Why can't I just wake up and it all be a bad dream.....

I try to log on to one of my sites (which is one of two that are still with them) and this is what I see:




Feature Price service currently interrupted.

All websites hosted by Feature Price are currently down. If you have already signed up for an Atlantic.Net web hosting account through an Atlantic.Net sales rep or on your own through Atlantic.Net’s website, your service is unaffected.

Atlantic.Net has been working with the former entity of Feature Price to transition Feature Price customers safely to Atlantic.Net. However, today the former entity of Feature Price denied Atlantic.Net employees access to Feature Price’s equipment. Shortly after this occurred, all service to Feature Price customers ceased due to unknown factors at this time.

At this time, Atlantic.Net cannot provide a time frame for service to be restored, however we are working closely with all available professional, legal, and law enforcement channels to restore service to Feature Price’s customer base as quickly as possible.

Your Options at this time:

1) Be patient and wait to see when service is restored to Feature Price web hosting. If you choose this option the time frame for your web hosting space to be up and available to all Internet users is unknown at this time.

2) You may secure your web hosting presence through Atlantic.Net by signing up for one of our web hosting plans. This will ensure that you do not experience any further difficulties due to Feature Price, as Atlantic.Net’s web hosting infrastructure is completely separate from Feature Price. Additionally, we have created new web hosting plans targeted to meet the needs of Feature Price’s customer base. If you choose this option the time frame for your web hosting space to be up and available to all Internet users will be approximately 24 - 72 hours. Please click here to view and signup for one of Atlantic.Net’s Web hosting plans.

If you are on a Platinum or Premium Plan:
We will honor the remainder of your prepaid service if you remain with Feature Price or if you switch to one of Atlantic.Net’s web hosting plans. Please click here to view and signup for one of Atlantic.Net’s Web hosting plans.

If you are on a Mini or Budget Plan:
We will honor your prepaid service through August 1, 2003 if you remain with Feature Price or if you switch to one of Atlantic.Net’s web hosting plans. You will need to start paying for your hosting account after August 1st 2003 you will not be charged for July if you switch now. Please click here to view and signup for one of Atlantic.Net’s Web hosting plans.

3) You may switch your web hosting to another web hosting provider of your choice. If you choose this option the time frame for your web hosting space to be up and available to all Internet users is unknown at this time.

Atlantic.Net apologizes for this interruption of Feature Price’s service. We got into this to try and restore some faith into the hosting community and to try and put the customers first. Yet this has been undermined at every turn to the ultimate loss of your web hosting service to date.

At this time we encourage you to be proactive and assist us by switching your Web hosting account to Atlantic.Net as quickly as possible. This will ensure the fastest and smoothest transition of your hosting service away from Feature Price. We also would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your patience to date we are making serious ground in getting services restored and customers domains returned to your control. We thank you for your tolerance and are working for you to restore your services.

Thanks,
Atlantic.Net Team
1-800-921-9328

'All websites hosted by Feature Price are currently down.'

Yes, one of our clients on 64.127.134.1 just notified us of that page.
I came here to post! You beat me to it. :-)

I have a silly question. If they are denied access to Feature Price equipment, how could they have that message on your site that is still hosted with feature price?

Unless I'm misunderstanding something here, it looks to me like a ploy to get everyone to switch over to their hosting plans for their own convenience.

Originally posted by LightningWeb
I have a silly question. If they are denied access to Feature Price equipment, how could they have that message on your site that is still hosted with feature price?

Unless I'm misunderstanding something here, it looks to me like a ploy to get everyone to switch over to their hosting plans for their own convenience.

Quite fishy.
http://64.127.134.1/
How did they get to post that, without access? DNS alchemy?
:eek:

If you wish to choose another provider the ETA is unknown
PAH
Go find yourself a real host and wait until UNKNOWN:UNKNOWN am on your clock to get your domain back :D

www.sprintserve.net
www.crediblehost.com
www.p4host.com
www.vnpixel.com
www.cybrisk.com
www.dathorn.com
www.hostnexus.com
www.hostgator.com
Just to name a few GOOD hosts :)

Yes, it sounds like they are saying that A.N. has denied them actual access to the physical equipment but A.N. can still go in and put that message up without having physical access.

However, they seem more than willing to handle transferring the domain to their OWN service stating 24-72 hours to do it but if you want to transfer to a different host they apparently aren't going to let that happen as they are saying an "unknown" time frame for that. If they can do it for themselves, they can do it for a transfer to a different host, they just don't want to. IMO, they chose to embroil themselves in the F.P. mess, they should do the right thing.

perhaps they already have the list of all featureprice's customers before their access to the servers has been denied?

