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Comments
100%... and yet we've spent precious minutes reading it!
From very early on (within the first 10 posts) of Eric he already was saying to terminate what he called "unsustainable deals" without specifiying what is considered as such. That, together with the "you're not a customer" and "you're wrong I'm right" attitude are (I think) the main causes of what you put away as accusations. All 3 things are textbook errors in sales and in some cases even against laws. And the DDoS attacks: could be that they were LET related, but there haven't been evidence provided for it.
Also, the "deletion of LET offers" is basically an act of anger and revenge towards a large group of users that don't have anything to do with the alledged attacks or even the thread. And it's random, since only offers with LET in the name seem to have been removed - while others (like me) still have a running VPS without the "pay me or I'll remove it" mail. Let's politely call that "treating people differently based on a random feature of them".
Almost immediately the "we didn't take the customers and their contracts" was declared. A customer has a service, a customer has rights. If you buy a multi-year contract expecting it to bring you a service for that period of time and you're are being told "you're not a customer" it takes away that and makes the contract worthless.
Funny. New management don't recognize people as customers - then something like AUP can go out of the window. The AUP is with a non-existing company. And the new one? Deletes stuff because he thinks "it's not fair" while within 10 posts on this forum positions himself in a way that "fair" has been far away.
Nah...
As you can see, I mainly reacted on a number of things you've brought up, not on AI. Simply because I started to hate AI - one of the reasons because it's often wrong and people just believe it. The piece of word garbage produced here is a fine example: way too much text, regularly wrong conclusions, etc. But I don't agree with a few things your interpretation of what happened, so I've given my opinion to the most fundamental of those ;-)
Nah, didn't. Saw it was AI generated and skipped it. But the reactions to it cost time though
If so, then by whom?
I'm basically never there (Reddit in general) but "some users at r/VPS" might have a sound basis ...
Besides, yes we (LET) are a large hosting-related community, but we shouldn't take LET as being super influential or powerful. I've seen providers grow well and significantly without us.
and that's very mildly worded!
(emphasis mine)
THAT + loads of entitlement, emotions, toxicity up to the point of one particularly enraged user blackmailing LET admins and mods along the lines of "either he is banned or I leave", albeit in another thread, gratuitious allegations out of thin air (or the ass) against VeloxMedia.
TL;DR Eric did a bad job PR-wise - but this thread here is even way worse and makes LET look like a very toxic and aggressive community.
Also: how much mud slinging is a provider supposed to take calmly?
In theory, yes - but after this thread definitely NO! Quite a few here simply would abuse that to basically force their will upon provider. Plus: once on such a list a provider - if he was lucky - would be at the mercy of LETsters to get off the list again after having done pretty much everything "the community" demanded.
So, clearly NO!
Hell, many here do not have a slight clue, they simply see some provider offer a loss leader at e.g. $5/year and assume that that is what a VPS should cost and if a VPS costs more it's a rip off.
Re (2): what is an aggressive push for multi-year prepayment? You see what one user perceives as an aggressive push for multi-year prepayment another user might welcome (a) for peace of mind for some years, and (b) as a way to save $$.
Don't get wrong, I'm not strongly disagreeing, I just have learned that clear definitions are needed. And yes, beyond a certain point a truly aggressive push for multi-year prepayment becomes a red flag indeed.
As you explicitly mentioned my VPS: Yes, it's up and running and service hasn't been interrupted.
Finally: as you see I largely agree with you or at least do not strongly disagree. I'm glad to see that my decision to ignore this thread and all posts in it (after a certain point), except yours and those of very few others was a good one.
Hardly anyone (incl. of course myself) can be truly neutral and objective but you tried and did well. THAT is the kind of comment I'm interested in, plus well based opinions based on focusing on facts and truth.
Kudos!
I'm only going to reply to a couple. I've not read the whole lot, but the first two were wrong, so I kind of stopped at that point...
Yes there was. In the first few days, when people started asking for information about how they were handling GDPR, Eric's response was to just cancel their service.
People who had paid for 3 years, only to be told after 2 months that their service would be cancelled if they didn't pay a $4/m ransom.
Eric was clear that any existing service from Lewis was not his problem and that he was keeping some services alive because he chose to. It was this stance that prompted a lot of the GDPR questions, because in that case he had people's data illegally.
Sure, this is an AI summary of what happened during the alleged DDoS.
Most LET customers now have a complete downtime as their services were cancelled by Eric because they didn't pay the ransom.
Again, there are several people who said that complaining via ticket got their service and account instantly deleted by way of response. It's stretching things a bit to say that's "answering the ticket".
I can't be bothered to read the rest.
Actually, I read a bit more. Have to reply to at least one more!
HARD NO
People had paid in advance for multiple years of service. All of that was considered as null and void by Eric, and a new deal was put in place - $4/m for whatever you had or no service. It's irrelevant whether the $4/m for whatever you had represents good value or not, by cancelling the original service that had been paid for in full, and then when people tried to claw the money back from their banks to mark all those chargebacks as fraudulent - THAT IS THE SCAM.
