresses and BGP Autonomous number registered with RIPE, PINE, ARIN or Afrinic.
    3- Check if they accept Credit Card directly using owned Merchant Account, even if you prefer paypal. Not every body can got Merchant Account. Credit Card Merchant Accounts for TRUE Business only.
    4- Check if they accept Bank wire Transfer or Bank deposit to make sure they hold Business Bank account.

    September 3, 2010 @ 5:56 am | Reply
  38. wingtam:

    Also the atelra.com dead, no reponse for tickets, they lied to their customers.

    September 3, 2010 @ 8:41 am | Reply
  39. @Mtalaat,

    Having your own IP Addresses and an Autonomous Number does not make you a qualified VPS Hosting Provider.
    Most (if not all) VPS Hosting Providers focus on what they do best (as any company should do), if they don’t have people on their staff who are knowledgeable in terms of TCP/IP, BGP Routing, VLAN Trunking and what not it’s actually a bad thing if they run their own network.

    September 3, 2010 @ 10:38 am | Reply
  40. Hey,

    The VPS from France is still on from RackVM,
    Funny.

    September 3, 2010 @ 10:53 am | Reply
  41. As for point 3 above I do not agree, we do not accept credit card ourself but it is not because we cannot get merchant account it is because we do not want to deal with credit-card fraud ourselves, it can be very time-consuming so we only accept paypal and wire transfer payments.

    September 3, 2010 @ 11:29 am | Reply
  42. HeXel:

    I’m going to chargeback RackVM

    September 3, 2010 @ 11:30 am | Reply
  43. scyllar:

    @Andrew

    That could very well explains everything :D
    Keep up the good job and get us more super deals!

    @Mtalaat

    I think here on LEB most people do try new hosts out from time to time. Why? Because we all chase the cheap offers. Some bad guys do use this and so often they succeed ;)

    There is in fact no golden rules in that. Check your hosts now, and tell us how many of them match all of your rules?

    But I belive the community can help each other to reduce some risks. Once you have an issue, make sure to share. Don’t be silent, because scammers like that :D

    September 3, 2010 @ 11:52 am | Reply
  44. alexey:

    RackVM died for more than 48h for me
    I have 2 VPS (one in Germany and one in France) and dedicated server with them
    and this is really a pain. France VPS was backup for Germany servers and I have no idea if they will up to download backups
    ANd prepaid for next few months :(

    September 3, 2010 @ 12:35 pm | Reply
  45. Gary:

    Absolutely, LEB is a good resource and imo LEA should expand it. I know there’s lowendtalk.com but a proper forum would be nice, with subsections for all featured hosts, so people can discuss, compare benchmarks, tips and tricks, etc.

    September 3, 2010 @ 1:18 pm | Reply
  46. @Gary — a proper forums will be added. Should I continue to develop with bbPress now? Or use a “proper” forum software like phpBB3?

    September 3, 2010 @ 1:35 pm | Reply
  47. @Paul – WebAngel.ie

    Fraud can happen with PayPal just the same.

    September 3, 2010 @ 1:36 pm | Reply
  48. Gary:

    Ah, glad to hear it LEA. I’d probably move to PHPbb tbh, bbPress is pretty limited.

    September 3, 2010 @ 1:41 pm | Reply
  49. Gary:

    @ Michael – that’s not what he said. He said he doesn’t want to have to devote resources to dealing with fraud directly. With a payment gateway, they’re responsible for all that.

    September 3, 2010 @ 1:47 pm | Reply
  50. @lowEndAdmin

    PLEASEEEEE invest on vBulletin

    September 3, 2010 @ 1:49 pm | Reply
  51. Gary:

    I dunno Mtalaat, we’re about doing things cheaply here. Is there something about VBB that’s worth $200/year that a small niche forum like this would need?

    September 3, 2010 @ 1:54 pm | Reply
  52. I always pay monthly, even thought one year prepayment might give me more discount. After seeing this month’s dead pool, I think I make the right decision :-p

    September 3, 2010 @ 1:54 pm | Reply
  53. @Mtalaat — vB?! Not open source. Next! That’s also a reason I won’t use software like SMF. Just noted that the latest MyBB is released under GPLv3/LGPLv3 so I might take a look as well.

    Also need to consider whether the forum software would run well under 128MB of memory :)

    September 3, 2010 @ 1:55 pm | Reply
  54. @LEA: I like MyBB very much. phpBB is also a good choice. For tiny forum solutions, I recommend FluxBB or PunBB.

