The following is why you never deal with Jeff Kehe and the above people. This is from an ICQ to Jeff just a few minutes ago. We want to remove our equipment from his NOC because of poor service. I'll let everyone know how it goes:

JEFF
You guys are under contract, I can't let you take anything out....

ME
Ummm....our contract doesn't say we HAVE to keep equipment there.

JEFF
Well, it doesn't say that I have to let you take it out, either. If you take it out, I'm going to need certified funds for the remaining months of the contract.

ME
Ok, I'll have my lawyer contact you shortly. The contract says nothing about you being able to hold my equpment if I'm paying my bill and I am.

JEFF
That's fine.

ME
I need a number for him to call.

JEFF
Okay. You can have him call me directly, 404-XXX-XXXX. I have no problem speaking with him. BTW - I brought a UUnet circuit online, and I was planning on moving you to that... but I won't bother if you're going to start threatening us legally.

ME
I have one month left with you. I want to move my equipment out now. Your connection is bad for gameservers and I need to get those boxes to MAE where I can make some money on them.

Be a prick. I'll give my lawyer your number. I have one month left. I have paid you for 12 months and gotten nothing but 3 moves and lots of down time.

JEFF
You have February and March remaining, I believe... because you started service in April. I'm not trying to be a prick.

ME
I signed the contract February 20something. I got it at home. Regardless of when it started I want to move my equipment. I have a right to do that. To bad if you don't like it. The contract states that you can keep it if I don't pay, but I have been paying

JEFF
You signed the contract March 22.

ME
Ok, I'll have to look. either way. I want my equipment. I have been paying on time. I want to remove my servers so that I can make some money on them.

JEFF
I'd be happy to let you have them, if you are willing to forward us $1198 to settle the remaining months of your contract with us.

ME
Why?

JEFF
The last two months of service would be due prior to removal of the equipment.

ME
Ok, tell me....where in the contract does it state that?

ME
Both you and I know if this went to court you would loose. Holding my equipment because you want to is not a valid reason. My contract states that I will pay you XXX dollars...not that I will actually have or keep equipment in your facility.

JEFF
Mike, I'm not going to argue with you any more about this. Have your attorney call me if he wants. If necessary, I'll get my attorneys involved. Keep in mind also that any litigation has to be filed in Greenville, South Carolina, per the contract.

ME
No problem. He will call you shortly.

If holding your equipment until the contract is over is *not* in the contract, he's got to be on crack to think he can just add that clause in at the very end and think it is ok.

It seems to me that the equipment and payment are two different issues, and while he may have to sue you in the event you don't pay according to the contract, he is not able to leverage your equipment against that and prevent or head off that possibility.

What really seems to suck about something like this is that Mike doesn't appear to be threatening to withhold any funds at all, he just wants his servers on a faster network and now. He only has one month (maybe two) to go on the contract, so any litigation will certainly take longer than that.

It sucks that Mike has to be put in a position like this at all.

Good luck Mike, I hope you get your servers soon.

Scott

Do you have an electronic copy of that contract? It would be interesting to see what the contract says on the matter.

Cbaker17, what would your company do in this situation?

Robert Marsh
Head Surfer Rackshack.net

I get a "File Not Found" when I click on the AUP/TOS link on the serverhost web site.

Well, I was going to find their TOS and see if it mentioned anything like this... but upon visiting www.plusweb.com I find a helpful Cobalt Raq saying "Welcome to the Web Site of www.plusweb.com".

<edit>Sorry Chicken, you're quite right, my other comment was out of line.</edit>

http://www.webauthorities.com/contract.pdf

There is the contract. No, I never said I wouldn't continue to pay the remainder of the two months. But as everyone here knows, their track record isn't the greatest. I just want my equipment out.

I hate to say this, Mike A, but I think that you will have a very difficult time with this legally. I've been on both sides of legal efforts before, and it always sucks to be involved with that kind of mess. If you file a suit it will have to be in the court that is specified in the contract. Even if you go through that expense and hassle, it will take a long time to get the issue resolved.

One of the reasons I do business with rackshack is because I don't have to sign a lengthy contract. Rackshack uses a high set-up fee and low monthly rates to their advantage.