The DNS entries for accounts hosted by Feature Price (at least one account that I know of) are as follows:

NS1.FASTNAMESERV.COM
NS2.FASTNAMESERV.COM

Fastnameserv.Com in turn uses Yahoo DNS (NS1.YAHOO.COM & NS1.YAHOO.COM).

Ultimately requests for fastnameserv.com resolve to 69box.atlantic.net. If the DNS is routed through Atlantic.Net's own boxes, it shouldn't be a big deal for them to change all Feature Price websites resolve to the page you see right now after they notice Feature Price blocking access to their servers.

Originally posted by surpass
Quite fishy.
http://64.127.134.1/
How did they get to post that, without access? DNS alchemy?
:eek:

Actually, my friend at Atlantic.net said Atlantic.net pointed all of Feature Price's IP space to one website. Which is apparently quite easy to do. However, the core router at Feature Price's facility has been cut off from inside and Feature Price's former owners have locked themselves inside the building and won't let any one in. Since they don't have access to the router, they no longer have access to any of the customer's servers/sites. He said that 2 news crews have been camping outside of Feature Price all day. I'm sure we'll see something about it on one of the Fort Myers TV station's websites.

Travis strikes again. :(

and it resolved that quickly? still seems fishy to me.

Originally posted by LightningWeb
and it resolved that quickly? still seems fishy to me.
Humm... you know, the idea isn't that they individually went to change each customer's DNS entries at the registrat. All those DNS entries resolved to a server under atlantic.net which routed them onwards to Feature Price servers where the websites were physically located.

Now, if you meant the IP addresses, they don't need time to resolve like DNS entries as far as I know.

Yikes.. LOL, where does he get all his funds? Off Shore Banking? He must like going to Cuba.. HEHE.. :-)

You will need to start paying for your hosting account after August 1st 2003 you will not be charged for July if you switch now. Please click here to view and signup for one of Atlantic.Net’s Web hosting plans.

You know.... do you think it's kinda odd that this happend at the first of the month? Especially since they are offering the month of July for free?

Seems kind of sketchy to me. But that's just my opinion.

Atlantic offered June for "free" too. And premium and platinum accounts are supposed to be supported to the end of the Featureprice contracts.

But if they can go down this easy, what good does that do?

Grianstad, you might want to read this.

2) You may secure your web hosting presence through Atlantic.Net by signing up for one of our web hosting plans. This will ensure that you do not experience any further difficulties due to Feature Price, as Atlantic.Net’s web hosting infrastructure is completely separate from Feature Price. Additionally, we have created new web hosting plans targeted to meet the needs of Feature Price’s customer base. If you choose this option the time frame for your web hosting space to be up and available to all Internet users will be approximately 24 - 72 hours. Please click here to view and signup for one of Atlantic.Net’s Web hosting plans.

Atlantic.net isn't down, the sites hosted on the old FeaturePrice equipment are because the people at FP are locking them out. If anyone transfers to Atlantic, they don't have to worry about the fraudsters anymore.

From a Ft Myers TV Station website:

Phone Company Shuts Down
Dateline: July 1, 2003 - Chris Cifatte



Fort Myers : A local telephone company has shut down, and customers say they're being shut out.

Edison Telephone is a pre-paid phone company headquartered in Fort Myers.
Monday afternoon, a group of angry customers found out the company is closed down.

A pre-paid phone company takes money in advance rather than bill you afterward.
That means people who just paid their bills won't get the phone service they paid for and they're mad.

Edison is owned by the same family that founded Featureprice.com, a web hosting company.

Last month WINK News told you about angry customers of that company when it closed down without notice.

Owner Bonnie Johnson blames Edison's problems on the company that bought out Featureprice.com for not paying the bills. "When Atlantic Broadband did not come through and let me know that they were going to deliberately keep money from sprint and not pay them, I started trying to find another company to work with the customers," Johnson told WINK News.

Atlantic Broadband did buy Featureprice.com but they told WINK they've never heard of Edison Telephone, and never agreed to pay any of its bills.

WINK News will let you know what happens next.

link to this: http://www.winktv.com/local/show_news.php?show_n_id=4665&archive=1

I wonder why Featureprice is locking Atlantic out, since Atlantic was supposed to be taking over the accounts?

And I didn't mean that Atlantic.net was down. I'm sure they are reliable.

