Has DataWebPro hosting gone out of business??

195 replies
Just wondering if anyone else who uses this hosting company has not been able to contact them for the past week? I've been with them for a lot of years and their service has been awesome but lately my sites have been going down on a regular basis, there have been database and email issues and I find myself constantly posting help tickets to get things working again. I've got a bunch of sites that went down early last week and I sent tickets and left messages but haven't heard a thing in response. I know they have a bunch of customers so I'm hoping a few others will see this post and let me know if they know what's happening. I'm losing money and really concerned by this.

I appreciate any information anyone can offer and thanks!

Jody
#business #datawebpro #hosting
  • Profile picture of the author Andyhenry
    I'm in the same position - All my sites with them (over 100) went down this morning and have been having email issues recently.

    I really hope they haven't gone under as it's costing me money now and the work to recreate them all will be immense.
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    • Profile picture of the author tecdac
      I just learned yesterday that Steve Hettrick passed away last week. He was the man behind DataWebPro.

      He was a brilliant mind and I will miss talking to him.

      We were friendly competitors so we used to bounce ideas off each other (mostly me off him).

      Anyway it comes as a real shock.
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      • Profile picture of the author suemax
        Originally Posted by tecdac View Post

        I just learned yesterday that Steve Hettrick passed away last week. He was the man behind DataWebPro.

        He was a brilliant mind and I will miss talking to him.

        We were friendly competitors so we used to bounce ideas off each other (mostly me off him).

        Anyway it comes as a real shock.
        Aw gosh - really sorry to hear, both in business terms and in "great mind and friend" terms.
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    • Profile picture of the author Matthew Shelton
      I'm having bigtime problems too. FWIW, not all their servers are down, at this time my sites on P5FOX.NET and PALACESITE.COM servers are working.
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  • Profile picture of the author Andyhenry
    No- all my sites are down (including emails) and all datawebpro websites are down (i,e their main site, forum, support etc..)

    I'm wondering if that's the end... I'm now moving all my name servers to point to new hosting in case this never comes back.
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  • Profile picture of the author LAND architect
    Which webhost are you going to use?
    I just received this email from my dad he has 100 or more sites with Steve. I have ten. Here are two companies that dealt with Steve's servers / data center; e-mail Coast inc or GNAX.net directly. Here are the contact at GNAX jhinkle@gnax.net (Jeff Hinkle Owner of GNAX) or Email at Coast inc: qa@coastinc.com
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    • Profile picture of the author RosalindG
      Thanks kindly for the info. Have you had any luck in getting your sites back online?
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  • Profile picture of the author Steve Garratt
    OMG I have been with Steve and Datawordpro for about 4 years. Most of my sites have been down for a day and currently transferring them to Hostgator.

    This is a shock. Steve will be missed by me and a lot of other people.
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  • Profile picture of the author abundantliving
    OMG, my server just went down and I was searching google to find out what was going on... and am SHOCKED. I had no idea Steve was even sick. He was a very good friend of mine. I knew there was someone in his family who was seriously ill, but he never told me it was HIM.

    Now my server is down, my business is down (temporarily), and I'm crying over the loss of a truly generous good man.
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  • Profile picture of the author Andyhenry
    Hey Holly,

    Do you know if Steve was the only person looking after Datawebpro?

    I was under the impression that he was just one of the support people but it does look like all their servers are down because their own sites are down too.

    If Datawebpro was Steve - then I guess we've all got a lot of work to do. I have several client sites that are now gone unless those servers come back and I'm not sure what to tell them right now.
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    nothing to see here.

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  • Profile picture of the author abundantliving
    Steve owned the company. But he had a team of support people. And, the servers were housed somewhere else.

    You'd think SOMEONE (on his support team or at the physical location where the servers are housed) would have contacted Steve's customers before just shutting everything down!

    If anyone can find out the name of the company where the servers are housed, we should get in touch with them. They may own the servers, but WE own the data... and if they don't give us the opportunity to retrieve that data, there's probably one big mother of a lawsuit that will enable to recover some of the monies we're losing while everything is offline.

    I did some research (but I'm not an expert on research - I'm sure someone here in this forum can do much better), and contacted GNAX

    They do not house the servers, and told me the best they could do is have me fill out a ticket on their support desk and they would forward the ticket to the company that houses the servers (that they are unable to tell me who that company is or how to reach them because of customer confidentiality). They also could not tell me whether my ticket would be read and responded to today, next week or never.

    If any of you have hacker skills, this is time to use them! HELP US!!!
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  • Profile picture of the author Caleb Spilchen
    I'm a little confused, if someone can send me the domains they have on there... I will trace it back
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    • Profile picture of the author NicheProf
      I will update all with what I know and share my communications with Steve's server providers.

      I posted the following across my network earlier today:

      Major issues and a lesson! My primary host DataWordPro's Steve Hetrick died unexpectedly at the end of January. Given the demands that placed on the family, they failed to notify individuals and companies hosting with them. 5 years for me SEO Plans, SSL and Dedicated Server.

      When I was informed by a friend and partner on Thursday of this past week, I filed support tickets, emails and left phone messages. All without response. Gradually, over the past 48 hours I've lost access to all websites and the dedicated server.

      I've since learned Steve was a reseller for Coastinc.com who appears to have been an agent or repackager for Jeff Hinkle and GNAX.com

      I would appreciate any suggestions anyone may have who may have been in a similar situation previously and to warn everyone to expect the unexpected.

      I can't even access the site backups because I don't know where they were being kept offsite.

      May the rest of you have a great Super Bowl Weekend!
      -----------------

      Below is a copy of the letter I sent to Coastal Internet Solutions:

      As I am sure you are aware, Steve Hetrick died at the end of January, 2011.

      I have had numerous domain names hosted on multiple servers and a dedicated server for several years.

      I am no longer able to access those servers to download and transfer them to another host and need your assistance in allowing me to retrieve my files and data from those servers.

      WHM and cpanel access has been dying to me for the past 2 days.

      The various DataWebPro sites, email and support are down.

      Prior to this point none of my prior emails, support tickets, chat messages and phone messages have been responded to by the organization.

      After having an agent speak with Steve's stepmother, I've confirmed that his daughter (Jocelyn L. Larson) and his sister (Tracy K. Petrosky) were to be handling the business, however, neither have responded and I need to gain access and make my transition ASAP.

      I've contacted GNAX.com and they said this needed to be addressed with you.

      Respectfully Frustrated,

      Ron Capps, PhD

      Aka Dr. Ron Capps the NicheProf
      Phone: 660-928-3454
      Skype: RC-Enterprises

      -----------------

      Copy of Coastal's response to me:

      Hi Ron,

      We have been in touch with someone at Dataword that is handling the business. They have informed us that they are handling the situation as is so far and the only thing you can do is try to reach them again for further answers.

      Unfortunately, as you are not our customer, we can not do anything other than forward your message to them, and also suggest trying to contact them through any other methods you have (email, phone, fax, mail, etc). The phone number listed on their site is 717-254-1318

      By law, we can not provide any further information as you are not our customer and we can not give you any private/personal/internal information. I do apologize but as long as someone from their company is responsive, we can not do anything else directly with you. We have extended our condolences as well as offer to help and support in any way necessary in these difficult times for them.

      We will gladly keep you updated on any progress or new information that Dataword tells us to give.

      In certain situations where the host is considered permanently unreachable (after a predetermined/extended period of time), we can then discuss other options with you directly. We will be in touch if this situation comes to that. But so far we have been in constant communication with them regarding this situation.

      So we expect to have more information from them within the next 24-48 hours

      Thank you,
      Coast Internet Solutions, Inc.

      ---------
      At this point, I hold out some hope Steve's survivors will make arrangements for all of us to at least be granted access to the servers for the purposes of transferring all data and files to another hosting option.

      The reason I chose to use DataWordPro was...Steve. He was responsive, insightful and candid. Unfortunately, this experience has driven home the point to look more closely at larger hosting solutions with a deeper ecosystem in place to weather unexpected situations like this one.