Mind you, I used to have two dedicated servers at *****, so I know how frustrating things can be. Hang in there.

Jim

Who's got the gas because let's start the flame :)

First, I used to be a part of Version 12 (rock on Allan) and then 5 Star Communications aquired them and 5SC is in the same Datacenter as Jeff's stuff (or so it seems looking at traceroutes). I had numerous outages with 5 Star, they didn't like to pay Mae Dulles so Mae Dulles cut their service off and kept their equipment until they did (took them 2.5 weeks to pay)...it stipulated in the contract they could do that. Basically 5 Star sucks.

Also, I have worked out a deal directly with Mae Dulles so I don't have to deal with 5SC anymore. We need to talk more about this because I'm curious of your experience with them.

Depending on the situation you may be able to get out of your contract if their uptime hasn't been what they've stated in the SLA and then you can cite that as your reason for leaving. If you can do it this way and he won't give you your equipment back most likely you can sue Jeff for losts associated with him not letting you take your equipment back in an orderly time period.

I hate talking about bad web hosting policies and tactics. Companies that have bad contracts should be made public - we should keep a list on WHT for the companies on a "watch" list for bad business tactics...just a thought.

-Paul

Ouch.. that contract is a bear. What I have typically seen in other contracts is a lien on the equipment IF and only if a customer becomes delinquent in payment. They way this contract reads is that customer equipment will not be released until ALL fees have been paid. (Section 14 I believe)

As we have been looking into doing colocation, we have been gathering other companies agreements. This is the only one that I have seen so far that creates a lien even if the customer is not past due.

I am certainly not a lawyer but I do feel for your situation. Good luck. It appears that it is up to the good will of the company involved here what they will do or will not due.

You would certainly spend thousands on an attorney to get the kind of court order that you need and it would likely take some time, maybe even months. Everyone likes to talk about the legal this and lawyer that, but for the dollars you are talking it is simply not worth it.

If we take a licking from a vendor in our business, like we recently did from XO, we chalk it up to experience and let our dollars do the talking in the future.

Good luck.

Robeert Marsh
Head Surfer Rackshack.net

<< I would really like to tell you all about my MORE THEN TERRIBLE story with Jeff, and the money that I lost - But I want to post ALL the nasty emails, ICQ messages, and facts before I do so >>

Best of luck Mike!

Um... what's the problem here? I'm a bit confused.

Mike says that he's willing to pay the remainder of the two months. Jeff says that he wants to see the remainder of the two months before he sends the equipment off.

So, um, pay him the remainder of the contract, and get your servers back. Surely it doesn't matter if you pay him the money now or a month from now, does it?

The contract specifically states:

14. Any Customer equipment in “PC’s” possession will not be released until all applicable fees have been paid. In the event that unpaid fees are not satisfied within 60 days, “PC”, at its discretion, may elect to sell Customer equipment to satisfy any unpaid account balances. If the sale of Customer equipment does not satisfy the account balance, the Customer remains responsible for the payment of the remainder of the account balance. If the sale of Customer equipment is required to satisfy account balances, “PC” has absolutely no obligation to safeguard, backup, retain, or return to Customer any data residing on equipment being sold.

We'd be happy to give you your equipment if you pay the remaining two months - totalling $1198. Or, you can continue service for the remaining two months. Either way is fine with us, it's up to you.

Interpretation of this could be done in many ways. Since are not yet even assessed (time not elapsed), they cannot not be applicable.

On the other hand, since the contract specifically mentions this, it could be considered collateral and therefore the fees "to be" assessed may be an issue. I think since the contract states that the equipment may be sold it becomes collateral by implication.

The real bear is that it isn't perfectly clear in either way, so personally I'd have to side with consumer versus seller.

Tough one, my interpretations can certainly be questionable.

Hope you guys work this out.

Originally posted by cperciva
Um... what's the problem here? I'm a bit confused.

So, um, pay him the remainder of the contract, and get your servers back. Surely it doesn't matter if you pay him the money now or a month from now, does it?