If you believe Eric's figures, there were over 3000 customers, and an average package worth $80. That makes a quarter million of money that was taken and then made worthless to the customers. That is a classic scam.
Whether there's a new fake company or not to try to confuse matters is irrelevant - people who paid for something didn't get it. That is the scam.
You missed the point where Eric started to manage and profit from infra already paid by the former customers.
Not really. I was just refuting some of the positivity that @alfatarsos seemed to be trying to afford Veloxmedia. I didn't even read the whole of his rebuttal. Veloxmedia was a scam through and through, no ifs and buts.
look at you noobs getting trolled by a stupid ai post
You still think there are any humans left on this thread?
And that is how you "discuss". BUT: a discussion should include the option of seriously pondering arguments provided by others. (By far not only) you however debate i.e. you "know" the outcome (re your own view) beforehand. That's not discussing.
Not really a problem for me because I do not expect (real) culture here anymore and have got used to its ugly absence, but there are a few here (like you) where I still see potential.
You're to very welcome to explain the scenario where both Lewis and Eric aren't scamming people* given these hard facts
PS:
x represent Lewis, y represent Eric.
Let's say <x,y> is <1,1>. That means Both Eric and Lewis is scamming people e.g Eric is Lewis.
Give counterexample as such <0,0> isn't ∅
Because his servers are still up and Eric didn't ask him for any money.
He claimed something he was replying to was untrue. There was plenty of evidence that it was true. I provided that evidence.
I don't really have to read and reply to all 30+ points in that post. Each of the first 5 points was wrong, so I just replied to them before I'd had enough.
I'm sorry if you feel I should have wasted my time pondering more of those points and addressed each and every one, but honestly I've got better stuff to do with my time.
I'm assuming @jsg is sentient enough to understand "What-if" as in "How do you feel if you hadn't breakfast today?" and doesn't answer with "I won't know, I had breakfast today".
Therefore, even if Eric didn't asked @jsg to pay, he should have the mental faculty to understand the hypothetical scenario where Eric did demand payment.
So, based on this presumption, I kindly ask the scenario where both Lewis and Eric aren't scamming people (as in <0,0>) given the hard facts, or assuming it's true.
@jsg i am still waiting for our argument about the sky being blue and the earth being round
I'm missing the SAR request one time fee of $99
@Saragoldfarb
Done
BS! My stance was pretty much the same from the beginning - and back then I did not know whether my VPS would stay alive.
What I said was not about "oh, only X points", it was about your attitude and I was referring to
So your stance wouldn't change if he terminates your VPS right now without refund?
So, ignoring your new BFF Eric, why do you think Lewis' actions were not an attempt at an exit scam?
According to him, he was running the business at a 25% loss for 4 years and then had a massive promotion, selling way more than usual at super low prices to try to get as much money in as possible, only to then abandon the business less than a month later.
Or another way, after racking up debts for years, he convinced people to pay perhaps $250,000 up front for multi-year services that he planned to allow to be cancelled by "Veloxmedia" after only a month.
In the worst case, Lewis knew Eric had no intention of honouring those contracts, and did it because he thought it would get him off the hook for the chargebacks.
In the best case, he arranged with Eric for the contracts to be honoured, but Eric scammed Lewis and by extension everyone else.
It was definitely a scam, the only question is whether Eric is truly an independent person and party to Lewis' exit scam or not. The way Eric is acting, it certainly seems most likely to me that he was always in on the plan and/or is just Lewis' alter ego.
Correct. I would of course not like that and be disappointed but my feelings don't change facts and what has happened.
That's where I stopped reading and just quickly glanced over part of the rest. Eric is not my friend - but neither is he (in my eyes) a thug who planned from the beginning what he decided to later, to a very major part due to how his (I assume) intentions were responded to.
As for the rest, sorry I'll not being drawn down to that mud pit by you. Anyway, my intent wasn't to convince you wrt VeloxMedia but to, a false hope it seems, make you think about discussing and what that means.
AFAIC feel free to go ahead with this thread, I don't care anymore.
Funny how you spend longer writing a rebuttal to something I didn't say than it would have taken to read what I actually did say.
I like how you constantly keep saying that you don't care and yet you keep coming back
So just to confirm, terminating your servers and not refunding you will still not make you believe it's a scam?
I'm still waiting @jsg to confirm the possibility of both Lewis and Eric are not scamming LET users given the hypothetical scenario.
First post of Eric here :
The good news is I have access to all the systems and everything is still up and running. The bad news is everyone's agreements/contracts/money is with Lewis and he's gone.
Second post of Eric here (just after that):
He's still helping us with transferring access and being helpful to keep things online and operational. Lets keep it that way
So basically within a very very short time he was able to put everyone on "high alert" with his first post - basically saying: "Lewis is gone with contracts and money" and then a very short time later "He's still helping us with transferring" bla bla.
These are 3 lines that almost nobody responded to in between that are enough to cause mayhem by any provider. No matter what their intentions are. Don't blame people here, start blaming the cause of it. BTW: in between those 2 messages there were a few "chargeback now" but also a few with good advice.
+1⁰000000000000000 regarding the ai comment.
@jsg
@ralf
Lol, that would be great if that's would happen