Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Reseller Hosting : Gigabytz.com scam

[proxy]

Be cautious about member "brownstuff". Purchased a reseller account from gigabytz.com to store a few documents and now my account and gigabytz.com is down and then i see that he is selling the domain "gigabytz.com" in the domain names forum. There are alot of scamsters about, your warned.

[Carl_Douglas]

Hi proxy,

Unfortunately I have been caught out by this too. Apparently GigaBytz has been taken over by Sonow Internet. I can't even contact Sonow though so I'm wondering what else I can do?

I did receive a reply the beginning of this week after submitting a support ticket last week:

Reece Dylan has responded to your help desk request.

-----------------------------------------------
(Reece Dylan)
-----------------------------------------------
Time: 3-5-2004-7:03
: Hi Carl,


Gigabytz has been merged with Sonow Internet, all subscriptions will be transfered over on your next billing date you will be given the option to subscribe, or update your credit card details for transaction processing every month.


Thanks

From the lack of information from GigaBytz and the fact that our websites are down do I assume we've lost out on what we paid? I'm particularly annoyed because I chose to pay annually as well. I have the address and telephone number (US though so not much use to me here in the UK) of brownstuff (assuming he listed the right one when purchasing his domain, which is debatable) as well as numerous email addresses which I have tried emailing but to no avail as I have not received a response. Is there any collaborative steps we can take?

Carl

[chuckt101]

Yeah, I wouldn't trust anything Sonow is connected with:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showth...hreadid=252623

[Typhoon]

How did you pay? If by PayPal have you tried contacting them to retrieve the funds sent?

[Carl_Douglas]

Taken from http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr...plaint-outside :

The Buyer Complaint Policy only applies to tangible, physical goods which can be shipped, and excludes everything else, including but not limited to: intangibles, services, quasi-cash and all non-tangible, non-physical goods.

Unless there's some Paypal policy that allows me to claim my money back within 30 days of sending it I've no chance!?

Just as well the plans weren't overly expensive in the first place..

[Carnifex]

i was looking for a host a few weeks ago and I used the host quote feature.

got a response from Gigabytz.com that I liked was about to sign up when I did a quick search of the forums for them.

The domain was actually being sold while he was trying to get more business which I think is very poor business practice for a business such as hosting. Needless to say I ran a mile.

[Typhoon]

Ah, I do remember them having very poor protection for online service purchases.

The only alternative I can see is trying to use the complaint process and see what happens or possibly try phoning them: https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/we..._contact-phone

[sonow]

We purchased this company around a month ago, the person who we purchased this off 'dan aka brownstuff' asked us if we would like to continue using the server until we transfered over all the clients to our own servers.

We stated clearly that we would like to carry on using the server for a couple of weeks, which he agreed to do.

Not less than 24 hours after the money had been transfered he decided to switch the server off without telling us, he also hasnt been contactable.

Because of this we wasnt able to get hold of the clients details in time to be able to contact them and offer refunds or free couple of months hosting for the trouble.

This left us without anything we could do to solve the problems.

If anyone has been trying to contact gigabytz.com for a refund please contact us info@sonow.co.uk and we will sort it out for you.

Thank you

[Carl_Douglas]

Having just read your reply I have now sent you an email Sonow. I would be extremely grateful if you could reply asap.

[sonow]

Email has been recieved

[triffik]

Reece Dylan has responded to your help desk request.

This bit worried me - if it's who I think it is, then there's no wonder you can't get in touch / see your money.

If it's the same Reece Dylan - who also goes under the alias Scott Wiginton, and pretends to live in either London or various large American cities - then do a bit of Googling (both web, and google groups) for his name/s and reputation....

Of course, this might be entirely unrelated, so investigate!