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Kerplunc Hosting = Kaput
Just got this email...
Matthew, formerly of Kerplunc Hosting, said:
My name is Matthew and i was the original founder and operator of Kerplunc Hosting and it's sites. I was soley in charge of Kerplunc Hosting until a few months ago when ownership was transferred as i no longer had the time to run the company.
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It has recently come to my attention that the current owners seem not to be reply to tickets or dealing with any issues. I've been trying to get in contact with them for the last few weeks but to no avail. At this point i've decided there is no choice but to shut down the company to prevent anyone from losing data or money.
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I've contacted the datacenters their servers are with and they've confirmed no contact and that payments are overdue for servers. I've worked with them and have made arrangements to keep all of the servers online until the end of September.
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I currently only have access to send mailouts and a few basic features but i hope to be able to get in and send out some refunds to those who need them. Just reply to this message if you've paid for more then 1 month or if you've just recently ordered.
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I apologize for any issues this will cause and wish there was more i could do for you.
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-Matthew
I've been thinking about changing from TinyVPS to OneDollarVPS, pending monitoring ODVPS's uptime. I guess I'll definitely be doing that now.
Comments
Or maybe not actually, it seems ODVPS have gone to the wall as well?![:) :)](https://lowendtalk.com/resources/emoji/smile.png)
As a victim i only can say: stay away from OneDollarVPS!
OneDollarVPS where putting VPS's on Intel Atoms (and think how many $1 VPSs would be on that node for it to cover the cost - at least 50 on an intel atom just to profit off the server).
Wait, what? The ex-owner of the company emails the clients and messes with the company's systems? Sounds very fishy and i don't think he has legal rights to do this if he really sold the company.
He talked with the datacenter, so, IMHO is an special case of abandoned servers and someone that want to pay, then considering the situation the datacenter owners agreed to do this. Maybe isn't so fishy.
Either that or Matthew still had an ownership stake in the company.
I know if I was to suddenly keel over, we have some official policies in place as to who takes it over and what happens in the next 30 days.
From the look of the email it sounds like Matthew might still be the part owner of the company. Now it gives me a better picture on why SuperBytes.net was in the dead pool last month, as that brand (and Kerplunc) has been around for so long.
My VPS is online on SolusVM but can't access anymore![:( :(](https://lowendtalk.com/resources/emoji/frowning.png)
I'm thankful that Matthew got involved. I've been trying to get in touch with KerpluncHosting/TinyVPS for months now. They don't respond to tickets; a robot will automatically close tickets unless there's activity every three days... even tickets in the "new" state waiting for Kerplunc to acknowledge them. They didn't respond to emails. The only phone number I had for them ended up being a dev shop for hotel-reservation software, and they'd never heard of Kerplunc, TinyVPS, or any other names I had.
If the new owners weren't paying the bills, as Matthew states, then someday soon my servers would've had the plug pulled on them without any announcement or notification, and I'd have to scramble to find new hosting and to restore from backups.
"i've decided there is no choice but to shut down the company" ? Last I checked you can't do such a thing unless you (a) have a controlling interest in the company or (b) want to spend 10 years in prison. And as of this date of Hall still deems himself "Founder, CEO at Kerplunc" on Facebook. Conclusion: LIAR.
The first thing I do when considering a low-end VPS in this day and age is to check out the company and its owner via Google and other online search methods. Can you not find out who the owner is? Is the owner under 21? Does the company not have a tax ID number? Is the company not an active and duly-formed partnership or corporation? Is the company in business less than 12 months and have no prior history? Fake, incomplete, residential address, P.O. box, mail-receiving facility or privacy-protected data in the company domain's whois? Still no guarantees, but I'd wager one can weed out 75% of the hosting scams and save weeks of frustration with those criteria alone.
People talk here about VPS admins as if they're adults, but the reality is that many of the "companies" being complained about are lone teenagers operating illegally because, in addition to making false claims, they aren't old enough to enter into contract with anyone. Nice-looking sites are popped up using pirated or freeware templates, an attractive but bogus company name is chosen, allowance money and lunch money is saved to pay $10 for a domain and put a down payment on a server, an offer is posted for free on Web Hosting Talk, that offer is read and cited in places like this site, and then the fun begins -- until the kid finds out that getting fast cash for booze and Clearasil means he won't have enough time left to study and do his homework because he needs to spend hours and hours, day after day, coddling his "customers" and trying to resolve complaints about technical and legal issues he never anticipated and doesn't understand. Good luck trying to get your money back if the kid pockets it and disappears -- you can't, because he's a minor and you have no legal contract. Want to find the parents and sue them? Plan on hiring a private investigator and a process server, either of which will cost you far more than the amount you're trying to collect. In short, you're completely screwed. If it's too late and you've already paid your best-case scenario is having a network issue or an abuse complaint resolved by an "admin" who was kept late by his teacher for smoking, or having to wait 5 to 10 hours for a response from the support department because the "support department" is out getting drunk on a date or the bell hasn't yet rung in social studies. Is your business site down and the server unresponsive? Don't plan on any sales for the day because the "support department" only has a few minutes to respond to customers between classes. Is the subject line of your email not threatening enough? Don't plan on your words being read by the "support department" until the schoolbus ride home.
There are many such scammers, and Matthew Hall is a textbook case. Hall was 16 when he began "Kerplunc" (a/k/a KerpluncHosting a/k/a SuperBytes a/k/a TinyVPS) with his original "business partner", Nick Barrett, who was 14. When George W. Bush became president, Matthew Hall was 9. Hall referred to himself as "Matthew Whore-Caller Hall" on Facebook (see screen capture here). More eye-opening stuff about Hall and Kerplunc here.
If you're creative it takes about an hour or two to locate stuff like this; I realize you might not want to spend the time but if you're going to trust the reliability of your website (and possibly your business) to a total stranger, and you wallet wants low-end, isn't it worth an hour or two? I think so.
Happy hunting, everyone.
Good post, omniscient.
It seems like after Nick left Kerplunc (and continued with Fanatical VPS which seems atleast in my case pretty decent even now) everything went downfall.
What I don't understand with those fail hosts is how someone "don't have time to run company". Don't have time? Hobbyists...
@omniscient
Just to confirm, yup. A lot more than 10 years also depending on what happens to the assets too. This is my issue working for a company 70% owned or controlled by my ex-fiancee.
This is one of the reasons why we pull apart these offers over on the main site. It's a pity though that many commenters over there find such hosts to be acceptable.
@Spirit: Even so, some "hobbyists" do it pretty well, like BuyVM.
Hmmm... buyVM are "hobbyists"? I would imagine that running such hosting company isn't dependable from free time of one person...
Its a hobby to share and care at low prices
Hardly a hobbyist
Maybe you think we are since we love doing our job so much and act like goofs, but the fact of the matter is we have a full time support staff, myself as the full time dev/sales/support guy and others that work part time (Aldryic is mostly full time as well).
Francisco