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I'm sure she was, I was with Shard Host for about 3 months.
For 3 month I had multiple problems with VPS being not reachable (node issue) and of course I was raising a ticket to resolve the issue. You maybe shocked but Sarah was the only one person who responded to all tickets. Average response time 1 day, so basically yes, she was only one person.
Tickets -> Sarah
Newsletter -> Sarah
Whmcs hack -> Sarah
Urgent mail -> Sarah
Well, I was thinking that Sarah is actually man, it simply does'nt look that woman did all this things but who knows.
@rds100, that is probably not an option for Jon. I cant speak for him but when someone leaves me and breaks contracts I need to cut my costs to a minimum. That is probably what happened here if the DC actually shut off servers.
@CVPS_Chris i agree about costs, but there is also benefits - in this case it would be free good marketing benefits, which would probably outweight the costs (power and bandwidth). You know more about marketing than me, so...
Some of DaddyCheese/ShardGaming servers were in the EU would be my guess. TheRegister article said they were renting some servers from OVH.
Husband and wife
The ColoCrossing servers are down but their WHMCS (currently in maintenance mode) and SolusVM (fully functional), both hosted at CloudVPS, are still running (billing cycle at CloudVPS starts on the 1st of the month).
You're skating on thin ice there alex
Jon said that he did not do this on the first or second page, if they are not entering in to formal insolvency then a highly suggest everyone opens a dispute, you do not have to accept what the accountant said, while it is true that it is considered an un secure credit so is a credit card and they don't let you get away with it.
Questions that need answers:
If it turns out CC did pull the plug but at the time of posting the confirmation it was not CC and Jon was simply not aware at the time I would urge you to switch them back on for at least 6 hours with 24 hours advance warning, hell I will even pay the power bill myself for that period.
You know what, if they came here and said, sorry guys we tried and things are not working out, we will close down at the end of the month, due to personal circumstances we will not respond or be responsible for anything after XX date, then fine that would be ok.
But this was essentially a big middle finger to every customer and the industry, I actually think this is worse than hostrail.
I will be keeping a keen eye on the activities of the directors and will absolutely be making companies house aware of they way this has been handled, it is not correct and the accountant is not a legal representative of the business in terms of the companies act and what the responsibilities of the directors are.
I did not even have service with them but this has really angered me.
@Jbiloh still stand by: http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/375677/#Comment_375677 ?
are servers rented or coloed ?
Any option that CC rerun servers for a hour or two ?
Obviously things were falling apart in early November (and possibly earlier than that). If I had to guess, I'd say it was personal issues between the two owners (husband and wife). All assumptions though. The real killer is that Shard continued accepting payments and new orders up until the very moment that they officially ceased operations and disabled everything (services, disappearing off social media, everything).
We were caught totally off guard by all of this, and had literally just finished setting up a bunch of new equipment for them. Bummer for everyone involved.
To make matters worse their accountant guy won't take my call or respond to my emails. Their receptionist has been very rude.
Between offering services at a loss and buying equipment it would be very easy to go from 21K in the bank to 0 in a year or less.
From experience I can tell you unsecured creditors get shit when a company goes belly up. My company has been listed as a creditor on 4 different bankruptcies (all around the time of the dotcom crash) and after the secured creditors and lawyers received their cut we received $0 of the +$40K we were owed from the companies.
If Shard is insolvent the only hope for customers who paid $10 or $20 is to file a chargeback with their credit card company because that's the only way they will be getting their money back. Contacting the accountant won't get you anywhere.
My guess would be their lawyer(s) told them to STFU. Forums are the last place you want to be posting if you're involved in a legal matter.
The accountant apparently doesn't have a sense of humor :P
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2144578/Judge-orders-man-paid-accountants-800-coppers-pay-debt-properly.html
@DomainBop it seems the accountant didn't have common sense either. Are british pennies really made of copper? Because 166 kg of copper costs more than $1200 by today's prices.
They're made of copper-plated steel.
That would be illegal anyway.
Companies house says different. and that's the whole point of suing in this case. if they don't have it in the bank then you get bailifs to seize their property instead.
Companies house state what their position was at a point in time which is in the past.
Seriously, nobody here is out thousands or hundreds or even a hundred likely. Nobody here is going to take any action beyond a paypal dispute.
Either raise the PP dispute or finish your bitching, learn yet another lesson and move on.
Just us. Hah.
Which sucks of course, but just as shardhost customers need to accept the loss so do you, different scales :P
The "loss" is irrelevant for me. I "lost" a couple months on a $8/year plan, and had to spend an hour restoring service elsewhere. I accept that.
What I don't accept is the callous way ShardHost treated its customers. It's unforgiveable.
A note to providers.
If you deal with a limited company in the UK and something like this happens you are not going to recover anything if the company does not have it. The Directors are employees of the company not owners.
So if you get a big order from a UK limited or you get to a point where your exposure is high enough that you are concerned about the risk of loosing money then always obtain a personal guarantee from each of the Directors. This makes them personally liable for any amount due under your agreement and means you can sue them as individuals.
I doubt many Director's would agree to a personal guarantee. (Un)fortunately part of owning a UK limited company if is shit hits the fan you're for the most part not personally liable.
Then you are a fool for not doing anything.. if i was a customer i would be playing hell. you had a contract (for them to give a service) they didnt delivery fully. Perhaps someone should post the directors address aswell as company HQ. that may move things forward
Then you don't know the UK market to well then, getting credit here these days as a limited company without a personal guarantee is rare. It used to be the opposite, not any more.
@DomainBop I have been there too, and as you say, we got $0 from more than you from a client... that SUCKS. Oh, they were protected by chapter 11 -.-
@jbiloh is there a way that someone rent that particular server? Without data wiping? It may help that a company can absorb their clients, or at least to take a backup from them? My server were with you (CC)
http://wallofshame.lowendserv.net, some suggestions? or do you say its exaggerated ?
Data privacy issues will then happen by a client or someone, then shit will hit the fan for CC.
From what others have posted here and from what Marc told me, they were colo'ing and buying their hardware so it would still remain SH's property? I know he had a rack in CoreXchange and made a big move to CC.
He seemed like a good guy when I chat to him a couple times on IRC so something really must have hit them hard, possibly from the recent data leaks that happened to them due to WHMCS (x2?)
It's funny how people are talking about legal actions here, like they know what they are talking about. Also over a small sum I presume people paid, it's just not worth anyones time unless you don't mind wasting money to take legal action (which I assume the majority here won't / can't).
Patrick.
@AlexanderM and @INIZ
thanks for your thoughts
@dnwk, never heard of that or had it happen to me
Basically:
Outside US = screwed (overly scrutinized) by Paypal and any other US-based entity
Inside the US = screwed by OVH and any other entity trying to give the US a taste of its own medicine ;-)
With all the chargebacks etc that can come out of (online) fiascos like this ShardHost situation, it wouldn't surprise me at all if Paypal and others raise the bar even more :-(
It is sort of like how some a--hole companies want you to provide your SSN in order to APPLY for a job ... like, W-T-F??? Apply, as in submit an application! ... don't even know if they want you or if you even make it to background-check phase. LOL, they can GTFOH with that.
Cheers
I don't know what exactly the SSN is used for, but i can imagine that this is to make sure that you are a US citizen and not some illegal immigrant?
@rds100 nah, that requirement is normally stated in the job posting and applicants tend to get asked to confirm 'right to work' when they apply. if you get an offer and accept then you have to provide SSN etc and at that point you'd get outed and the offer would be revoked.