      Beyond the loss of Steve, the added tragedy is with each passing hour, a potential valuable asset which might have been merged or acquired by another hosting company is turning into a potential liability and devalued corporate asset.

      Feel free to send me any questions I might be able to respond to and I'll make an effort to keep this thread updated as I learn more.

      On a positive note, I had a dream last night that his survivors had a 12-day plan for making everything available to Steve's clients.

      In the meantime, I would encourage any of you who were being hosted by DataWordPro to email sales or billing @coastalinc.com and express thoughts similar to mine so we can apply pressure to force a determination one way or the other. Each passing day of downtime intensifies the negative impact for all of us and, potentially for Steve's survivors.

      Dr. Ron Capps (aka the NicheProf)
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      Ron Capps (aka NicheProf)
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  • Profile picture of the author abundantliving
    Thank you for sharing. I understand their position, but DataWebPro is NOT responding to their customers. And I would think... if OUR data is on servers THEY physically house in their building, then WE are THEIR customers.

    This is screwed up. I think Steve was the reason ALL of us hosted with him. He put customer service above all else, and I think he'd be extremely upset if he saw how poorly his customers were being treated now. It's really a shame.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mark Hendricks
    I've been in touch with coastinc and gnax ever since I discovered Steve has
    passed last Wed night (he died about a week earlier)

    my last support ticket communication with coastinc.com/support said they hoped to get resolution with whomever they are currently in touch with at datawebpro, and have something happen in 24-48 hours.

    I, like others, have lots of sites and various businesses on my dedicated server, and not being able to get to it to transfer data is painful.

    I have setup accounts elsewhere, set up all the email accounts for each of my main business domain, and have it all forwarded to my backup yahoo email - at least when customers find my new home page that says.... "we're working on it" ... they can contact me for further info.

    Also... I, as others have said, really miss Steve Hetrick. Because of his friendship, webhosting smarts and personal service, I recommended a lot of people to him over the years.

    Hope for the best, but take some action in the meantime in case things don't turn out how you would like.

    As always, my best to you --

    Mark Hendricks
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  • Profile picture of the author Andyhenry
    Agreed.

    THANKS Ron - I really appreciate you sharing your comments here.

    At least I know I'm not alone. I've been hosting with them for many years because of Steve too. It seems he really was the key to the business.

    I hope they get the servers back up soon as I have a lot of work now whatever happens.
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  • Profile picture of the author Don Paul Boyll
    I was both shocked and saddened to hear about Steve. He could always be counted on to provide swift and effective customer service with a great attitude.

    Has anyone had any direct contact with any of his employees, or others involved in his business, that have indicated if sites hosted with them will be back up in the near future? Given the hassle it would be to recreate all my sites on another host, I'm willing to wait a couple of days, if someone is working to get everything working again soon.

    This is a bit of a reminder that we all need to consider how those closest to us would be able to continue on without us. Maybe I should stop putting off writing that last-will-and testament that my kids keep asking about.
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    • Profile picture of the author NicheProf
      Don, the best answer we have regarding a timeline is the one I posted in Coastal Internet Solutions, Inc response to me. From all indication, Steve's daughter and, perhaps, sister are the one's responsible for corporate business decisions and actions. I have been unable to get a response from anyone at DataWordPro (tried email, support desk & telephone). Steve's Twitter account hasn't been touched in over two years.

      Coastal's response indicates they are in contact with someone at DataWordPro and they hope to have a response in 24 to 48 hours.

      If we have any point of access or leverage, it is probably through contact wit Coastal and their communicating with the survivors.
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      Ron Capps (aka NicheProf)
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      • Profile picture of the author ChasHicks
        Ron, Mark, Willie - thanks for sharing the info you have.

        I, too, have been with Data Web Pro for almost 5 years now and have all of my primary sites there. Steve was a pleasure to do business with and very responsive to any problem I had.

        I'm like Mark - I'm starting to move sites to other hosting options. Unfortunately I have a lot of data on servers there that I didn't have backed up except at DataWebPro.

        Membership sites, blogs, primary money sites, etc. - dozens of them.

        I pray for Steve's family, his employees during this most difficult time.

        I also pray for all those businesses affected and can only hope we can get access to the servers and/or backups to recover our assets.

        Charlie Hicks
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        • Profile picture of the author Mark Hendricks
          The replay mp3 is now available of the teleconference I did
          on the Datawordpro situation (no pitches, just help),plus updates as time goes by at:

          -- Click Here To Go There --

          hunteridge dot com slash datawordpro

          Also page two of this thread has more info....

          Best,
          Mark Hendricks
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          • Profile picture of the author Kaz Moriarty
            I have found the contact information for Steve's son. I hesitate to post private info so if you are interested then send me a pm.

            I sent the contact details to one member of this thread who thanked me but indicated would not phone now because son is likely still in mourning. This seems to me to be a legitimate concern that you may wish to take into consideration. Steve died on January 25th.

            Kaz Moriarty.
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            • Profile picture of the author dcushion
              Hi All,

              I, too, have been with Steve a long time... 6 years and many websites. Always got great support and did talk to him many times. Condolences to the family - and best wishes to them in sorting out what must be quite a mess.

              And, thanks to Willie for his email which alerted me to this.

              But... what to do now.

              Here are some questions that many may have - so could our experts here help us out:

              1) Should we sit tight for a few days recognizing there will be a drop in income?

              2) I do have a few sites that are still up - should I be quickly moving them to new hosts?

              3) For the sites that are down that I created with, for example, either Dreamweaver or XSitepro - can I just republish them to a new host? What would I be missing? Emails?

              4) I assume that I would set up new email accounts at new webhosts and be OK from here on. Is there something else that I would be missing?

              5) For Wordpress sites, I think I am in trouble unless I have a backup (which I probably don't). Is there anything we can do here?

              6) Anything else we can/should do right now or in a few days.

              Thanks for any help. I know we can work through this - just not sure what the best plan is.
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              • Profile picture of the author NicheProf
                Given Coastal Internet Solutions most recent response, I would be suggesting patience for some things and quick action for others.

                If you still have access to any sites with cPanel, I would engage another host who may provide free transfer via cPanel from the old host to the new host. Do that ASAP! This situation is made more difficult because it appears to be a rolling process. A site may be there but by the time you make arrangements to move it, it is gone. That happened to a dedicated server there yesterday.

                You should have no problem re-publishing sites you have on your computer. Regarding emails, I make it a habit to forward all domain emails to a Gmail account for archiving and organization. Just a thought for the future.

                I'll be discussing the situation on today's Blog Talk Radio Show. (12:30 Eastern, Sunday)

                Call in number is (718)766-4782

                School of Social Marketing | Internet Radio | Blog Talk Radio You can listen online or plaback from the site or subscribe through iTunes.
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                Ron Capps (aka NicheProf)
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                Niche Marketing and Web 2.0
                emailto:nicheprof@gmail.com

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  • Profile picture of the author Pursuit2Success
    Never heard of it, and RIP to Steve even though I don't know him. What will happen to all of your sites then?
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  • Profile picture of the author Willie Crawford
    My experiences and communications have been similar to everyone else here, with me being told that Coastal is in touch with someone at the company. I too have tried numerous ways to contact them since I have lots of hosting clients screaming for answers.

    I would imagine the family is somewhat overwhelmed, as it appears Steve did a LOT of the work himself. He responded to virtually every ticket I or my customers ever submitted, except for billing issues, and he still made time to talk with me any time that I called.

    Not all of my servers are with DataWeb are down, but many are, and I can even identify why some are down, but it's due to problems that the data center probably needs to correct, and they won't do anything unless directed to do so by their client.

    The fact that so many of the brilliant people that I know and respect used Steve is a testament to the type of person that he was.

