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Out of curiosity, I wrote a question on the Law Stack Exchange Q&A site about a hypothetical situation similar to this one involving a fictional individual from the UK named Louis selling his business to an equally-fictional individual from the US named Erik. The gist of the answer was:
Of course, this doesn't address the GDPR issues which are separate and, in my opinion, much more clear-cut (i.e. Eric is breaking the law). It also doesn't address anything about the payment methods or Stripe issues, only the question of who has the contracts, who is responsible for maintaining services, and who is liable for breach of said contracts.
Agreed.
As a customer, I will not accept charity( as the new boss claimed), nor will I accept coercion—even if the product would be deleted after all mess.
Nonetheless, a sole trader has no legal business entity to sell. As the uk.gov site explains, the sole trader has personal obligations to keep records for tax, permits and employment purposes, but there are no shareholders, partners or a legal entity that can be transferred to new owners. I think this was well covered in Business Law 101.
Actually, very little guidance on the mechanics of selling a sole trader’s enterprise, except obligations to creditors and the crown.
My speculation is that Eric didn’t wing it. Seems like he bought assets, but not liabilities. Probably didn’t assume ownership of the customer contracts. Likely that Eric got the logins to the backends, both server management and financial, but that doesn’t mean he’s responsible for what’s inside. I’d give Eric credit for spinning a deal to his advantage and taking advantage of a seller who was winging it.
Pretty similar to how things work in the U.S., though for us it varies a bit state by state. Anyway, if I’m on target about how the asset sale was structured, small claims are Lewis’s problems alone. Anyway, for the many non-UK customers like me, UK small claims court isn’t really feasible, as we’re not able to easily show up.
Anyone with servers at @VeloxMedia? How is it going apart from the soap opera?
I don't. But, it's pretty much non-reliable.
As much as I disagree with how Lewis and Eric handled things, I've had zero technical issues and my server has been operational throughout, for the past four months, give or take.
Fairly stable. I moved out most of things from them and only left non-critical apps. Fremont server was down for a few days I think, SLC and UK servers are surprisingly super stable.
Until they actually shut down your server and deny a refund, you are committing fraud by doing a chargeback for a service that is still being delivered. Penalty is jail time for you.
On the server side, yes. But, I'm taking into account the host operator too.
Same here. VPS is in NL.
complete BS, every payment processor which takes care of their customer safety will refund asap when they see this BS happening right now, because they already know how this will END, not good for the guy who formed the company.
BTW, does someone has his EIN for US LLC?
Would be interesting if he has clarified everything with the IRS maybe they need a hint, haha.
A take that doesn't look unreasonable to me.
Your following "legalese" post though I doubt quite a bit. Sure, at law.stackexchange some users probably are trained lawyers and/or otherwise professionals, but your description of the situation was way too basic.
Plus - and most importantly - AFAIK nobody here really knows the deal Lewis and Eric made, nobody has seen the documents and all the details.
So, based on what exactly could anyone here (incl. myself) judge the deal? Basically we only have a part of "the book's cover" and an instinct what's right and what's wrong.
And Eric or his company are honouring the agreements with us, the VPS seem to be running OK, at least those not losing them money (although: @Saragoldfarb's post suggests that even those are running).
So, what is there concretely to complain about, other than Eric not behaving nicely?
Try it and send us your court transcript lol
Legally it is not but who cares I guess.
Pretty neat. What'd ya use for this?
Isn't £5.30 on renewal ?
Been down but running. Not that bad. Server in SLC.
Discrub, it's a chrome extension. Scraping takes some time but it'll nicely output it in html.
Last number I saw was $4
buy you know, haven't logged in for a while.
Hosting it on SomethingMedia
Genious, if its down, its down.
Reguards
Velox Media inc. and Velox Media LLC. Both are now registered in OH.
https://businesssearch.ohiosos.gov?=businessDetails/5527412
https://businesssearch.ohiosos.gov?=businessDetails/5525941
You're young, right? That's exceptionally naive. Every chargeback is loss of profit.
As a payment processor, I would expect them to cover these situations:
1) payment not authorized
2) item significantly not as described.
3) item or service not delivered.
"Sir, did you authorize the payment? Did you receive it? Is it working? Then why the fuck are you bothering us?"
Usually... True... However... Now their accounts is flagged, any somewhat reasonable explanation will do.
Fremont erver has been up but network connectivity flaky ever since the 'change of ownership' thread started.
See: https://imgur.com/a/Q0c4Xdh
It was meant to be minimal and to only answer the general question, since the Law Stack Exchange doesn't allow legal analyses of specific matters, as that would be legal advice. Instead, it's simply intended to determine whether contracts are automatically transferred.
The problem is cancelling services without refund. Sure, he's still keeping my server up so I have no reason to chargeback (not that I could after paying with cryptocurrency, anyway) or to take legal action, but he has terminated, without refund, the services of others.
If the services are unsustainable, I fully support him either raising the prices for the next billing period or even straight-up cancelling them, but if he cancels them, he (or Lewis, whoever is liable) must provide a partial refund for the service time that was not provided.
I agree with you that many people here are treating this as a witch hunt and exaggerating certain issues that are, most likely, not actual issues (there's no chance in hell that this is an exit scam, for example). Nevertheless, there is still significant and genuine fault, both moral and legal, to be found in the behavior of Eric and/or Lewis.
I've had a single issue which was a DDoS that lasted a few hours. My VPS was receiving several Mbps of packets with (presumably) spoofed sources, all with the same source port and all with destination port 53. It slowed to a crawl and lost touch with my uptime monitor a few times, but it ultimately came back.
I imagine the DDoS situation is largely resolved. All other issues are behavioral, not technical (e.g. shutting off people's servers without refund). Eric certainly knows how to manage infrastructure well enough to get things done, but he seems utterly incapable of managing his own emotions. Honestly, I'd prefer a somewhat incompetent hosting provider with a good heart than a seasoned one with the behavior we're seeing here.
really bad. Velox Media's discord is full of complaints. major downtime i read for many users though not all.
the reason Velox Media's customer to chargeback is simple and important one:
1. User bought and paid for server to Lewis. Not VeloxMedia or Eric (new owner)
2. Eric is allowing to run your server host with Velox Media at his sole discretion.
3. Eric did not receive fund/revenue in his own account for your server. He is technically giving it for free as long as he can and thus he can suspend/terminate it at his own will. There is no legal or even any written contract/agreement between Eric/Velox Media, LLC and user.
4. The future invoice after your service expiry date will be generated through Eric/Velox Media and then user and Velox will be officially under the contract of providing services.
5. If you are a user who bought VPS on monthly basis and has renewed it then chances are its now legal contract you paid to Eric.
6. If you are a user who bought annual/2yr/3yr server plan then you've paid Lewis, and not Eric/Velox Media, LLC and so Eric has no obligation to keep your server ON for 3 years. That's the main reason to chargeback, beyond there were reasons like lots of downtime as mentioned by other users.