Who knows what the owner is thinking.. or rather ex-owner. He has done many irrational things in the past few months, and one more saga to it is hardly surprising.

Their clients should just switch, be it to Atlantic or to others when they had the chance.

Their clients should just switch, be it to Atlantic or to others when they had the chance.

I wished I would of moved all my sites. I left two of my own pet-projects and now I regret it.

Being a previous satisfied customer of Atlantic.net, I felt confident that the problems would go away and I wanted to at least get what I paid for and use the rest of my contract up. I guess that backfired!!!

The ad page for Atlantic is showing up in windows with the original site owner's domain name as the url. Wouldn't this be illegal? Every visitor to an FP customer's site is getting an Atlantic ad, using the domain name owned by the customer.
They have to be connected for Atlantic to have all of FP's customer list and access to changing the customer's index page or redirecting, don't they? Otherwise, we'd just get a page not found error.
This stinks. They're abusing domain names owned by others to advertise to all of that domain's visitors.

Why is anyone even with FP/Atlantic anymore? I would of ran if I would have been in that boat months ago...

Who knows why people are still there. We moved months ago when the problems became obvious and looked like they would not be solved. The sites were constantly down and no one responded to trouble tickets. That should be enough warning. And Atlantic has been spamming me and is still trying to get the business even though we left FP long ago. Someone else who was with FP contacted me for help recently because anyone going to their website was getting an Atlantic advertisement instead of their site. It's terrible that they did that to everyone. They have no right to advertise using domain names that others have paid for. Anyway, we got the site moved overnight and good riddance to all things FeaturePrice, including Atlantic.

Im in a similar boat as Keesha.

I figured this mess was just a big nightmare in which I'd wake up from, shortly.

Being the optimist, and wanting to get full benefit for my prepaid yearly account, I held on to FeaturPrice to the bitter end.
I did, however; backup all of my files.

My websites are not mission-critical, so I dont mind a little bit of downtime until either the problem is resolved, or I am forced to change hosts.

-A

We just transferred several domains to our service today from the FP fiasco. The client had been struggling to get control of his domains and managed to do it. His sites were switched over today with no problems.

Do you have control over your domains? I'm talking about how FP had put domains in their own name so no one could transfer even if they wanted to. If you have the domain control, you can transfer to whoever you want. Don't let AN tell you otherwise.

Yes, I still have control of my domain. However, I did have to use Atlantic.net's domain manager to change my nameservers (which I did shortly after the most recent issues). Here's the link to it for anyone who needs it:

http://signup.atlantic.net/featureprice/

Damn this thing keeps going and going, lol...

I must've of been the only one who "jumped the boat" at the first signs of trouble in January 2003. After all the crap since then which has only gotten worse, people are still hosting there?

I lost $200+ to FP, but honestly, I don't even care anymore. I even got my domain back from them, but only after having to start legal action though.

I think this would be a sign for those still hosting there to find a new host. :(

When is this going to end? :rolleyes:

I must've of been the only one who "jumped the boat" at the first signs of trouble in January 2003. After all the crap since then which has only gotten worse, people are still hosting there?

I lost $200+ to FP, but honestly, I don't even care anymore. I even got my domain back from them, but only after having to start legal action though.

I think this would be a sign for those still hosting there to find a new host.


I think a few others and myself have stated why we chose to stay. We didn't want to lose the $200 that you claim you lost. For those who can't seem to read, we stayed because we had sites that were not mandatory to be up 100% of the time (hobbie sites and the like) and we wanted to get what we paid for. We have control of our domains just like you state you do, so what's with all the criticism from you guys? Geez... give a break

keesha

sometimes things come across too harshly on these forums.

If you have control of your domain, just go ahead and transfer it - either to AN or to another reputable company.

I just followed through with Atlantic.net sign up but stoped short when I realized they wanted my credit card information. It looks like you have to sign up for one of their accounts and that they will credit you with whatever money you had left in your featureprice account. Only catch is they have a set up fee and the prices don't jive with the featureprice options. I could sign up with them and use the credit of three months I have, but it would end up costing me more in the end.

It all seems pretty sneaky and I'd rather just avoid them alltogether for now.

There are so many quality hosts out there and this forum is a testement to that. I don't like the Atlantic.net tactic of baiting the featureprice customers. They've allready gone through enough!

I guess my 75 buks is gone down the drain.

http://news.netcraft.com/

checkout where the featureprice customers are running...

