First off, sorry if this is the wrong forum - I wasn't exactly sure where this belonged.

Here's the story:

We, the owners of my site, purchased hosting from a company called Web-X. Well it turned out they were ****** resellers, which we didn't realize when we initially purchased hosting. Anyway, they eventually went out of business - leaving our site in a kind of limbo. They pulled the plug on our site a few days ago and we went elsewhere for hosting. We requested that ****** send us the backups from our site, to which they responded:

"In order for the information to be retrieved, the domain would have to be signed up for service with us and paid for before we can release the information. "

So basically they don't want to give our backup back unless we buy hosting from them.

My question is: Does anyone know if we have any recourse here? Is there any way we can get our backups back without buying hosting or are we simply out of luck here?

Thanks for any advice you can give me :)

whats their site
and can you explain your story again

Originally posted by Hoobastank68
whats their site
and can you explain your story again

Err, it got filtered, the host was C I H o s t.


The story again:

We purchased hosting from a company called web-x. They were a C I H o s t Reseller. That company went of business leaving us to deal with C I H o s t directly. Well they shut off our site and we went elsewhere for hosting. When we asked for our backups, they basically told us we had to buy one of their hosting packages in order to get our backups back.

If you wanted your data back bad enough you can try contacting the host or datacenter that holds their site and talk with them and explain what had happened. Generally a host wont hand over data to someone because they can't really tell if the data is really yours or not. But it doesnt hurt to contact them and explained what had happened, and see where it gets you ::shrugs::

well, if they haven't terminate your account on their server, whoever the new host can copy over.

Hi, if your host, who got reseller from C I H o S t then you might want to contact C I H O S T, their site loads mad slow and their reseller is a rip off i think, but anyways since your host, who was actually a reseller, since they got out of business then probably all data was deleted...

Originally posted by Hoobastank68
Hi, if your host, who got reseller from C I H o S t then you might want to contact C I H O S T, their site loads mad slow and their reseller is a rip off i think, but anyways since your host, who was actually a reseller, since they got out of business then probably all data was deleted...

C I H o s t is who we tried to contact us, they are the ones that said we had to buy hosting to get the backups. I'm assuming the data wasn't deleted since they said they could retreive it for us if we purchased a hosting account...

ask your current host now to attemp copy and move your stuff from C I H O ST by using WHM.

If they have your data, contact the host that host's them or holds them. Be upfront about it. I wouldnt hand data out to anyone unless I could actually verify it was them for sure. It can be done. I had a site go down, that was hosted by a reseller, but they were hosted by MCHost/DV2. I gave them the explanation, they got in contact with the reseller, and got the data back.

This is sorta why you should always keep a backup of your data ;)

they just trying to get your money, tell them to send you a link to get the backup, and that because your host , reseller ran away, you have to get your site backup, if they ask you to pay to host with them you should tell them you going to sue them or something...or take legal action against them

...or consider compromising at half way.
Might be easier and quicker, especially in case they delete your files.

If you really want you data, sign up, move the data, cancel the account.

the problem is the host might not allow cancelation or they will but no refund...

This is see eye trying to extort money from you.

This is NOT my recommenation as a course of action for you to take.

However, if faced with the same situation, I just MIGHT tell them yes, pay them, get my data back and do a chargeback so fast it made their heads spin.

Heh, thanks for the advice, but I don't think we want to go down that road. :)

Just a little update, after several more emails - they offered to turn over our backups....if we pay $100 in certified funds....

darn..$100? why don't you just ask your new host copy for you?

We're going to try that now, I was hoping that C I H o s t would do it with a little convinging, but that is obviously not going to happen :(

good luck and let us the result.

Well the cost of signing for their lowest plan for a month is definitely cheaper than 100$ I am sure. But in any case, C I has no legal obligation to return any data to you, given that you sign up with a reseller and not them. I doubt your new host will make a dramatic impact with them. I could be wrong.

C I seems pretty shady here... This is worse then the whole moving and storage business problems.

$100 seems like a reasonable fee to restore the data and verify the ownership of the files. The host is under no legal obligation to give you a copy of the files. I'd advise not doing a chargeback as the $100 plus chargeback fees and collections fees would be sent to collections(as it should be).

I would have still given him the info for free. I have my own system for backups which i also backup 22 other servers and we are only talking about a 2min job to go in and select the directory hit restore, tar and send an email with a link. Maybe its not 2 mins but it is noway over an hour's worth of work. I think they should atleast charge it hourly. And untop of that, they should have also taken this another direction.... Since one of THEIR resselers Foo Bared, it should be their number one priority to first try to sign up that person with some type of special... instead they gave him a slap in the face.