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  1. #1
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    Jun 2005
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    * Something Always Happens...

    If many of you remember, the last time I was here I had a problem with Bill Banks and the whole issue of him contacting everyone and so on. Well, interesting enough now it seems I have a new problem. Haha, and I want to share it with you all so you can stay far away from this company and this user.

    The guys name is Daniel Keane from KeaneHost dot com and this one is just humurous. I hope you all get a good laugh about it, because I still can't stop. When I hired this guy to Daniel to work for us at AllureHost, he told me he had his own side adventure of doing his own Hosting Business and I understood that because thats how I got started in the business. For the first week, he had done a good job of being on and helping customers, but unfortunately that all change today. He had shown me some days back of his "new" design for KeaneHost and I had come to find that it had striking similarities to AllureHost. Now, I know AllureHost is just a template design, but it means a lot to me because I made it, I didn't hire some team to do it for me. So when I saw his site, I told him and he swore he only "based" his design off mine, so I gave him that. The more and more he completed his design, the more and more it looked like AllureHost to me, so I questioned him on it and warned him about how that could hurt his sales a little especially if someone made the comparison (=D).

    Anyway, today he asked me to help him with his orderwiz for modernbill because he wanted it like mine (obviously). However, I caught him, before asking me later on, looking at my orderwiz templates to see how I got the html to work correctly. When he couldn't figure it out, I suppose he decided it was best to ask me. That lead into a bit of an arguement, but I kept it real professional, then it got to the point when he was attacking my websites design, like he wouldn't be caught dead looking like AllureHost, he said we were "tacky". Anyway...HaHa...you know what my response was to that....right. Well, I went to change the root password and get everything going for the day of business, when poof AllureHost's account got mysteriously deleted. Haha, well I always have my backup of our website on an offsite server no one has access too but the head of tech support and myself, so all my info was up to date and stored away! Silly child, I always think it is best to keep things professional in a disagreement because you never know how childish people will get.

    So I hope you all take this as a warning, beware of this guy, he is no good for you. If he asks you for a job, think twice or if you are thinking of hosting with him, be sure to remember how professional he handled our arguement. I am sure you all have your doubts since this is only one side, but no worries, if you have any questions of comments, be sure to respond or PM me. I love you guys at WHT, have a great day!
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  2. #2
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    Dec 2001
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    Let me get this right, a disgruntled employee of yours deleted your entire site over an argument?

  3. #3
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    Yea...pretty much. Funny huh?
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  4. #4
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    Dec 2001
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    Quote Originally Posted by AllureHost
    Yea...pretty much. Funny huh?
    Not really, I'd be pretty pissed.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    May 2001
    Location
    HK
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    3,082

    Smile

    Why would you hire somebody who operate a hosting business?

    And what were the processes you went through when you approved and hired him as an employee?

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Dec 2004
    Location
    New York, NY
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    10,710
    You should be more careful when hiring employees in the future. Don't give them the root password straight out like that, give them some time to understand your support procedures and just company guidelines in general. By that time, you'll know if they're a good match for your company or not.

    Cheers,
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  7. #7
    Join Date
    Dec 2001
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    Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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    Indeed, while you may be laughing about how unprofessional the employee was in this regard, you have to remember how unprofessional this appears (and is) to an outsider. Whats to have stopped this newly acquired (obviously remote) tech from rm -rf /'ing your server?

    While clearly you've opened this topic to bash the tech (for good reason, dont get me wrong), you've also opened up yourself to similar questions about your better judgement. Good staff are hard to find, primarily because you almost *have* to keep it local nowdays (due to incidents like this).
    Myles Loosley-Millman - admin@prioritycolo.com
    Priority Colo Inc. - Affordable Colocation & Dedicated Servers.
    Two Canadian facilities serving Toronto & Markham, Ontario
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  8. #8
    The layout does have a striking resemblance .

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Dec 2001
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    NYC
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    Quote Originally Posted by rej1587
    The layout does have a striking resemblance .
    As it does with thousands of other sites

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
    Location
    EU - east side
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    21,920
    While clearly you've opened this topic to bash the tech (for good reason, dont get me wrong), you've also opened up yourself to similar questions about your better judgement.
    No one's perfect. He got lucky (in a way) and this is an excellent opportunity for him, and for others, to learn.

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Location
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    Oh, I already understood the kind of comments I opened myself up too, and yes I do agree that I may have hired him prematurely, however, I did an interview with this individual electronically and he seemed to be ok for the job and I did a couple of checkups on him. His personality worked out fine with our company, but once he started showing me his project of a company and the kind of resemblance I saw between mine and his was striking to me.

    When I approached him, he then got cornered and with no way out, attacked me rather than talk to me. I regret hiring him in the first place, and the situation sucked, but I did not suffer a major loss and it is an experience for me to learn from. All I can do now if just sit back and laugh at how the situation played out, and how things could have been worse if I had never got an offsite backup.