    Willie
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    • Profile picture of the author tamshelton
      It's very sad to hear about Steve. All of my sites went down at noon today. I have VPS and Dedicated hosting and received the exact email response from Coastal as Ron.

      Let's hope something happens soon.
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  • Profile picture of the author ozonline
    I just received an email from paypal that my subscription for hosting had been canceled... not sure it that's a good or bad sign.
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  • Profile picture of the author Netafile
    Also shocked and saddened about Steve's passing. Was a customer for almost 5 years, and stayed with him due to his great customer service.

    I can't believe someone didn't think to notify customers, particularly his support people who truly understood what the hosting means to his customers.
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  • Profile picture of the author Steve Garratt
    I too have just recieved an email from Paypal to say that my subscription has been cancelled. It was an annual sub paid on 25th December which is a bit unfortunate.

    I am currently in the process of rebuilding my sites on Hostgator. None of my Datawebpro servers are accessible so I'm having to do it the slow and painfull way from local backups.
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    • Profile picture of the author dcushion
      Mark,

      Thanks for the informative call.
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      • Profile picture of the author John Stiles
        It looks like a great many people were touched by Steve. We all seem to have one thing in common, we were with Steve because of the great person he was and the outstanding service he provided.

        Steve and I became good friends over the years, well beyond hosting and business. On many occasions we talked about personal things, life, family, kids and even our grandchildren. Yes, we were both grandpa's! The little ones in his life will miss him the most.

        There is a huge hole in my heart where Steve was, I'll miss him, I'll miss all our talks beyond business. The personal touch in this world is what is missing in many things.

        We'll all take a hit in our businesses during this time, ultimately we'll get through it and be stronger for the experience. While Steve didn't get though it. In his passing he's left a hole in his family, friends, and yes, business associates.

        My heart goes out to all of Steve's family and friends! Pass along a hug from me to the grandkids too.

        If there is one lesson I want to take away from the experience, it's that the world needs more people like Steve!

        Yes the turmoil sucks right now, but I'll learn many lessons in business and in life from the experience.

        John
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  • Profile picture of the author wpsecuritylock
    Mark,

    Thanks for reaching out to everyone. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this issue will be resolved soon.

    ~ Regina Smola
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    • Profile picture of the author rohar
      Hi,

      I find myself in a similar situation. I am (was?) a member of Steve's Blog a Month club and at the end of November found that my sites were way behind schedule - I got a note apologizing but did not have time to cahse up because of family issues.

      Now I can't access any of the sites nor are any of the email or project boards associated with the BLOG monthly site working.

      Does anyone have any advice about who to try? The only dns data I have is ns1.whiterockserver.net
      ns1.codebluehost.net
      ns1.bluefoxhost.net .

      Any help would be appreciated.
      Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author NicheProf
    I thought Warriors might be interested in this replay of What happens when your host dies? Replay of today's BTR Broadcast School of Social Marketing | Internet Radio | Blog Talk Radio Listen online, download or subscribe via iTunes
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    Ron Capps (aka NicheProf)
    http://www.NicheProf.com
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    Niche Marketing and Web 2.0
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  • Profile picture of the author Dirk Wagner
    Hi Ron,

    I just checked your website but couldn't find a link to the latest Broadcast since there are so many links on the main site.

    Please can you explain where I can find it to get the latest infos about DataWebPro?

    My main business stands still too as I have hosted my most important domains like my support, affiliate and business center, all business and paypal email addresses and I have no backups of my databases. :-(

    Thanks,

    Dirk

    p.s. I pray for Steve's family. I was a long time customer of DataWebPro only for the reason that Steve was running this business because he was always a great help, VERY trustful and honest. It is really sad that such people die so fast. :-(
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  • Profile picture of the author abundantliving
    Interesting.

    I got a notice from paypal that datawebpro cancelled my subscription for hosting services.

    Mark Hendricks just posted this update on his page:

    5:05pm ET: A friend sent this to me, a recent response he got from CoastInc.com :
    Thanks for your reply and understanding. We will continue to keep you posted. We are waiting for authorization from them to either authorize transferring their customers to us, or if they become unresponsive we can take further action. We expect to have a resolution either way within about 24 more hours.


    I wonder...


    If datawebpro cancels our subscription, will we be considered active customers and given the opportunity to access our data?


    It just keeps getting weirder and weirder.
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  • Profile picture of the author Caleb Spilchen
    You would -- you still have websites with them, on there servers. This other company has no idea whether you paid your bill, can pay your bill or anything.
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  • Profile picture of the author tbohannon
    I hope this tip helps:

    NOTE: This is not a pitch for services, just want
    to provide some value to the WF and let you know
    this is a technique I have had success in recovering
    websites.

    NOTE: These recommendations may not help you get a full
    return of your site, even if you recover 25% of a large site
    this has to be cheaper than reconstructing content.

    IMPORTANT: You should do this before the search engines attempt to
    re-crawl the sites and overwrite or clear the cached copies.

    Note: This will only work for public facing webpages, not
    protected content like a membership site!

    == The Search Engine Cache & Internet Archive Method ==

    1. Manual & tedious, but quickest & simplest method.


    2. Search all three major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing)
    and try to find copies of your pages in the SERP cache.
    There will be a link to the cached version just below your
    result.

    3. If your page is not available then repeat your search at the Internet Archives
    Wayback Machine (Internet Archive: Wayback Machine). The largest web repository
    that holds over 10 billion snapshots of web sites.

    Search Engine Caches will contain the most updated backups, as the Internet Archive
    only stores versions past the 6-12months.

    == Automatic Recovery ==

    If your site has more than a few dozen web pages then I recommend using the Warrick perl
    scrips created by Harding University.

    Harding University created the Warrick tool (Warrick - Recover Your Lost Website) to go out and
    reconstruct a lost website (or single web page) automatically.

    Note: It can take some time for medium - large sites. One site we recovered had about
    50MB of content and it took a week before Warrick completed the task.

    The Warrick tool is essentially a web crawler that scans and collects missing web pages
    from all the four web repositories - Internet Archive, Google, Yahoo, and Bing. If a web
    page is found in more than one web repository, Warrick will save the page
    with the most recent date.

    You will need to download the Perl scripts and run them from you server or local PC.

    You should be able to outsource this on any of the tech-focused outsourcing sites like RAC
    (now vworker.com) or oDesk.

    PM me if you need help with this...I own a tech company and we can handle this for you
    as well....BUT not a pitch...this was a tip to help you out.

    Ty
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  • Profile picture of the author Rob Actis
    WOW! I am so sorry that you all are in this situation. You are all in my thoughts and prayers.

    Rob Actis
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    • Profile picture of the author Mark Hendricks
      here's the 6:51pm ET update from CoastInc.com

      -- click here to read update --

      Best,
      Mark Hendricks
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      • Profile picture of the author handybizman
        Hello Everyone,

        Just found out the bad news. Your not going to believe this but my mom has just passed away the day before and I have been busy myself with funeral arrangements and many other things.

        I have also been with Steve for at least 10 years or more and he was always there to help me with support. My websites just went down yesterday and I was wondering what happen until I did a google search.

        Please let me know if we can recover our data if possible. I will just chill out for awhile and wait. I know Steve is in a better place now just like my Mom and peace be with him.

        I wish all of you the best!

        Mike A.
        Signature

        If your cigar connoisseur like me visit my sites at:
        http://www.handybizman.com

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        • Profile picture of the author Mark Hendricks
          New update 10am ET - coastinc now taking account
          for past datawebpro customers

          see info at:

          -- click here --

          Best,
          Mark Hendricks
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          • Profile picture of the author Andyhenry
            Originally Posted by hunteridge View Post

            New update 10am ET - coastinc now taking account
            for past datawebpro customers

            see info at:

            -- click here --

            Best,
            Mark Hendricks
            That link's not working for me. It's a page not found and redirecting to the homepage.
            Signature

            nothing to see here.