The problem is that I don't want to pay it all up front. The contract states that he can hold the equipment if I fail to pay. I've paid Jeff every month ONTIME, regardless of the problems we have had with them. What if I need to get just one server to do an upgrade on it. According to Jeff, I'd have to pay him the FULL amount up front to get that one server. According to Jeff, each server I send to him, he gets to keep. Certainly that can't be what the law would say.

Ok Jeff, if you won't let me have all the server, how about 2 of them? Certainly you won't deny me making something. Keep 1 of them, say the dual pentium. Are you going to hurt your business by making sure you hurt someone else's?

The problem I have Jeff, and I hope everyone else here see's this, is that I'm loosing money by staying with you. You failed to pay your bill at the NOC in Atlanta (for 3 months from what they say), and EVERYONE's server went down. You moved my servers 3 times (SC to OHIO to GA). We have had numerous down times and problems (one of which was a server that you guys said you rebooted, but in fact was never rebooted and took 4 days to come back up). I know your contract says that you are not responsible for lost money, but I'm hear to tell you, what you are doing is bad business and by not allowing me to recoup some of my losses by getting some of those servers back, you are ruining your name.

BTW, consider this (and the fax coming to you today) a notice that we don't plan to renew with you.

Mike,

I would be happy to discuss any questions you have about the issue over the phone, or via ICQ. I am willing to work out a solution to this issue, but you are going to have to talk to me about it directly, rather than attacking the company I work for on an open forum. You know yourself from our many conversations that I'm not an unreasonable person... I don't understand why you come to the forum first before trying to work things out. In addition, I don't appreciate you trying to spread false information about Plusweb on this board. Your actions are hurting your reputation too, you know.

How did this all finish (if so)?
And what the lawer said?
:)

This situation was resolved without any attorney involvement. I believe it was resolved to the satisfaction of both parties.

are u planning on moving, again in the near future ?

I though u had a new datacneter opened ? (<-- whats happening to that offer?)

Justin

Originally posted by jkehe
This situation was resolved without any attorney involvement. I believe it was resolved to the satisfaction of both parties.

Extremely correct :))
So be it...

I've always wondered about the risks of colo and if there were any cases where a host would just steal customers' servers :D

Good to hear that it was resolved ok, but scary that the customer who signs a contract with that host has essentially no gauranteed quality of network service or more accurately no leverage in the event something goes wrong (since the host will simply take and sell their server if any dispute arises whatsoever). Ouch.

Anyway, thanks for posting the details here. A reminder that careful reading of the contract is VERY importantly, especially if you're trusting someone with your equipment.

Originally posted by scott2
I've always wondered about the risks of colo and if there were any cases where a host would just steal customers' servers :D

Good to hear that it was resolved ok, but scary that the customer who signs a contract with that host has essentially no gauranteed quality of network service or more accurately no leverage in the event something goes wrong (since the host will simply take and sell their server if any dispute arises whatsoever). Ouch.


So. The colo is risk anyway - you spend your money and do not know - will it bring you profit or at least return your money :)

(Note: Here and after I do not mean personally you - just any _you_ :)

Try to take a look from the other side...
You signed a contract - company makes it's plans and can expect you'll pay(and BTW makes a discount). Question regarding quality of service is big enough to be discussed separately. You must pay if you signed the contract (contract' termination is related to the question of quality of service).
Will you pay the rest if company will send you your equipment? I guess no. Even if you think "yes" for that moment - you'll change your mind when time to pay will come :)
You know there is a rule in the shipping - if shipowner will give a cargo to a charterer before gets the money, he will never see that money. Whatever charterer says. While you have his cargo - you can discuss a rules. After you gave it - forget about money. It's a hundreds years rule (you understand - shipping is old enough). I think that the situation in collocation is very close to shipping - while you have his server - you can discuss the rules and conditions. If you don't - forget about money.
Can I say something regarding the behaivor of Jeff? Yes. It's reasonable.
I'll repeat again - the quality of servise is another question. If the contract does not have any conditions regarding this matter - there is nothing to discuss.

One more thing - I think that Mike was absolutely right when he says - leave one server till the end of contract and send me anothers.