    I am an equal employer and I give people chances. I feel as if people deserve a chance before I squash the idea. We needed some quick help, he offered, and after about a couple hours of asking questions and contacting people, I got the ok from the C.E.O of our company and went with the go ahead.

    So sure, you can say that my better judgement failed me in this instance and yes it may have cost me some "respect" among you, but I take what I have learned and build upon it. This is my first real venture with a hosting company and I am learning along the way. I hope to eventually become a Veteran to this so that I can pick these types of people out before they get their claws into my skin.

    Thanks for everyones words, they have been helpful! :-)

    ALSO:

    This post is not meant to BASH anyone, this meant to warn you and others looking for hosting to be careful around this individual. I consider BASHING saying, THIS GUY SUCKS, HE BITES BIG...yes, you get the idea. Warning is all, I hope you take it as such (I also vented a little).
    Last edited by SwiftModders; 10-28-2005 at 07:47 PM.
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  12. #12
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    Dec 2001
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    My definition of bashing includes venting, perhaps not the most clear choice of words (though I did say it was with good cause). Either way, you're both very fortunate that he didn't wander off and change the root password, format the hdd, or dump on some hidden backdoors granting him invisible access months down the road to act maliciously.
    Myles Loosley-Millman - admin@prioritycolo.com
    Priority Colo Inc. - Affordable Colocation & Dedicated Servers.
    Two Canadian facilities serving Toronto & Markham, Ontario
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  13. #13
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    Sep 2005
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    Albany, NY
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    How old was this guy?

    By the looks of his grammar skills I'd say he was 12 or maybe foreign...
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  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by AllureHost
    All I can do now if just sit back and laugh at how the situation played out, and how things could have been worse if I had never got an offsite backup.
    The point here isn't that you have an off-site backup of your site, what would have happened if this guy has wiped your customers domains? Sure you might have had backups of those, but you are laughing about a guy doing this when he had access to potentially disrupt the operations of the client's domains.

    Mistakes do happen and anyone can turn out of the blue and do something like this, but you do not laugh about it on a public forum, no matter what the outcome was.

    Quote Originally Posted by YUPAPA
    Why would you hire somebody who operate a hosting business?

    Why not? One of my staff runs their own hosting business independantly of ours and I have absolutely no problem with that. The difference here though is that I have known this person for years, trust them and they do not compete in any way with us. They actually have a reseller account with us that they use for hosting their clients.

    In some cases, the best people you could possibly hire are the ones that understand what business means. The vast majority of employees do not care about the company, they only care about getting a wage at the end of the week. If you hire someone who you trust and you know they understand the values of the business and they personally use your system from an user perspective, what is wrong with that?

  15. #15
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    Jun 2005
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    Sorry AykSolutions, who are you talking about? If you are talking about me, my grammar in my first post was not polished, just a quick post before classes. And I am 20 by the way.

    To FLH-Wullie:
    In my previous posts about some misfortunes I have had, most people laughed about them and told me that was the best thing to do after a hard situation so you do not get o agitated or go off on a rant when trying to inform other people of your experiences. In my second post I said "Funny huh?" in a sarcastic way, but I guess translations of text gets kind of lost. Also, it was my way of trying to keep myself from getting a little more pissed. All in all, yes I am relieved that the situation was not any worse, and yes I don't think laughing at the situation is the best thing to do publically, but it was the best way right now to show my relief.

    Also, I agree, I felt he had the experience needed to be a good staff member, and his knowledge of hosting seemed to be pretty good, so I figured he was a worthy candidate. Well, the only thing left to do is to just move on, and hope to have a good bounce back and apologize to my customers if they had any issues with the hosting during that period. Thanks again guys for the comments.
    Last edited by SwiftModders; 10-28-2005 at 09:10 PM.
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  16. #16
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    Sep 2005
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    Allure,

    Nope, not you. The guy's site. I just read his one paragraph on the main page telling Why someone should pick him. It kills me how people forget to use commas and periods. Looks so bad.....
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  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by AllureHost
    To FLH-Wullie:
    In my previous posts about some misfortunes I have had, most people laughed about them and told me that was the best thing to do after a hard situation so you do not get o agitated or go off on a rant when trying to inform other people of your experiences. In my second post I said "Funny huh?" in a sarcastic way, but I guess translations of text gets kind of lost. Also, it was my way of trying to keep myself from getting a little more pissed. All in all, yes I am relieved that the situation was not any worse, and yes I don't think laughing at the situation is the best thing to do publically, but it was the best way right now to show my relief.
    As my mother always said to me:

    If they told you to jump off a bridge, would you?

    There are times when you can laugh about thing like this, but when you post using the company name/signature talking about someone who had root access to your servers deleting data, that is not the appropriate time.

  18. #18
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    Yea, I used to get the same talk from my mom about certain things. Ah well,seemed like a good thing at the time, but now it doesn't. Anyway, I understand what your saying Wullie and thank you.
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