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J> @Awmusic12635 said:
Unfortunately, I really didn't know what hit me until it was too late. I just saw orders coming in. I thought, wow, orders! The server is getting full! Order more servers!
You make a good point. I never meant to grow to that extent. And I realize people here feel betrayed, but I couldn't offer the service and sustain it. I tried though-- I did buy additional servers to handle the load but it was all a panic blur that it happened so fast. After I got everything up and running, I examined the data and it didn't fly. It was mostly yearly.
For month over month since I actually started VPS (June of this year is when it launched) I had growth. First $30, then $60, etc .. note this does not cover infrastructure. This business was funded on my credit cards. (I'm a grown man, I have my own obligations.)
The company doesn't make me feel old, it's still in it's infancy stunted by bad decisions.
I don't expect anyone here to understand fully. If you only make $350/month in revenue, why the hell would take on extra expenses exceeding that revenue. I was making enough to cover the 3 servers I had.
I'm working through this. I'll have more information as I have it.
There's a time to
back away.
It may be a temporary glitch, but https://www.serverhand.com/ doesn't seem to be displaying correctly. Can others confirm this?
Yes, stylesheets are broken. It seems their URLs/paths dont get properly built.
In honesty, I had not realised it was only since June you were offering VPS, thought it was much longer, so for me, I apologize in that it does go to explain why you lacked the experience to manage this.
The only correct way to have handled this given the services were active for just a few weeks was to come clean, admit the error, refund everyone and cancel the services.
Tough lesson, you may be new to VPS, but not to hosting.
Hallelujah, finally something more reasonable - in my humble opinion
I understand that you were in a frenzy as orders came in and sort of panicked. That bit is understandable, but I still find it hard to understand that you panicked to an extent that every rational thought went out the window. It must have been pretty obvious that these were not regular orders but mostly came from your offer which was not sustainable on such a scale. At that point your alarm should have gone off. But anyhow, you didnt refund them straight away but instead ordered a second machine to fulfill the orders (that is where the money went I understand - though, how expensive was that server and for how long did you rent it) and thats when the entire mess started.
Fair enough, I am not saying any of that should have happened, and you most definitely should have paid more attention to about everything, but alright, it happened and you did not have bad intentions.
The bit however that I completely fail to understand (and which was my main point of criticism all along) was your reaction afterwards here in this very thread. Why in God's name would you have thought mere credits are the just thing in this case? Why would you even think of blaming your customers and particularly the Chinese customers for ordering and even promoting your offer? Why was there this back and forth on decisions?
Yes, some of the responses were not exactly friendly but many of them also understandable given the situation and the lingering secrecy and irrationality.
Thanks for the clarification, so I thought.
EDIT: It's kind of a jerk move for me to bring this up without fully explaining why I brought it up. See next 2 posts for more details.
I hadn't looked at their Twitter, to be honest, but it's probably best for us to steer clear of politics on LET (to the extent feasible). I mean, it should be possible for someone to run a good, reliable VPS company while at the time sympathizing with infowars.com. (It's really another question why one would sympathize with infowars.com.)
I only brought it up because it seems weird for any company (especially one so new) to post anything controversial on their public Twitter. I normally don't care but when you look at their public announcements and social media I don't see anything regarding the issues their clients are dealing with and instead are greeted with Alex Jones' face (and I don't care about people's views towards him or his website).
All negativity in this thread aside, if you look at the legitimately helpful posts they talk about PR and transparency but I'm not seeing anything positive being posted publicly except for this thread.
Link, singular
I've just taken a look at their Twitter page for the first time. Yeah, you're right: so much for using Twitter to inform customers about crucial issues concerning them! Seeing Alex Jones as the first piece of important news for customers seems almost perverse in the present circumstances.
My best guess is they don't want to create panic. (This is the charitable interpretation.)
Good catch (they all use the same URL shortener I'd never seen before so I assumed it was from the same site). That being said, my point still stands even if my first post wasn't a complete thought (I've edited it).
Yes, though considering that the number of subscribers is still relatively low that information would probably not be that useful anyhow but rather possibly scare off potential customers, what you mentioned as panic.
True, though I also appreciate that someone is taking a stand (if we should consider this particular posting a "stand", it rather seems to be about the industry and happens to be under that domain) for something which he might believe in and is not popular right now. Companies are either completely silent or side with the popular opinion (myriad of registrars, Uber, Twitter, Facebook, Airbnb, too many to name).
So how are those refunds coming along?
Their web site is back up, and with a new look/theme. If one tried to judge things by the new look, it appears that everything is going very well.
(I won't comment on the displayed testimonials by Nathan, Joanna, and George.)
Well, to be fair, that Twitter post is a link to an article "Tips For Finding The Perfect Forex VPS" that appeared at http://planet.infowars.com/business/tips-for-finding-the-perfect-forex-vps , which is no doubt why Alex Jones appears. The article itself is not obviously political and reads more like an advertisement for Forex hosting.
Must be secretly raking it in if he hosts Google, yahoo and msn
For some reason, I thought that ServerHand were based in the US, but I now see that they're based in England.
so you are telling you got overrun with unexpected orders (after offering special cheap stuff on LET) and went straight ahead ordering just another server without even looking at what orders you got? how did you even determine what kind of server you'd need then? oh. wait. I forgot, you asked over at WHT...
and you're seriously trying to tell that you are the only person on earth that does not look at the incoming money first to
have a wank overdo any sort of calculation?I don't know shit about WHMCS, but how hard can it be to quickly check the last ~100 orders for type and amount?
That bit is simply hilarious, I wonder who would ever come up with such template fillers.
Frankly, at this critical moment when the very life of one's company is at stake, why re-style the web site?
Agreed, but as long as the issues at hand get resolved (as @JoeMerit asked earlier) its up to him whether he finds the time to restyle it. The important bit is, have all customers received the refund notification and been refunded?
I hope Nathan, Joanna, and George gets their refunds , before they charge back .
Yeah NJG seem nice too shame they've had to go through all this.
Maybe they were sold? Last I checked, they were a registered LLC in Florida (although the information they filed was not valid).
Where did you get the English connection from?
Erm, it is an LLC though?
Complete rubbish, my information is legal and accurate. Thank you.
Yeah, no UK citizen would be foolish enough to open an LLC and operate it from the UK as a sole director, HMRC would get that info from the IRS (treaties exist) on the first return and smack the crap out of you for tax avoidance through deception.