Ok Jeff, if you won't let me have all the server, how about 2 of them? Certainly you won't deny me making something. Keep 1 of them, say the dual pentium.

That was a solution. I beleive that this problem was solved this way.

Oops! This message is already long enough :)

Best regards.
Edward

P.S. I do not work for any hosting company, and never did.

From my point of view as a customer, if I had spent all the time and money to setup a server with a colo host, the host would have to be extemely bad for me to want to pull the server out and place it elsewhere. In this case it sounds like the host in question was given several opportunities to provide better service. Not to mention multiple moves - I would say that extended downtime from more than one NOC move a year alone, and especially more than 2, is very unacceptable.

Anyway, I would certainly steer clear of this colo. If your server can be held hostage (while you are paying on time and in full), you have no leverage except going to court which is extremely expensive and time consuming to get your $2000-$4000 server back. What if service is good today but bad tommorrow?

All I know is that when I deal with people, if they were not satisfied with my work, and gave many chances to make things right, I would certainly not respond by holding the material they gave me to work with hostage. But then again, I'm not rich and maybe that's the reason why :)

I do think customers can do better contract wise, and I certainlly would never go with them after reading this thread.

so do I hear someone saying we think it is ok to keep someones things until they honor the entire contract they comitted to? Jeff Kehe - what do you think about this?

sailor: After thinking about this for a bit, I would agree if the client could easily end the contract if the host failed to live up to the uptime guarantee for a month. That way the host is protected from customers who are simply indecisive, while at the same the customer is protected from a host who is simply incompetent or dishonest.

With a dedicated server you typically get your monthly back in a best case if the host is unable to provide adequate network uptime, or a partial reimbursement for downtime. What do you get with a Colo?

Say I spend $3000 up front for a server, get 2 months of service on a 1 year contract, and then the host moves to a new NOC and is unable to provide good uptime for 2 months straight and this still can't be resolved (say network uptime is below 99.5%). Now I'm losing business, and at best might get the montly $200 a month back, but if the server is hostage for the full contract, I'm out the initial $3000 investment.

Does a typical colo contract allow the customer to be relieved if the host is not keeping up his end of the contract (providing network uptime of at least xx.x%). Do contracts ever include provisions for the type ping time averages or other measures of how good a host's connection will remain for the year? What happens if the host starts the year with great upstream providers and then switches to cheap but low quality bandwidth, so for example, clients from Europe find accessing their site to be unacceptably slow?

The quality of service was not mentioned, other than something to the effect of "Plusweb will do its best to keep the user online, but does not guarantee uptime." The only reason why we required payment for the last two months, which was only $1198, was that we had reason to question the future credit worthiness of the customer. The contract specifically stated that we could require payment, so we did. Nonetheless, we were not out to get anyone, or hurt anyone's business, we just wanted to make sure our interests were protected.

It just seems unbalanced that the customer would have no assurance as to the quality of service and the host would have every assurance to get their payment. I would not go with a contract like that... too risky unless you have cash to spare.

I suppose this would hit me more than it hit the customer in this case, because just starting off I was thinking of possibly building a server and sending it in. I wouldn't have extra servers to spare or lots of cash, but I could pay the monthly based on money coming in to me and advertising revenue. If the quality of service drops to an unacceptable level, it seems unfair that I would have to come up with a cash advance to the host which was not budgeted in advance. And it didn't sound like there was reason to suspect the customer wasn't "credit worthy" since he said that he had made every payment on time to date.

I guess it's not so much the holding the customer to the yearly contract as not providing adequate service to keep the customer at your facility and demanding not only full payment but full payment in advance of when it was due for service not provided.

Originally posted by sailor
so do I hear someone saying we think it is ok to keep someones things until they honor the entire contract they comitted to? Jeff Kehe - what do you think about this?

I would stay the hell out of this Hinkle, since one of the reasons the customer left was because of you.

I would stay the hell out of this Hinkle, since one of the reasons the customer left was because of you.