    September 3, 2010 @ 1:59 pm | Reply
  55. @Admin

    How about archiving sites in the Dead Pool so they don’t appear in search results on LowEndBox, e.g. search for tag: France and RackVM appears multiple times but no use for the user of LEB..

    http://www.lowendbox.com/tag/france/

    September 3, 2010 @ 2:42 pm | Reply
  56. Wow, really can’t believe how many fly by night hosts there are out there.

    September 3, 2010 @ 3:28 pm | Reply
  57. c:

    hmm, i know we got some smart guys here. does anyone know what contrys law that are in effect when you buy something from another country on the internet.

    If im in Finland buying something from a company in the US whos laws are in effect?

    why do i ask?
    in some european coutrys the TOS/EULA isn’t legaly binding, and there’s good laws about fraud/not forfilling an order.

    September 3, 2010 @ 4:21 pm | Reply
  58. KLIKLI:

    I’d suggest you to go with MyBB which is more stable and more modules to be chosen from.

    September 3, 2010 @ 5:11 pm | Reply
  59. InsDel:

    @LEA: FluxBB is my personal favorite lightweight forum. MyBB does look like a decent package too, I just don’t have much in the way of experience with it.

    September 3, 2010 @ 6:22 pm | Reply
  60. @LEA I have no trouble running MyBB on 128MB as long as I do not use apache. Never used more than 70mb on Debian with Nginx.

    September 3, 2010 @ 6:27 pm | Reply
  61. Mike:

    I’ve had good luck running XMBForum under lighttpd in 128MB of RAM, for what it’s worth. (Using Kloxo.) It’s also extremely fast, because – as far as I can tell – it implements DB query cacheing *much* better than, say, PhpBB.

    That said, I don’t really see what the problem with bbPress is. There’s more to life than vBulletin and PhpBB, people.

    Citadel probably runs fine in 128MB of memory too, but that would be even more distressing to the “ZOMG must have giant pr0n avatars and giant animated banners in my signature and custom rank icons and awards and +rep and and and and and and…” crowd. :)

    September 3, 2010 @ 6:45 pm | Reply
  62. Sandro:

    123Systems – Andrew : are you still working on Europe locations? :P

    September 3, 2010 @ 6:57 pm | Reply
  63. Gary:

    @ Mike – bbPress is about as basic as it gets. No searching for one. The level of flexibility and control a proper forum offers is what matters.

    September 3, 2010 @ 7:31 pm | Reply
  64. @Sandro

    We are still debating on if we are actually going to do this one yet, There have been a few US providers that have merged out to the Euro market and we are waiting to see how well it treats them before we go sticking our neck out there.

    September 3, 2010 @ 7:54 pm | Reply
  65. For what it’s worth the fast_fusion guy is lieing about not being affiliated with Diverseweb. I have specifically pointed this out. Anyone who has service(s) with them probably isn’t going to have any luck getting their data back.

    http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?p=6992057#post6992057

    September 3, 2010 @ 8:03 pm | Reply
  66. It amazes me how the real owner of the account happens to find his account is hacked just after diverseweb went down. Why not any earlier?

    Hes a Complete Loser :)

    September 3, 2010 @ 8:23 pm | Reply
  67. Clearly doesn’t have a brain either.

    September 3, 2010 @ 8:24 pm | Reply
  68. HeXel:

    Domain Name: RACKVM.COM
    Registrar: 1 & 1 INTERNET AG
    Whois Server: whois.schlund.info
    Referral URL: http://REGISTRAR.SCHLUND.INFO
    Name Server: NS1.RACKVMDNS.COM
    Name Server: NS2.RACKVMDNS.COM
    Name Server: NS3.RACKVMDNS.COM
    Name Server: NS4.RACKVMDNS.COM
    Status: ok
    Updated Date: 18-jun-2010
    Creation Date: 19-apr-2010
    Expiration Date: 19-apr-2011

    I guess that they already knew it was going to turn into a scam

    September 3, 2010 @ 9:26 pm | Reply
  69. Mike:

    @Gary: They have plugins for that, you know. :)

    Besides, it’s not like anyone ever uses the search function on a forum, anyway. :) (I infer this from membership at WHT and elsewhere, where the same things get asked over and over and over and over again…)

    September 3, 2010 @ 10:25 pm | Reply
  70. Gary:

    Hehe yeah this is true. Handy for checking up on people’s previous posts to see if they used to work for a company they now deny any connection to though… :)

    September 3, 2010 @ 10:33 pm | Reply
  71. @mike, I just use google except for the “find all posts by this user” searches

    September 3, 2010 @ 11:34 pm | Reply
  72. Mike:

    @dmmcintyre3: I do the same, except I normally ignore “find all posts” and go for “find all threads started by this user”. Weeds out 95% of the ignorant/fluff postwhoring, and helps you narrow in on the, say, managed dedicated server providers’ panicky threads about “yahoo is bloking all my email, pls help me ppl”, or “how do i edit teh mysql config file from teh command line?”. (I exaggerate very slightly for disdainful comedic effect. But, as anyone who’s been around WHT for a while can attest… only *very* slightly.)

