My own FIDPAC/GUNNELS horror story
Just wanted to add my own horror story about Steve Gunnels and FIDPAC to this list. A bit more detail can be found on my own website, but this forum won't allow me to post the URL.
Anyway, after being hosted successfully with FIDPAC for some two or three years, I decided to upgrade my hosting to one of their 'lifetime' accounts - one lifetime payment, hosting forever. To sweeten the deal and ensure he got my money, Steve Gunnels even offered to upgrade my upgrade to what he termed an 'SDS6' account, which allows me to fully host six separate domains (no domain stacking).
After transferring my three domains to the new server, they copied them straight over as stacked domains because that's what they were on the old server. Trouble is, my sites use a lot of subdomains. These subdomains worked perfectly on the old server (using .htaccess files, so I could add and delete at my leisure). The new server doesn't allow sub-domains under stacked domains, so instantly, all those websites fell over.
So I told him this and asked him to fix it. FOUR MONTHS LATER I AM STILL WAITING FOR IT TO BE FIXED!!!!
I have emailed him on average three or four times a week over those four months. He either tells me it can't be done, or tells me he will asked his tech if it can be done, or asks me what it is I want done, or completely ignores me!!! Each email I send is CC'd to four or five of his email addresses, as well as to my own (and from now on, to my lawyer). For the last three weeks I haven't even received a read receipt from him, let alone a response.
As far as I'm concerned, this guy is a SCAMMER AND A CON ARTIST. I warn everyone to avoid him like the plague!!!
What?!? A way to contact Steve Gunnels other than by email?!?
Yes!! Absolutely!! Post the number here, and maybe some of us might be able to get in contact with the ******* that refuses to answer our emails!!
(Probably won't be much good to me, being outside the USA.)
Steve Gunnels horror story
I'm in a big mess here. As a web developer, I have set up hosting with fidpac.com aka super.nu (and others) - aka Steve Gunnels, for approx 38 individual web sites / clients. These hosting agreements are all long term, most being 4 and 6 years, with 4 lifetime agreements, all paid in advance. I've done business with Steve since 2002 and although he is slow to respond regarding support, sooner or later my assorted problems were solved, and we would continue forward as I continuously brought in new clients. Now I have 2 sites down, several more are 'acting up' and Steve hasn't responded to any of his contact phone numbers or email accounts. In a google search, I find I am not the only one. I did file a report with ifccfbi dot gov, but I doubt anything can be done.
Painting Dan with the same brush
Hi dtmx and thanks for the additional info.
Yeah, it was probably this Dan Levesque that helped me out too, though I never learned his last name. I heard on another forum that Steve Gunnels' son's name was also Dan, so that made me suspicious. But this Dan was very helpful and managed to get my SDS account up and running - which was more than Steve Gunnels managed to do for about three months.
I note that the registrar Levesque is using for serverconnectix is the same one used for besthost1. Which leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I know besthost1 as a former Gunnels company, even though it appears Levesque was running it most recently for some time.
The sad thing for me is - although Gunnels couldn't offer me tech support if it saved his life, and although he illegally withdrew money from my credit card and refused to pay it back, and although he keeps spamming me with irrelevent emails and offers to 'upgrade' my account - my websites have actually been running smoothly and with little interruption for quite a while now. These tales of sites on hostingservicesllc servers closing down, however, is really making me nervous!!
Re: Painting Dan with the same brush
Quote:
Originally posted by delahoc
... although he illegally withdrew money from my credit card and refused to pay it back...
Delahoc - Contact your credit card provider and initiate a chargeback against them. The credit provider will almost certainly charge the merchant back for the $99 and issue you a refund - they operate on a "beleive the customer first" basis, unless the merchant can prove the charge.
If enough people issue charge backs, merchants can get their merchant status revoked. The credit card companies will only realize there's a problem if people complain!
Looks like Gunnels has finally pulled the plug
I posted earlier that - while the hostingservicesllc sites all appeared to be down - my sites, hosted through super.nu all still appeared to be up and running.
Well, not any more. This morning I woke to find none of them responding. Even the super.nu homepage is now dead. My three domains (and all my precious email, sql databases, cgi scripts, etc!!) are dead. That also means many of my clients, relying on cgi scripts hosted on my site, are also suffering.
If anyone can find Gunnels, please let me know so I can help string him up by his balls. Perhaps a hacker or two might want to check out gunnels dot org, too ....
You may also note that Dan Levesque has now put up a rather lengthy (and not terribly well-written) diatribe about his own problems with Gunnels on the old besthost1 site. I apologise to him if the information I posted in this forum in the past was incorrect. I hope he turns out to be better than Gunnels, and if he is indeed no longer associated with him, that he is able to overcome the problems that he has had.