Great way to win over supporters and new customers Jeff :) you really won me over :rolleyes:

Originally posted by AlaskanWolf
Great way to win over supporters and new customers Jeff :) you really won me over :rolleyes:

Well, the thing you must understand is that Mr. Hinkle and his organization has been reading hostnames off of our machines co-located in his company's data center, contacting those customers, and then offering them lower prices in order to get them to switch over. Or, he's telling them false information about us going out of business in order to get them to sign up with him, and leave us locked into paying for additional services that were specifically for that customer. Hell, he even took a machine out of our cabinets and put it in his, because he decided that the customer was now his. We told him specifically not to have any contact with any of our customers from the very beginning. So, I hope this shows where I'm coming from when I get angry when he tries to jump on the bandwagon when he starts bashing us.

Thats more like it. Glad to see an explation

Jeff - it is unfortunate that you continue to resort to spreading falsehoods in order to defame other companies. I have printed your statement that you have made in this public forum and will be moving forward with a business libel suit against you and your company. Our company denies your allegations and in fact - if you would provide proper service to your clients and pay your bills to your upstreams so they don't shut your service down - you would be doing much better. Some of your customers have contacted us on several occassions and requested our help and requested to do business with us direct because of the problems I mentioned above. It is usually "I can;t get Jeff Kehe or anyone at his company to reboot my server and I don;t know where they are - can you please help me - we have been down for 8 hours and my busienss is suffering" or why is all service down - we can not do busieness this way - we don;t like him - can we please do busienss with you? I have other resellers hosts that I do busienss with and in fact send busienss to - they don;t have these problems - maybe it is time that you conduct some internal introspection of your methods and processes. Good luck in court.

I think you just did as much damage to him with your remarks as he did to you so good luck to you both in court. I feel this is a flame war and this post should be deleted or locked and handled off the board like adults.

Wow! Subj is almost poetry :)

Originally posted by sailor
so do I hear someone saying we think it is ok to keep someones things until they honor the entire contract they comitted to?
Sure you do. I saying that I think that.
Never told "we". Who is that "we"? ;-)

Originally posted by scott2
All I know is that when I deal with people, if they were not satisfied with my work, and gave many chances to make things right, I would certainly not respond by holding the material they gave me to work with hostage.

Sure me too. If I didn't made my work. But if I think that I did it good enough?
Somebody should decide is it good enough or not.
As I said in previous post the question of quality of service is big enough to be discussed separately. Contrat should have a paragraphs regarding quality of service. But if it hasn't - so what. You signed it. It assumes that you read it before.

Originally posted by scott2
sailor: After thinking about this for a bit, I would agree if the client could easily end the contract if the host failed to live up to the uptime guarantee for a month.

Thanks a lot :)
Things to think - there should be very trusted service to determine uptime for personal server. I've read on WHT something like
Client: My server was down for a 5 hours
Hoster: Is it joke? 2 hours maximum, and maybe 1 hour more, but thi is not our fault
:)
It is possible to use 3rd party services like qwkmon.com or internetseer.com but who will pay them?
And so on and so on...

Originally posted by scott2
It just seems unbalanced that the customer would have no assurance as to the quality of service and the host would have every assurance to get their payment. I would not go with a contract like that... too risky unless you have cash to spare.

It seems to me (not sure) that it would be hard to find another type of contracts.
Question: Is there any companies who gives contracts with guarantee of quality of service?


Best regards
Edward

Hmmmm
I wouldn't solely rely on Qwkmon etc. I have had a number of instances where they reported my server was offline, but everyone who I asked to test it said they can reach domains on my server.

I have to admit though, the network @ dv2/plusweb/serverhost is a little unstable. There are often short outages - usually 10-20mins, but when it goes out, it goes out - noone can reach it.

Question: Is there any companies who gives contracts with guarantee of quality of service?

Yep - ones that are expensive :)
I think most of them will guarentee X network uptime - but servers is down to you - or vise versa. I mean, if you or someone else brings down your server then declares it is the webhosts fault - would you see that as compensation grounds?

/me stretches - I am full up from lunch now... so back to work :)

--James

I agree that both posts should be removed and in fact have requested such from the mods. I only replied out of defense on that one. The thread has turned ugly at this point and I will not be positng any more replies on it - irregardless of what is said.

You two can work this out off-board, please do not post your private dealings with eachother on the forum.