I ran to dathorn personally.

Wow!

Lots of people left FeaturePrice to all sorts of different hosting companies.

Yes, and I have a new client that wants to move his domain name now....

Is featureprice run by atlantic, yahoo or what?

Has anyone had any success in moving domains "owned by a featureprice customer"?

I posted up a few posts that we have been able to transfer quite a few clients from FeaturePrice. They had previously worked to get control of the domains and once they did, we had absolutely no trouble with the transfer. So if your client/potential client has control of their domain, they can transfer easily.

Yes, I still have control of my domain. However, I did have to use Atlantic.net's domain manager to change my nameservers (which I did shortly after the most recent issues). Here's the link to it for anyone who needs it:

http://signup.atlantic.net/featureprice/

Originally posted by indyjon
Has anyone had any success in moving domains "owned by a featureprice customer"?
For what it's worth, FP registerd it's customer domains with DotRegistrar (http://www.dotregistrar.com/). They may be willing to help you, after all they have a whole stack of domains with no idea who they belong to, or who to bill come renewal time.

The problem is, FP never populated the domain records with customer information. Unless the customer was proactive about it, these records have no Admin, Tech, or Billing contacts associated with them. If you can demonstrate your customer's ownership of the domain in question, I'm sure DotRegistrar will work with you.

This link [ http://signup.atlantic.net/featureprice/ ], posted by keesha, is a great way to regain control of a lost domain registered through FP. You can even use this method to recover the domain on your clients behalf. Be sure you are an authorized agent of your customer before you get started though, because they will be tracking your IP and throwing allot of legal mumbo-jumbo at you.

Where am I coming from with all this? I am an FP refugee. I used the above form, though I didn't actually have to (I was proactive about populating my domain record). Last weekend, I took my five domains (only one was registered at DotRegistrar) and jumped ship, leaving six months of paid hosting on the table. Then I transferred my DotRegistrar domain to NetSol, it took less than 72 hours to complete the transfer. Now all my domains are nice and snug under a single domain manager account.:D

Over the last few weeks I have been researching for a new host. I spent quite a bit of time lurking about here at WHT, reading post after post, conducting searches on new leads, and learning what to expect from a quality host. Thanks for everyting :gthumb:

Here's a little pay back :cool:

DotRegistrar didnt help jack before. They are useless when I tried to get help. I had to get a snapback, namewinner, godaddy and thefirstname all after my domain which expired back in april with featureprice. I got it back with a snapback luckily. DotRegistrar dont help at all from my experience, I hope your luck is better then mine.

I didn't actually have to talk to DotRegistrar, except to confirm the NetSol request to transfer my domain :)

I think the best way to populate a lost FP domain record is the atlantic.net recovery link keesha posted :scatter:

Yes, DotRegistrar was a pain in the ass!

They completely ignored me and my requests and DENIED my request for a domain transfer to GoDaddy (which they're suppose to contact me to ask, my info was on the WHOIS) without even asking me if I wanted to transfer it or not (assuming I'd want to deny a transfer I asked for...).

I finally sent them an email stating that due to their own actions, my own choices were narrowing down to legal actions. They still pretty much ignored me.

So my attorney sent them a letter and called them. Guess what? They immediately accepted my transfer request and were suddenly nice and responsive. Sad... :(

Originally posted by PUBH
So my attorney sent them a letter and called them. Guess what? They immediately accepted my transfer request and were suddenly nice and responsive. Sad... :(

Seems to me like that's the only way to get anything done in America. :rolleyes:

Will.

Originally posted by PUBH
They completely ignored me and my requests and DENIED my request for a domain transfer to GoDaddy (which they're suppose to contact me to ask, my info was on the WHOIS) without even asking me if I wanted to transfer it or not (assuming I'd want to deny a transfer I asked for...).
That's quite a contrast from my experience.

July 4, 2003 12:45 AM NetSol confirmed my transfer request
July 5, 2003 3:40 PM DotRegistrar requested confirmation
July 5, 2003 4:05 PM DotRegistrar approved the transfer
July 6, 2003 1:05 AM NetSol verified the completed transfer

DotRegister went on to request "We would really appreciate any comments on our service and the problems you might have experienced." Perhaps they woke up or decided to save themselves some aggravation. Perhaps they have chosen to cooperate with there existing customers in the hopes of retaining a few. Perhaps I just got lucky :D

Whatever the reason, I feel obliged to present some positive DotRegistrar feedback after receiving such prompt service.^)

Perhaps they changed a bit since then.