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      • Profile picture of the author Willie Crawford
        As someone who has been a part of "crisis action teams" in
        wars, floods, earthquakes, the air evacuation of 20,000+
        people from one country... in a matter of days, a tsunami,
        volcanic eruptions, etc., I can imagine the confusion that
        must be experienced by some of the personnel at Coastal.

        Hundreds, if not thousand of people, all sending in faxes,
        phone calls, support tickets, emails, registered mail, etc...
        all at the same time, from different people at different
        levels of the customers' companies, to people at different
        levels in Coastal.

        Many of these factors actually work against each other in
        resolving issues. As an example, I get phone calls,
        support tickets, etc., not only from my customers, but from
        their customers... who think that they have an obvious
        solution, when they don't fully understand the problem.

        Not that I fully understand the problem!

        I think the best description for it all is "baptism
        by fire!"

        Having just taken over my hosting company in mid-December,
        that is certainly an accurate description.

        It's an expensive lesson for many of us. I have customers
        literally losing tens of thousands of dollars!

        Willie
        Signature

        Here's A Ready-Made High Ticket Product To Make Your Own.
        Click To Go BIG!

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  • Profile picture of the author tbohannon
    Preventing Loss of Virtual Real Estate Assets

    Here is another follow up tip:

    Note: This will only work on Virtual Private Servers or Dedicated Servers.
    It is possible to create PERL scripts run on Shared Hosting accounts and
    copy the backup files to another FTP server. Including a small network
    storage device that you keep at your office.

    1. Setup JungleDisk (RackSpace) Backup

    This service is a 3rd party remote backup service that provides software
    that can be installed on a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or Dedicated Server and configured to backup both your CPanel configurations and your Web Sites on that server.

    This gives you more control over digital assets and can be restored to another
    VPS or Dedicated Server should your primary server crash...even on a different host.

    We use HostGator VPS's and then setup JungleDisk to backup 3 times a day offsite. VPS's cost a little more than Reseller plans, but the level of control is worth paying the extra $$.

    2. For Self-Hosted WordPress sites

    I recommend scheduling an outsourcer or yourself to backup your WP sites immediately after any content or technical changes (adding plugins, upgrades, etc.).

    Then ongoing at least once a month or once a week, backup your WP sites. Be sure to backup both the WP files and the SQL database associated with the site. Download locally and include in your nightly local AND remote backups. You are doing nightly backups of your local system, right????

    3. Use a WP Backup/Clone Plugin

    There are free WP Plugins that will backup your database if you're not sure how or not comfortable doing the MySQL dump through your cPanel.

    A more complete way to backup your sites is to use a paid plugin like WP-Twin which I use for cloning and backing up WP sites.

    Just do a Google or search the WF and you should be able to find it. It was created by another Warrior named Wilson Mattos. You will find him by doing a WF Search. The direct site is Wp Twin

    Again you should be able to get any tech-savy outsourcer to take care of this for you.

    PM me if you need help.
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  • Profile picture of the author abundantliving
    Thank you Mark!!!!!
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  • Profile picture of the author abundantliving
    Does anybody know how to reach Coast,Inc. or find out how to fill out their form if you have over 50 domain names?

    I had all my domain names on a custom nameserver... don't know if they need the domain name of the custom nameserver or all 50+ domain names... and don't see any quick way to reach them to find out.
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    • Profile picture of the author Willie Crawford
      Originally Posted by abundantliving View Post

      Does anybody know how to reach Coast,Inc. or find out how to fill out their form if you have over 50 domain names?

      I had all my domain names on a custom nameserver... don't know if they need the domain name of the custom nameserver or all 50+ domain names... and don't see any quick way to reach them to find out.

      Holly, I've just used the support desk and Coast has always gotten back to me really quickly. I'm looking at several thousand domain names spread across "numerous" dedicated servers.

      A question I have is what does their "Fully Managed" service really include.

      Interesting times :-)

      Willie
      Signature

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      Click To Go BIG!

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    • Profile picture of the author Mark Hendricks
      Holly,

      If you have a dedicated server, just fill in the form like:

      server.whatever.com ip address of server = nn.nnn.nnn.nn (whatever yours is)

      and fax it to them on that form, include your phone number

      then fill in the webform - include your last paypal statement showing date, trans ID, price, etc

      include same info on dedicated server as the fax info above, make sure to use a yahoo or gmail address as your contact email

      I was back up in about 20 minutes after all things were sent to them.

      Mark
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  • Profile picture of the author abundantliving
    Thanks Mark.

    Have just submitted everything. Hopefully it won't be long now.
    :-)
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  • Profile picture of the author Andyhenry
    So for my reseller account - will they be able to put all my previous data back online? or am I just going to end up with a new host and none of the existing website data? I already have alternative hosting - but if these guys have access to all my datawebpro stuff and can bring it all back online - I'll definitely go with them just for that benefit.

    Andy
    Signature

    nothing to see here.

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    • Profile picture of the author Mark Hendricks
      Andy --

      CoastInc really controls all the servers (my understanding), so when
      you become their customer they turn on your reseller
      account and all sites should come up.

      All data is still on server, I believe... they were just
      turned off or disconnected from internet during this
      last few days.

      Mark
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  • Profile picture of the author Steve Garratt
    Did anyone else have an annual subscription? I paid mine on Christmas day.
    Signature
    Please visit my blog and if you have an interest in electronics then please join me at Home DIY Electronics
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    • Profile picture of the author tamshelton
      I pre-paid yearly for the Advanced SEO plan on 12/29/10. I went ahead and filed a paypal dispute, not sure if I'll be able to recover anything. Still within the 45 days to file a claim.

      Originally Posted by howdo-i View Post

      Did anyone else have an annual subscription? I paid mine on Christmas day.
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      • Profile picture of the author Steve Garratt
        I have also placed a Paypal dispute. I'm just inside the 45 days. I don't know whether it will be successfull and I almost didn't do it out of respect but it's just too much money for me to lose.

        Originally Posted by tamshelton View Post

        I pre-paid yearly for the Advanced SEO plan on 12/29/10. I went ahead and filed a paypal dispute, not sure if I'll be able to recover anything. Still within the 45 days to file a claim.
        Signature
        Please visit my blog and if you have an interest in electronics then please join me at Home DIY Electronics
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        • Profile picture of the author Matthew Shelton
          @Caleb, yeah I know you are right and knew it when I posted. This is just such extra hassle, and coastal wants you to FAX a signed agreement to them? I don't even remember how to fax anymore, do you?
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  • Profile picture of the author abundantliving
    Mark, I see that your site is back up. Congrats!

    Curious... how long after you submitted the forms, did it take for them to send you a paypal invoice and then get the website up?

    I ask because I submitted all the forms over an hour ago and still haven't received any confirmation, invoice or anything.

    I know it's only been a little over an hour, but I'm anxious to get this fixed. Any input as to how long, what to expect, etc would be greatly appreciated.

    Thanks.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mark Hendricks
      i was most likely among the first to fax and fill in webform, since
      then lots of folks are probably setting up accounts, and if they
      have domain or reseller accounts, those may take more effort
      for coastinc to turn on, instead of just one ip address for the
      main server to turn on all of your domains at once.

      they said they would send me a paypal button later today
      for payment.

      Best,
      Mark
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  • Profile picture of the author abundantliving
    Did they notify you they were processing the order request so you could know when to redirect your nameservers back to the old IP address?
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    • Profile picture of the author Mark Hendricks
      a tech named John called me to get the server ip address (he overlooked on the fax I sent, and the note I placed in the webform) -- and said to try to access some of the sites that I had not changed nameservers, after "a while".

      So, if some of the domains that you did not change nameserver info come up in browser, then it's time to change back those nameservers you did change.

      Mark
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  • Profile picture of the author abundantliving
    Everything is on my custom nameserver, and I changed the IP addresses to point to the new hosting. So, I guess they don't contact you... you just switch the nameservers back and wait, huh? This is ridiculous... but it's better than nothing.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mark Hendricks
      Holly,

      I just went back to registrar and put back in the same nameserver info that I had before all this happened on the few domains that I changed. So now all points back to the dedicated server.