    September 3, 2010 @ 11:49 pm | Reply
  73. For what it’s worth, fast_fusion is now banned on WHT

    Francisco

    September 4, 2010 @ 12:31 am | Reply
  74. Alex:

    I’m so stupid to buy RackVM.

    September 4, 2010 @ 5:35 am | Reply
  75. Why didn’t I see this coming? Those RackVM deals sounded too good to be true, and it turns out now that they were too good to be true! I just filled a dispute on PayPal. They automatically escalated my claim to a dispute, I guess the seller’s account isn’t active or got cancelled. I hope it doesn’t interfere with me getting my money back. I hope everyone that used PayPal can also get their money back! It is a total shame what they did. So many people were counting in them to be legit….

    September 4, 2010 @ 3:31 pm | Reply
  76. c:

    @Freedom VPN
    Were you inside the 45 day limit. i was thinking of doing a despiute but im outside the timelimit

    September 4, 2010 @ 4:12 pm | Reply
  77. @LEB, give SimplePress a looksee: http://simple-press.com We use it on our wpmu installs. Works great and it more like a phpbb setup. I don’t think you can assign it a domain by itself though.

    BBpress is supposed to be merging into Buddypress anyway:

    http://wank.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/bbpress-dies/

    Let’s see what else…

    We have a merchant account but that’s more because we’d rather deal with the bank directly and Paypal has just caused too many problems over the years.

    Their own IP addresses and BGP Autonomous number isn’t a good gauge. Many hosts place their hosting and support websites away from their own servers. That way in case things go down, their clients still have a way to contact them. Heck, my servers are in Charlotte here, ticket support is on Long Island and forum support is in Dallas. BGP Autonomous number you only get if you do your own routing and not many hosts do that. Most datacenters control routing even if they assign IP address blocks to hosts.

    September 4, 2010 @ 5:02 pm | Reply
  78. Tom:

    Free, you can’t really get your money back with PP for something virtual.

    September 4, 2010 @ 5:43 pm | Reply
  79. @c yes I was, thankfully.

    @Tom It doesn’t hurt to try, does it? I hope the guys at PayPal see that this wasn’t legit and give me my money back anyways.

    September 4, 2010 @ 5:47 pm | Reply
  80. @Freedom – It could have been Ben escalating it himself. If he’s checking their billing email he could be catching them very quickly.

    Then again, the stories of them having paypal issues might also be very true and you’re right on that.

    Francisco

    September 4, 2010 @ 7:18 pm | Reply
  81. ikr.:

    @LEA – Take a look at fluxbb. Open source, EXTREMELY lightweight, pretty much image-free.

    September 4, 2010 @ 8:08 pm | Reply
  82. >I hope it doesn’t interfere with me getting my money back

    Paypal will side with you if the sellers account has been limited/closed and they can not respond, Paypal can not side with a seller that can not respond. Paypal will go after Ben however to try and re-coop their losses if their isn’t enough funds in the account to cover the disputes. I’m going to assume Ben didn’t have fake information via his paypal account however. Hopefully he had it linked up to his bank account.

    -Andrew

    September 4, 2010 @ 9:48 pm | Reply
  83. Anon:

    Is this thread about the dead pool or bb software?

    September 4, 2010 @ 10:19 pm | Reply
  84. Anon:

    Paypal says:

    “Your item is not covered by PayPal Buyer Protection. Thus, we are not able to help you at this point.

    However, if more claims are being filed against this seller within the next 180 days we will review this case more closely.

    Please contact the seller directly to solve this case. We have to debit the reversal amount as well as a 5 EUR processing fee from your PayPal account.”

    Time to do a real chargeback with the credit card company.

    September 4, 2010 @ 10:30 pm | Reply
  85. Anon:

    I wish you were right about paypal siding with the buyer, Andrew. Looks like they’d rather do nothing than side with anyone.

    September 4, 2010 @ 10:33 pm | Reply
  86. HeXel:

    I want my money back !

    PayPal refuses to give so I might go to the police and report the situation.