I got the transfers done in April/May.

:dgrin: To be honest (as if there's any other way to be) :dgrin:

I have read only negative remarks about DotRegistrar. Many other technicians and customers have had difficulty working with them. You had to dispatch an attorney for crying out loud :eek:! What's worse, it's not entirely shocking to divzero .^|except you're referring to my backyard, right :smokin:| For their sake, DotRegistrar that is, my story shouldn't the exception. Besides, they have a perfect opportunity to step up and scratch a few backs.

I guess now I can watch to see if they sit back down.

I do believe someone bought out DotRegistrar though (Tucows if I am correct). Hopefully things can change. But I'll never be doing business with them again.

its there a possibility to access my old info???


i lost a lot of info in my databases!!!!

:angry: :mad: :bawling: :(

If you have your old IP address, can find and edit your hosts file (you may need this if you had more than one domain), and the account is still up and running...probably :D

My FP/Atlantic.net address is still down. If I were looking to recover data, I would be watching for these servers to come back up and contacting atlantic.net for more information about their status or the possibility of data recovery later.

Honestly, I would go with the assumption that you'll never get the info back. :(

Originally posted by roro
its there a possibility to access my old info???


i lost a lot of info in my databases!!!!

:angry: :mad: :bawling: :(

As PUBH said, you should probably just consider all of that information gone. Atlantic is suing for an emergency order to gain access to the servers housing everyone's data:

http://www.leeclerk.org/civil_detail.asp?CsNum=03-CA-02744&CsType=


In the future, keeping a set of local backups would be a good idea for you. Going through this nightmare once ought to be enough for anyone.

Yes.

It is a good idea to keep backups of your databases regularly. I make backups of mine every few days, or at the end of the day if there have been important and major changes. Cause if you lose the database, that information is gone. Thus without a backup your info is gone.

I'm also sort of surprised Atlantic filed that against FP. Most hosts in such a situation would just wait-it-out.

I know, its all my fault... i used to make backups of my databases every month!
and yes... featureprice broke on june 27!!! lucky me

Originally posted by PUBH


I'm also sort of surprised Atlantic filed that against FP. Most hosts in such a situation would just wait-it-out.

Really? Even if people were putting up "Atlantic Sucks Harder Than FeaturePrice" sites and flooding the Support department every day with calls and e-mail, screaming that they want their pages up? 'cause that's what's been happening.

I'm actually surprised they didn't file sooner, given the pure headache this whole exercise has been for them.

A lot of FeaturePrice users that didn't get out before everything completely fell apart (out of a desire to "get what they paid for") are now completely stuck. No data, no access, nothing, because Travis shut off the servers. Now they're complaining to the BBB and the FL Atty. Gen. about Atlantic, claiming fraud and what-have-you.

I don't think they really had a lot of choice, if they want to keep their reputation intact.

Originally posted by roro

featureprice broke on june 27!!! lucky me


Heh. FeaturePrice broke in January, m'man. What lucky corner of the web have you been hiding in, that you were spared til now?

featureprice has been broken since back in november/december :P it just got progressively worse until like march and they died.

Originally posted by missy-sedai


Heh. FeaturePrice broke in January, m'man. What lucky corner of the web have you been hiding in, that you were spared til now?

i mean... the access to the info

sorry about my english!


Atlantic had control of the servers for some time, why they dont make a backup?!?! atlantic is a part of the problem! they said they will respect the platinium packages, THEY LIED!!!!

Originally posted by roro

Atlantic had control of the servers for some time, why they dont make a backup?!?! atlantic is a part of the problem! they said they will respect the platinium packages, THEY LIED!!!!

No, they didn't lie.

They don't have control of the servers, they haven't been able to gain control of the servers, which is why they're suing to gain control. FeaturePrice decided not to honor the terms of the purchase agreement.

It's not Atlantic's fault that you don't have your information - it's your responsibility to make regular backups.

I understand your frustration, but let's not lay blame on Atlantic for your failure to safeguard your data.

Originally posted by missy-sedai
No, they didn't lie.

They don't have control of the servers, they haven't been able to gain control of the servers, which is why they're suing to gain control. FeaturePrice decided not to honor the terms of the purchase agreement.

It's not Atlantic's fault that you don't have your information - it's your responsibility to make regular backups.

I understand your frustration, but let's not lay blame on Atlantic for your failure to safeguard your data. Well met.

Atlantic.net is on the short end of the FP ugly stick too. :rolleyes: