New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Comments
To think I was this close to buy a VPS from VeloxMedia (one of the regular ones)...
In my opinion, this is somewhat of a linear situation. It's not fully linear though.
» There was obviously a lie in terms of VeloxMedia being a company - it was a sole trader. The previous owner (Lewis) is guilty of misleading customers on that. One thing he's not guilty of, though - having a burnout and selling the built business, two valid occurrences. He's on his own right of doing that, though I think the 25% loss could have been easily overturned with much better planning - which was expected from someone that allegedly had more experience like he supposedly had. Doesn't look well.
» This sole trader passed on their ASN, the infrastructure, the customers (but not the contracts), and solely these three, to the new owner, in the US. In my opinion, this creates a clear issue with GDPR management and especially at a time where the US is de-aligning themselves with general Europe/UK practices there. You can't simply dissociate a customer from a contract, that would be absurd, they are not there for charity... they paid for a service and expect it accordingly.
» Eric solely wanted the infrastructure, probably has better plans for it, or to integrate into something else. OK, it's his own right. He's also on his own right to dissociate customers from the infrastructure or entirely terminate them at will, since technically and legally it's an entirely different entity now, payment gateways included. It's a hard truth, but it's the truth: the contracts were with the previous entity and they were apparently not carried over. One can obviously understand why.
» However, since he also decided to purchase the customer "books" that have come with it, he could also optimize adequately the infrastrucutre and it would cost him very little to create similar contracts to the existing customers and guarantee some revenue to a new company. At the right scale, it wouldn't be an issue.
» Obviously 30GB RAM plans for roughly 4-5 USD per month are unsustainable already per se. Obviously the way this was done (paying for 2/3 years in advance) was in such a way that it does approximate itself from an exit scam, not from Eric, but from Lewis. However, these could still be technically honoured and split accross several servers to avoid unsustainability, at least until the end of the term, and don't really make a difference on the grand scheme of things if, for example, you provision 3/5 dedicated servers with 768GB or 1TB of RAM. There's also a timing problem on this one, due to ongoing RAM costs, which can't be ignored.
» Which leads me to the next point. Considering what was already known by the BF, that RAM costs were increasing since September/October, it was ridiculously imprudent from Lewis to provide 30GB RAM VPSes at that pricing. Or triple RAM VPSes, for the matter.
» The maths that come with provisioning a VPS plan simply don't scale enough for that - and done this way at an event like the Black Friday, when he probably already knew well the status of his own business at that point, because a 25% loss doesn't come from thin air on a trader already trading for 6 months, do mean that indeed his last BF offers were indeed an exit scam - and were, as we're seeing over 50 pages, contaminating the entire company. It wasn't sold only because of an alleged burnout - it was sold because of a scaling error. Because Lewis realized he'd grown too much, too fast, too badly to continue. But he wanted to leave out big, so he did this for the Black Friday.
This is a tricky subject but for me, three things are clear here:
» Eric is fooling no one. Lewis did it before, and now Eric is paying the PR price here.
» Lewis, for someone who had alleged experience, did things so badly that the Black Friday offers were, I consider, an exit scam for him.
» It's Lewis, and not Eric, the new VeloxMedia, or any others, to have to pay the price for this.
The customers are truly in the worst position here. This is going out on a legalese and it's the second worst possible outcome, due to Lewis's very bad way of handling things, the first one being to stay without service.
The only thing remaining is this: will Eric honour the existing customer books and create new contracts for them? You don't consolidate an infrastructure in 5-6 days, but it may be feasible medium-term, probably into January and beyond. Several of the commentators here at LET have no idea how slow it is for that to occur in reality, but it is indeed slow. Could take weeks.
The truth is - it can come at the same cost or at any other higher cost, and Eric is not, and never was, obligated to provide service, not even at the same cost. Eric is not to blame, he purchased a problem and delt with it pragmatically. But you can blame Lewis for that, because the way it was sold created this whole issue.