    September 4, 2010 @ 11:35 pm | Reply
  87. I would suggest going to your bank first to see about reversing the charges before going to the police. Have a strong feeling that all the police is going to do would be to look at you funny when you mention the amount of money involved.

    September 5, 2010 @ 1:04 pm | Reply
  88. Here is what i get from Paypal:
    “We’re unable to decide this claim in your favor at this time. PayPal’s Buyer Complaint Policy applies to the shipment of goods but not to disputes about merchandise quality.”

    September 5, 2010 @ 1:11 pm | Reply
  89. Gary:

    If paypal are happy to take the fees for intangible items then they should be willing to take part in disputes. With a little investigation they can see that this guy’s left a lot of people without services or a refund. It’s going to cost them more if people take this to their banks, so I guess they’re just hoping to wash their hands of any responsibility and hope that you guys just give up.

    Paypal are scum.

    September 5, 2010 @ 1:30 pm | Reply
  90. Customer:

    I am (was) a customer of RackVM. Within 2 days my VPS went down and was not working for over 24 hours. According to Ben Harper (aka. the scammer), the VPS ran just fine even though I knew it wasn’t and in the control panel it was marked as “Offline”. For a reply I had to wait for over 24 hours (Dedicated 24/7 Staff ehh??). Magically, after his reply, I could boot the VPS and everything went fine..for another day or two until he decided to shut down without a notice.

    I have paid via Nochex.com – waiting for their support system maintenance to clear out. Then, hopefully, they could help me to get a refund. If not I think a simple charge-back will help.

    September 5, 2010 @ 2:52 pm | Reply
  91. id:

    Admin,

    the post title got vpssquad in it, but in your post vpssquad is not listed. and they are still online, perhaps you should correct it :)

    September 5, 2010 @ 3:05 pm | Reply
  92. Gary:

    It’s related to AMHNetwork, think LEA accidentally put that instead.

    September 5, 2010 @ 3:20 pm | Reply
  93. Sad…
    I have two six pounders accounts @ RackVM and a VPSax account @ VPSsquad. Fortunately based on my past experience, I don’t set a live website on a new machine immediately, instead I play around for 2 or 3 months just to be save.

    @ Francisco Dias – I hope we can have a good long relationship in the future.

    September 5, 2010 @ 9:09 pm | Reply
  94. HeXel:

    @drmike

    6 pounds * the number for the clients

    See how much did he robbed.

    September 5, 2010 @ 9:29 pm | Reply
  95. @id — sorry I should remove vpssquad from the title. They *were* down for a short period of time together with AMHNetwork, but came back up after I drafted up this post with the title field filled…

    September 5, 2010 @ 11:13 pm | Reply
  96. Its is strange to see how a company gets revived from the Dead pool after some time.

    I noted LEB Admin has changed the status of a few of the sites mentioned here because they been bought by a different company and should now be a trust-able name.

    Will this happen with RackVM ? :) One day a notice would say they been sold to “SomeXCompany” and that they are back in business …

    September 6, 2010 @ 7:27 am | Reply
  97. Ztec:

    On THE rackvm matter.

    I claimde my money back with paypal, I got it back in à couple of hours.
    Tols them it was money I prepaid to them ( which I did ) .

    Written from iPhone.

    September 6, 2010 @ 10:15 am | Reply
  98. joeljkennedy:

    To ex-users of RackVM, the link below is to the active forum thread about RackVM, which includes information about how to get refunds.

    I hope to get my £51 back, and I hope everyone gets their money too!

    http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=976666&page=9

    September 6, 2010 @ 11:40 am | Reply
  99. scyllar:

    @Ztec

    Good news. At least someone really succeed in getting their money back. Yes I agree with you it matters how you describe your situation. I’d say you will tell the truth, while it could also well be misunderstood on the paypal side that you have got your item delivered / service provided. I believe those who failed the paypal dispute must have sounded they had received their service. I’d also mention that paypal doesn’t take the seller’s TOS into account. Learn a little bit paypal rules, buyers and sellers, it’s a good tool for you.

    September 7, 2010 @ 1:58 am | Reply
  100. wei:

    Good news! I got a refund from RackVM thru Google Checkout. On the claim form, I chose “I only received part of my order.” which is true, getting only 3 weeks out of a year’s subscription!

    September 8, 2010 @ 7:04 am | Reply
  101. Check this out

    http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showpost.php?p=7000940&postcount=31

    This is why diverseweb is down :)

    September 8, 2010 @ 2:26 pm | Reply

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