The question is that Lewis created himself a problem in the UK: he has hundreds of binding contracts, hundreds of dollars on its side, no infrastructure to provision them because he sold it, he goes with his own posessions to account for any legal consequences, and if the TOS didn't predict something like this, he's basically screwed if any UK-based customers decide to move an action against them. Hell, even if other international customers move a local action with local representation/lawyers in the UK against him. It's as simple as a board of 50-100 international customers uniting themselves and filling something with a local lawyer against Lewis. He's in very bad waters.
The question is that no one outside of the country is going to do it alone for 20-50 USD and 1 service. But those within the country - Lewis does have an issue with them.
I doubt any statement would divulge the details of the sale. Ask as much as you want but they have zero obligation to tell anyone anything.
Hiding the details breeds distrust, which will affect brand reception with existing customer or people who knew about their past.
For one, we know the infra transfer is successful. But, we don't know the original plan regarding the contract.
Exactly. Those details are most likely confidential or should be confidential.
We, as customers, don't need the details. We just need a summary of what the deal means for us - as customers.
The main issue: as customers we don't hear anything - there hasn't even been a mailing that there is a deal. Announcing it on a forum or discord isn't an official announcement.
Exactly. Providing the exact details does nothing with regards to trusting the provider.
That would come down to the mission statement for the future of the company.
Thats your opinion but laws are telling a different story, at least if you are accepting customers from the EU
Precisely. I'm thinking of customers outside of the EU when I write that. A relevant part of the users at this forum are from Asia - these are the most affected with all of this.
50-100 international customers uniting themselves and filling something with a local lawyer against Lewis
Never going to happen.
i don't know why it just came to mind but wasn't the charityhost guy's name andrew? he was super arrogant and condescending. probably not related.
So what's the prognosis as we step into the new year? Will this go down?
50/50, either up or down.
Paying for servers to remain online.
Have worked on a new website and branding.
Registered the company in the US and for GDPR with the ICO in the UK
Moved some clients wishing to be moved from Fremont to another DC
Strangest exit scam ive ever seen.
My account @VeloxMedia got disabled without a refund. @DP ban this host.
F.
dispute on pp just 30s refunded
i opened a dispute at paypal.
I wonder what the hidden details are
Hehe
I bought one of the UK servers. Works fine as does my account.
So, question is....what did you do?
I opened a ticket to ask if it was still possible to get a partial refund, as I was concerned about the whole situation. Like some other people, he told me that he is going to delete the account and the service I had. I replied that he should either refund me or fulfil the service. When I tried to log in to check the ticket for an answer, I found that my account had been disabled.
Interesting, as I had a similar ticket conversation without an issue.
Have you tried again or just LETSupport?
Mr Biloh should refund accounts from tag money.
Taken from their newly published AUP, f***ing hilarious. ToS as well as Privacy Policy seem to be pretty much copy pasted from before. The Privacy Policy even links to web.archive.org.
Nice legal team you got there, @VeloxMedia. I mean I understand why we needed to wait so long, since you are doing this as a one man show.
30min ago, they had no TOS at all
PayPal dispute. Got my money back in under 60 seconds.
Funny, my server came back up at the 11hr mark and now seems more responsive lol. The charts do show more high latency spikes though, so probably just hitting it at the times when it is running well.
So, you freaked out like lots of others rather than being patient.
I've had zero reason to charge it back as my servers have been online.
From the discussions going forward it looks like it's been absorbed by a much larger company.
A much bigger company, but the professionalism is just as lacking as with the previous owner, due to the lack of communication via the appropriate channel. How difficult would it have been to send an email to all customers, explaining what happened and what's coming next? If they'd been transparent from the moment they took over, this wouldn't have escalated like it has.
I wouldnt save the money as lost, but dispute to hurt lewis. If all goes well, eric would be happy about that money.
Good im no customer of this lost case.