      Mark
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  • Profile picture of the author Matthew Shelton
    I am not at all happy about this situation. This company will only give me access if I signup to a new agreement and start paying them right away?

    What about what I paid for already? DataWebPro took this months' payment out of paypal february 2nd and then cancelled the account february 7th, and I haven't seen a refund, have you?
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  • Profile picture of the author Caleb Spilchen
    @matthew

    Coastinc has NO money of yours at all... How can they pay to keep there electricity on? They didn't get the money, the other company did... They are doing what they legally have to do.
    Signature

    Canadian Expat Living in Medellin, Colombia

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  • Profile picture of the author Caleb Spilchen
    @Caleb, yeah I know you are right and knew it when I posted. This is just such extra hassle, and coastal wants you to FAX a signed agreement to them? I don't even remember how to fax anymore, do you?
    I have to go to the store.... and get them to do it for me. They should let you e-mail the form ya'd think.

    Caleb
    Signature

    Canadian Expat Living in Medellin, Colombia

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    • Profile picture of the author mindykoch
      Originally Posted by Caleb Spilchen View Post

      I have to go to the store.... and get them to do it for me. They should let you e-mail the form ya'd think.

      Caleb
      There are quite a few ways you can fax from your computer using your scanner. I have used faxbetter for times when I just couldn't be bothered to go to the store.
      Signature

      ~Social Media Experiment~
      Social Drivers

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      • Profile picture of the author tamshelton
        Has anyone received a paypal invoice yet from Coastal Inc? My dedicated and 12 cornerstone accounts were up earlier but as of a few hours ago, the domains are redirecting to a suspended page..all displaying

        "Unfortunately the company that previously provided you with webhosting services,
        Dataword, is presently not able to provide webhosting services due to circumstances
        beyond their control. Dataword presently does not offer webhosting services and
        it is unclear at this time if and when they will ever provide webhosting services again.

        Dataword has contacted Coast Internet Solutions, Inc. (Affordable Website Hosting Company Coast Internet Solutions) to help it's
        customers arrange for alternate webhosting services in an effort to minimize any disruption
        in your Internet presence. If you choose to use Coast Internet Solutions, Inc. for your
        webhosting needs, you would need to sign up as a new customer.

        If you would like to continue your hosting account or dedicated server,
        please submit a ticket at https://support.coastinc.com for further instructions
        "

        This is NOT something I want my site visitors to see
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  • Profile picture of the author Matthew Shelton
    "This is NOT something I want my site visitors to see"
    - yes it makes it look like it is our fault, at BEST.

    Doesn't look like they have 24/7 support because I replied to that onscreen message also and haven't heard back from them yet.
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    • Profile picture of the author tamshelton
      Surprisingly Coastal just replied at 11:45 pm Est regarding the suspended message and when they are going to invoice.

      ------------------
      Technical Support Response:

      We are still working on restoring all the access, if you have already signed up, it should be back up within a few hours. The suspension notice is due to a problem in the billing software.

      ------------------
      So crosses fingers.. At this point, I'd rather not be back up at all until all was resolved than to have a suspended page with that verbiage. The site was up earlier and looks like a billing software problem. We've just had a celebrity whom we've interviewed in the past that frequents the site daily contacting us tonight freaking out wondering what's going with the site.

      Originally Posted by Matthew Shelton View Post

      "This is NOT something I want my site visitors to see"
      - yes it makes it look like it is our fault, at BEST.

      Doesn't look like they have 24/7 support because I replied to that onscreen message also and haven't heard back from them yet.
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  • Profile picture of the author Dirk Wagner
    Hi Matthew,

    I know this isn't the best solution but we should be glad when we get access back to
    our sites. I paid annually for my hosting which would be re-billed in May so I lost even
    more money but in those times I wouldn't disturb Steve's family with such problems.

    Until now I sent my fax to Coastinc one day ago and only received a message from
    them that I should send them the IP addresses of my domains since they couldn't
    find them at the servers so I still have to wait and see if they can find them after
    providing the IP addresses which I have stored at my PC.

    Until now no payment link was sent so I am sure that my sites won't be shown
    before I pay anything and before the billing software problem is fixed other warriors
    mentioned here.

    Kind regards,

    Dirk
    Signature

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  • Profile picture of the author smartcookee
    Do you guys all have your IP addresses for all your domains as stated by Dirk?

    I have no idea what mine are.

    I have all of my domains in a file with their corresponding nameservers and cpanel logins, but I never thought that I would need to know or have the IP addresses for all of them.

    Don
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    • Profile picture of the author Noel Springer
      Just google domain to ip lookup and you will find a service where you can find the ip address of your domain(s).

      I just used: Convert Host Name to IP Address or Find IP address of a host - e.g. find IP address of host name of
      Here is another: Whois - IP Address - Domain Name Lookup

      If your domains are all on the same server, most likely the IP address will be the same for all.

      Cheers,
      Noel
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    • Profile picture of the author Andyhenry
      Originally Posted by smartcookee View Post

      Do you guys all have your IP addresses for all your domains as stated by Dirk?

      I have no idea what mine are.

      I have all of my domains in a file with their corresponding nameservers and cpanel logins, but I never thought that I would need to know or have the IP addresses for all of them.

      Don
      if you go to your command prompt (type cmd in your 'run' window on Windows) and then type: ping www.yourdomain.com

      It will tell you the IP address of any website.
      Signature

      nothing to see here.

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      • Profile picture of the author Netafile
        Am getting the same notice on my sites.

        They started coming up, then disappeared and are posting the suspension notice.

        Got this from John at coast:

        "I understand your concern and apologize that this is taking longer than expected. We keep running into more and more roadblocks with this because of the way he had the servers set up. He had multiple accounts spread across multiple servers, all with secondary ips, custom nameservers, and even the ips customers thought they had were recently moved/changed by him. We have been sorting through literally "thousands" of accounts trying to find where everyone's account is. I apologize this is taking so long but we have been working nonstop trying to sort all of this out. We will be contacting you as soon as possible or calling you if we need further details to locate your account."

        So who knows when this will be resolved.
        Signature

        Howard "OutSourcerer" Tiano -OutsourceOuttakes.com
        FREE video e-zine on Outsourcing - Video tips from the "Gurus"

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        • Profile picture of the author tamshelton
          yes I just received the exact same cookie cutter response verbatim. I suppose they are getting tons of support tickets on this.

          Originally Posted by Netafile View Post

          Am getting the same notice on my sites.

          They started coming up, then disappeared and are posting the suspension notice.

          Got this from John at coast:

          "I understand your concern and apologize that this is taking longer than expected. We keep running into more and more roadblocks with this because of the way he had the servers set up. He had multiple accounts spread across multiple servers, all with secondary ips, custom nameservers, and even the ips customers thought they had were recently moved/changed by him. We have been sorting through literally "thousands" of accounts trying to find where everyone's account is. I apologize this is taking so long but we have been working nonstop trying to sort all of this out. We will be contacting you as soon as possible or calling you if we need further details to locate your account."

          So who knows when this will be resolved.
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          • Profile picture of the author smartcookee
            You guys (and gals) may get a kick out of this.

            Perhaps I'm not the only one.

            As I'm reading this thread, some of your signatures catch my eye and as I usually do...
            I click on the ones that sound interesting...

            and immediately discover that your sites are down! duh!

            lol
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            • Profile picture of the author Matthew Shelton
              "As I'm reading this thread, some of your signatures catch my eye and as I usually do...
              I click on the ones that sound interesting...

              and immediately discover that your sites are down! duh!

              lol "

              Yes, the cycle continues! singing: "the ciiiiirrrclllle of dowwwwnnnn" (from Lion King)

              Guess the lesson is to NEVER go with a small webhost, no matter how good they are.
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            • Profile picture of the author Netafile
              Originally Posted by smartcookee View Post

              As I'm reading this thread, some of your signatures catch my eye and as I usually do...
              I click on the ones that sound interesting...

              and immediately discover that your sites are down! duh!

              lol
              Yeah, it's funny in a dark sort of way...

              Any hosting company that is not reachable by phone has no business being in business.

              Sites are STILL not up...and I only had one dedicated server. Gave them the i.p. address.

              Can they be this inept? They're probably reading this forum saying..."OK, let's make THIS dude wait..."
              Signature

              Howard "OutSourcerer" Tiano -OutsourceOuttakes.com
              FREE video e-zine on Outsourcing - Video tips from the "Gurus"

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              • Profile picture of the author Matthew Shelton
                Originally Posted by Netafile View Post

                Yeah, it's funny in a dark sort of way...

                Any hosting company that is not reachable by phone has no business being in business.
                "
                agree - I'm not going with anybody that isn't a full service webhost again.

                Another good rule is to not have your domains and hosting with the same company - that way you have a fighting chance when something like this happens.
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                • Profile picture of the author Mark Hendricks
                  I held a teleconference for my Internet Success System members, and I
                  make these available to listen online for two weeks (members have
                  access to get all of them from the archive since Jan 2005).

                  Here's the topics of the Feb 8, 2011 call:

                  Topics discussed on this audio: A very important discussion of protecting your online business from webhosting horrors, how to do manual backups, how to automate your backups, keeping your data safe and away from host problems so that you can quickly be back up and running when (not if) you have a problem - what you can do if you discover some has taken your content and using it on their site and taking credit for it themselves

                  Listen in here (it will not be available to the public after Feb 22, 2011):

                  -- click here to listen --

                  Hope you find it helpful.

                  As always, my best to you --

                  Mark Hendricks
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                  • Profile picture of the author ChasHicks
                    I had DataWordPro's SEO Reseller plan (10 reseller accounts on different IPs).

                    I signed + faxed the agreement, provided info on all 10 servers, and signed up for service on Monday.

                    I got a call from John at Coast Tuesday morning but they couldn't "find" which actual servers these accounts were hosted on. None of them so far. I gave him what info I had and he said he'd check further and call me back in 15 minutes. No call.

                    I filed a support ticket and said PLEASE find and restore just these two sites (one a membership site, another a primary content site) for now while the rest gets sorted out.

                    No response.

                    I'm getting anxious - even though the Lord says not too :>)

                    My customers don't understand why they can't get to their data that they paid for.

                    Charlie
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                    • Profile picture of the author tamshelton
                      Same situation here. I have a Dedicated and 12 Reseller accounts on different IPs. However, after faxing and placing an order on Monday. I've only received cookie cutter responses on my support ticket opened that they are still locating accounts. I haven't received a phone call from John at all.

                      Originally Posted by ChasHicks View Post

                      I had DataWordPro's SEO Reseller plan (10 reseller accounts on different IPs).

                      I signed + faxed the agreement, provided info on all 10 servers, and signed up for service on Monday.

                      I got a call from John at Coast Tuesday morning but they couldn't "find" which actual servers these accounts were hosted on. None of them so far. I gave him what info I had and he said he'd check further and call me back in 15 minutes. No call.

                      I filed a support ticket and said PLEASE find and restore just these two sites (one a membership site, another a primary content site) for now while the rest gets sorted out.

                      No response.

                      I'm getting anxious - even though the Lord says not too :>)

                      My customers don't understand why they can't get to their data that they paid for.

                      Charlie
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  • Profile picture of the author Matthew Shelton
    well I used faxzero to send their required fax (2 free faxes allowed to send a day) and filled out all the forms and am waiting to see what happens next. Hope they don't ask for IP addresses.
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  • Profile picture of the author smartcookee
    Thank you Noel and Andy. I appreciate that information.

    Perhaps it has something to do with the sites/servers being down, but...
    I did manage to capture some of my IP's using Noel's method but it did not work on all of my domains.

    I returned to this thread and then I tried Andy's method and received this message:
    Ping request could not find host www.One-of-My-Domains.com Please check the name and try again.

    I did manage to dig up quite a few of them in my own records, but some of them were outdated due to a change I made a few years ago to my hosting package.

    Hopefully, Coast inc will be able to fill in the blanks since I do have all of the Nameservers and cpanel logins.

    Again thanks for those suggestions, Noel and Andy
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  • Profile picture of the author Andyhenry
    It's quite annoying that some of my clients sites are showing the "your hosting company no longer provides hosting - sign up for new hosting here" messages. They've obviously been able to access them so why not just leave them live and deal with us since we've already contacted them and they know we've agreed to move across.
    Signature

    nothing to see here.

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    • Profile picture of the author Steve Garratt
      Originally Posted by Andyhenry View Post

      It's quite annoying that some of my clients sites are showing the "your hosting company no longer provides hosting - sign up for new hosting here" messages. They've obviously been able to access them so why not just leave them live and deal with us since we've already contacted them and they know we've agreed to move across.
      My sites are showing the same message and I have no intention of signing up with them. The few remaining sites that I have not yet transferred away are displaying that very annoying message. It would have been better to leave them offline.

      Most of my important sites are now online at Hostgator. I'm glad that I made the decision to move quickly when we first realised that something was seriously wrong. You guys still waiting must be really hurting by now.
      Signature
      Please visit my blog and if you have an interest in electronics then please join me at Home DIY Electronics
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    • Profile picture of the author Willie Crawford
      Originally Posted by Andyhenry View Post

      It's quite annoying that some of my clients sites are showing the "your hosting company no longer provides hosting - sign up for new hosting here" messages. They've obviously been able to access them so why not just leave them live and deal with us since we've already contacted them and they know we've agreed to move across.

      Yes, although it's a little better than the message that first showed
      up on many of my clients sites that said "SUSPENDED" giving their
      customers the impression that they were perhaps completely out of
      business.

      I don't understand why they didn't just leave them live either.

      Willie
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      • Profile picture of the author Caleb Spilchen
        Originally Posted by Willie Crawford View Post

        Yes, although it's a little better than the message that first showed
        up on many of my clients sites that said "SUSPENDED" giving their
        customers the impression that they were perhaps completely out of
        business.

        I don't understand why they didn't just leave them live either.

        Willie
        Hey Willie,

        Chances are, they are on cpanel with Web Hosting Manager, I would
        assume that when they closed his account, they put it on "suspension"
        for a couple of days, and then turned off the servers... But, I guess
        they didn't suspend most of the accounts, or something. Because if
        it said suspended, that would be the page from WHM, that shows when
        someone hasn't paid a bill.

        Just my thoughts on the situation, thought it might help...

        Caleb
        Signature

        Canadian Expat Living in Medellin, Colombia

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        • Profile picture of the author Willie Crawford
          Originally Posted by Caleb Spilchen View Post

          Hey Willie,

          Chances are, they are on cpanel with Web Hosting Manager, I would
          assume that when they closed his account, they put it on "suspension"
          for a couple of days, and then turned off the servers... But, I guess
          they didn't suspend most of the accounts, or something. Because if
          it said suspended, that would be the page from WHM, that shows when
          someone hasn't paid a bill.

          Just my thoughts on the situation, thought it might help...

          Caleb
          Hi Caleb,

          Yes, they are on cPanel with WHM, and probably using WHMCS
          too. They may have just customized the default suspended page.

          They are working to sort through everything, just not fast
          enough

          Willie
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          • Profile picture of the author Caleb Spilchen
            Originally Posted by Willie Crawford View Post

            Hi Caleb,

            Yes, they are on cPanel with WHM, and probably using WHMCS
            too. They may have just customized the default suspended page.

            They are working to sort through everything, just not fast
            enough

            Willie
            Willie,

            Yeah, I think it was mean of them to change it to, "contact us
            to get your site back".. But then again, I'm not sure if they
            had any other way of contacting you, so maybe that was
            there attempt.

            Who knows ... Anyways, I hope things go well for you
            Willie.

            Caleb
            Signature

            Canadian Expat Living in Medellin, Colombia

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          • Profile picture of the author Willie Crawford
            This is the last response that I got when I pointed out to Coast and
            GNAX that I HAVE a listing of all my dedicated servers, NameServers,
            IP's, etc. and would happily provide that to whoever is working to
            sort through it all and turn accounts back on.

            I have multiple dedicated servers, leased through Steve, who leased
            from Coast, who was GNAX's customer:



            On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 4:26 PM, DataWordPRO / NetDepot
            <dataword@gnax.net> wrote:
            All Data Word Pro Customers:

            I would like to make an official introduction of GNAX
            (Global Net Access, LLC) to the customers of Data Word Pro.
            We are well aware of the issues each of you have been facing
            in the past week or more and share your pain during this
            time. We are all saddened by the passing of the owner of
            Data and the predicament it has left the customers in during
            this time.

            I would like to assure you that our goal is to assist in
            restoring the services to you and your company as soon as
            possible and with the least amount of problems. As many of
            you probably already know, Coast Inc has assumed the
            servicing of all the customers that had full dedicated
            servers with Data. They have asked us to begin the services
            for all the shared customers and we have agreed to do so. As
            you may or not know, we operate data centers in Atlanta and
            Dallas and actually own the facilities and servers. Coast
            Inc is a reseller customer of ours and was the provider for
            Data.

            We have been able to obtain all the billing records for the
            Data customers and are sending this email to each advising
            of the changes. All services will be restored by the time
            you receive this email and you should be able to reach your
            accounts in the manner you have always done.
            We have
            redirected the ticket system to us and will be handling your
            questions and needs. Your billing should come from the same
            source as well. Hopefully this will make your restoration of
            service problem free.

            We hope that you will continue your service with GNAX. We
            feel we are well equipped to service your current and future
            needs. I will admit that we are not totally familiar with
            all aspects of your business and ask for a bit of patience
            as we deal with them. We have a great staff that is very
            professional and will do their utmost to meet your needs and
            requirements. Any contacts outside the normal ticket system
            should be directed thru email to dataword@gnax.net. This will
            open a ticket in our system and we will handle it. Our
            7/24/365 phone number is 404-230-9150 prompt 5 for technical
            support. We ask that you use the ticketing system for all
            issues and refrain from phone calls. Our support system is
            designed around written tickets that are tracked and
            answered. We ask that the phone be used in emergency only
            and we thank you in advance.

            Please keep in mind that the issues you have been facing
            were not of our making, but we are here to do our best to
            resolve them. We appreciate your patience and willingness to
            work with our team.
            FYI, all services have NOT been restored

            Willie
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          • Profile picture of the author Willie Crawford
            I just wanted to add that I AM getting things resolved. I
            did get officials from Coast on the phone and we identified
            exactly what the problem is and how to fix it.

            I expect all of my customers' sites to be back online
            tomorrow... and then I have to sort through any mixed
            up IP addresses and changes that occurred while the
            sites were down.

            My tech support team can handle that... we just needed
            access to the servers!

            Willie
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        • Profile picture of the author smartcookee
          Hi Guys and Gals,

          Just thought I'd give an update on my status since it might help you all to know that there is progress being made.

          I had a DataWebPro account that was called a "Mini SEO package" that was a reseller account that consisted of 3 separate servers, although Steve moved a site for me that I purchased earlier in the year... and for some inexplicable reason he put that one on a completely different server...

          but as of this time yesterday only one group that consisted of about 12 of my sites were back up. about 28 were still down.

          I complained earlier today about the other 2 groups and re-sent the information I had on those sites and now everything is back up and working perfectly.

          Hopefully that might give some consolation to those of you still waiting.

          Don
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  • Profile picture of the author bendito84
    Thanks for valuable info here!
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    • Profile picture of the author ChasHicks
      First - I don't know anything about the financials between DataWord and Coast. I've got to believe Coast has been making money from DataWord for a few years now and have a history built up.

      However, from a customer service standpoint, I would think the best thing Coast could have done was leave the accounts live and send out a notice saying your account will stay live until Feb xx, at which time you must have an agreement signed with us to continue.

      In other words, be helpful to those affected and leave a good impression of their hosting service. Show some grace.

      The way Coast is handling this isn't sitting well here.

      I understand they must be overwhelmed.

      I just bought a business from one of my biggest competitors. It was multiple sites, good sized list, membership site, etc. I am going out of my way to handle all the customer service issues that were outstanding - because I care for the customer and am concerned for the long-term relationship.

      I'm learning some valuable lessons in going through this transition from DataWordPro. And I won't allow my business to be held up like this in the future.

      Charlie
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      • Profile picture of the author billybob
        Originally Posted by ChasHicks View Post

        .... be helpful to those affected and leave a good impression of their hosting service. Show some grace.

        The way Coast is handling this isn't sitting well here.
        Agreed. 56 hours and NO phone call about my 10 servers and 100 domains.

        How hard can it be to KEEP THINGS TURNED ON, rather than turning them off??
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  • Profile picture of the author Andyhenry
    Update: FYI

    My sites have been up and down all over the place. Not yet seen them all up but right now they're all still down.

    I did get a message (in their support ticket system) saying that my site was up but when I checked they were all down completely - no messages or anything now.

    They do seem to be working on this and I can imagine what a nightmare it is for them to get their head around what we all had set up with Steve.

    But still very frustrating right now as I have a lot of email accounts that I use which are tied to these and so making things difficult right now.

    Andy
    Signature

    nothing to see here.

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  • Profile picture of the author abundantliving
    I've been blessed... my sites came back up and have stayed up (knock wood)... at least long enough for me to transfer everything to a server on hostgator.

    With that said, I agree with Willie that this must be a customer service nightmare for CoastInc.

    However, it is a nightmare THEY MADE FOR THEMSELVES... therefore, I have no sympathy for them.

    If they had simply contacted customers BEFORE turning the servers off... providing us with a message similar to what they've posted on the websites and giving us the option to pay them directly or they will turn our server off in 7 days, then they could have avoided this altogether.

    Basically, they handled this is a ridiculously unprofessional manner... one that has cost the customers thousands of dollars. CoastInc deserve every headache they have created for themselves.
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    • Profile picture of the author Matthew Shelton
      I don't know jack about the hosting business but here's a little story:

      Once upon a time, there was a zoo where one of the zookeepers died.

      This zookeeper had charge of lots of specialized animals kept in different cages all throughout the zoo, and they were all being fed their specialized food and were relatively happy, at least they could carry on their lives as they were used to living.

      They were all peaceful well-behaved creatures, they paid their bills, so to speak.

      But when the zookeeper died the big zoo managers got worried and said "Who is going to pay for their food now?"

      - so they let all these animals out of their cages, all at once.

      The creatures started complaining and making noises - they couldn't live their lives outside their cages, and they were wandering all around the zoo now.

      The zoo managers said "Uh oh, we've got to do something!" but since they had stopped feeding the animals and made them all get out of their cages, they were all mixed up and hard to track down now.

      "Let us find you, and find your cages! We'll be your zookeeper now!" "Let us sort this out and you start paying us like you did the other zookeeper!" was the message they broadcast throughout the park.

      But the creatures were starving and confused - they would have loved to get on with their lives as before, but they had no idea where each of their cages were, or their cage numbers, and they didn't know how to mix their specialized food - they had just paid their creature wages before, and it had been done for them.

      They also felt like they had been shut out in the cold by the new zookeepers:

      - "Why didn't they let us stay in our cages?" they cried. "Do we really cost that much to feed that we had to be kicked out in the cold immediately?!"
      -
      - Many of the creatures felt they had no choice but to find another place to live.
      -
      - Others decided to stay in the bounds of the zoo and do the best they could.
      -
      - All of them resolved to keep better watch in the future.

      And the zoo was never the same again.

      The End
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      • Profile picture of the author ChasHicks
        Has anyone heard anything from Coast today?

        I have not. My business is suffering. I'm loosing money.

        Charlie
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        • Profile picture of the author tamshelton
          I have not. They've stopped providing updates or responding. I did find that 10 of the 12 cornerstone accounts are back up across 12 servers, but those are not my money sites. The main sites are on the Dedicated which was highest priority. I'm loosing out daily and advertisers are very angry right now that their pre-paid ads aren't running and the site has been down 6 days now.

          Originally Posted by ChasHicks View Post

          Has anyone heard anything from Coast today?

          I have not. My business is suffering. I'm loosing money.

          Charlie
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      • Profile picture of the author wpsecuritylock
        Great story Matthew! Did you write it? It really hits home for many of us.
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        • Profile picture of the author Matthew Shelton
          Originally Posted by wpsecuritylock View Post

          Great story Matthew! Did you write it? It really hits home for many of us.
          Thank you Regina!! Yes I wrote it. Sometimes a story or song can boil something down and make it communicable, and that is what I was reaching for, especially since there may be some Mom or Dad out there who due to this series of events may have to be explaining to their kids why this month they can't do so-and-so: they just don't have the money they expected to have. Maybe the story will help them. I'm still working on leaving this particular story behind, myself.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mark Hendricks
    the steps I've been told and followed:

    do not use an email associated with your domains, they won't be able to communicate with you while your account is down.

    use a yahoo or gmail account for your contact info.

    1 - fax in the agreement, put extra info on it: phone number, domains and matching ip addresses

    http://www.coastinc.com/dataword/transferauth.html

    2 - fill in the open a new account form on the web: add extra info such as domains and matching ip addresses

    https://www.coastinc.com/dataword/dataorder.cgi

    3 - open a support ticket at: https://support.coastinc.com - include all the same info as above

    (Mark adds: don't open extra support tickets, it only confuse them - just use the address they email when you open the first support ticket, update your request for service each day, if they have not responded) -- and be polite at all times (even if you're really steamed about all this :-) )

    Hope that helps.

    Mark Hendricks
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    • Profile picture of the author billybob
      Mark H.
      I think you just got lucky.

      The rest of us did not.

      Even after being carefully polite (though aknowledging my anxiousness), now they have changed the status of my ticket to HOLD.

      What does HOLD mean? When I try to reply to it, it bounces to another page, and fails to add my reply.

      How stinking hard is it to just turn on the domains and IP addresses we gave them? Really, they already RAN the servers! Is it that hard? Are they just incompetent?

      I also never heard back from the BILLING department . . . has anyone else heard back? Have they set up payments with you??

      Is the negative press toward COASTINC hosting going to ruin their business in the end? Because they are not helping themselves.

      Is it just two people working out of their basement, and leasing the servers from GNAX? Sort of like what Steve was doing??
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  • Profile picture of the author Mark Hendricks
    latest update from Coastinc around 12pm ET on Friday:

    Hi,

    Thanks again for switching your hosting to us.

    This email will explain the past situation with Datword as well as introduce our company to you.
    We will be sending you the payment link within the next 24 hours.

    Steve Hetrick, the owner of Dataword, suddenly and unexpectedly passed away on January 25, 2011. Mr. Hetrick was a personal friend as well as a long time customer of ours. I actually spoke to him just days before his passing. He was a great guy and devoted to his work. After speaking with several of his customers, I was impressed at how many people he had touched on a personal level. He will be dearly missed, and our condolences and offer to help in any way possible has been sent to his family multiple times.

    First and foremost, we want to assure you that his servers were "not" shut off because he passed away. Unfortunately for legal reasons, we can not disclose the specific reason why.

    We were in contact with the representative from Dataword trying to resolve this situation amicably, such as transferring billing to our company and keeping the servers up. Unfortunately after a few days, the rep became unresponsive and unhelpful, providing no information such as customer contact information, access to billing details, account location structure, etc.
    In fact, we did not and still do not even know how many customers he had.

    Although we received a few contacts from his customers that did a reverse trace on the ip, that was only a handful out of the thousands of accounts on his servers. Since we had none of the customer's information to contact them directly, we had no other choice but to put an explaination page up on the websites requesting the customers to contact us. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused but there was just no other choice.

    Once we received the contact from the customers, we immediately began turning accounts back on. We then found out that unlike a regular structure of hosting accounts, he had most customers spread amongst multiple servers.
    Additionally, he recently moved several ips/accounts from several servers to other servers to consolidate. Most of the accounts/ips that customers gave us to reactivate did not even exist anymore where they thought they were, nameservers/hostnames did not match in most cases. We had our entire staff working 24x7 solely working on cleaning up this catastrophe and getting accounts reactivated as fast as possible.

    Everything in your account should be active and working fine already. We are sure that some domains from some customers were still missed accidentally either because we couldn't locate them yet or because the details provided to us were not correct. We apologize if you still have any sites inactive,
    but we have mapped the structure of all of the servers and if you still have any inactive sites, please let us know as soon as possible so we can reactivate them.

    Coast Internet Solutions, Inc. has been in business since 1996, we are not resellers and do not outsource. We manage/maintain all of our servers by our own techs. Support is provided 24x7x365 through our helpdesk at https://support.coastinc.com for shared and reseller hosting, and dedicated server customers will receive a different dedicated helpdesk login specifically intended for dedicated servers in an upcoming email.
    For any quality assurance concerns, you are always more than welcome to contact a supervisor at qa@coastinc.com

    Please note that none of the servers have changed or moved in any way, and all ips, nameservers, plans, pricing, features, etc. remains as is. We will try our best to maintain the high level of support that you previously had.

    We will also soon be adding these servers on our status page at Coast Internet Solutions, Inc. Server Status and adding the domains to the search function also to locate which server you are on.

    If you have any questions or comments, plaese feel free to contact us any time.

    Thank you,
    Ethan, John, and the entire Coast Internet Solutions, Inc. Staff
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    • Profile picture of the author billybob
      Wow! Thanks Mark. That is a very IMPRESSIVE email they sent you.

      I wonder why they seem to frequently respond to you, but not to other customers??

      "Unfortunately for legal reasons, we can not disclose the specific reason why."

      That sounds like a BS argument, which is not true legally, but . . . whatever.

      The rest of the email is superb. Makes me feel more confident in WAITING FOR THEM to fix things. I hope it is not just a great example of PR spin, but rather a real indication of their situation.

      Thanks again for sharing here.
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      • Profile picture of the author ChasHicks
        I just got this today - a bit different than what Mark posted.

        I only have 2 DOMAINS out of dozens across 10 reseller accounts that are working.

        Now the game is changing again:

        -----------------------------------------

        Technical Support Response:

        Hi,

        Once again we apologize that this is taking longer than expected. When we were practically forced to take over these accounts, we had no idea what we were getting into. We found that almost every customer had multiple accounts spread across multiple servers and there were literally thousands of domains like this, even including multiple different class c/secondary ips, custom nameservers, etc. We had no list of domains, no accurate server names, no ip distribution, etc. To make matters worse, dataword recently moved many of the ips from old to new servers and when customers gave us the information to reactivate it did not exist.

        The rep from dataword has stopped responding to us and did not provide any helpful information on where accounts were located, who the customers are, which servers they were on, etc. In fact, we still do not know how many customers they had.

        Even after setting up a dedicated staff team to work solely on this issue 24x7, we are still inundated with requests to find ips/accounts that can't be located and are receiving numerous outraged emails from people that are simply not understanding the complexity of this mess and that WE are the good guys trying to help. We did not make this mess nor cause it. We were working as fast as possible to resolve it but logistically takes a long time. Unfortunately after discussing with the president of the datacenter, Gnax, this is something that they are better able to handle. We will be giving all the servers back to them and they will be in contact with you to deal with any remaining issues.

        An email account specifically for these issues will be setup within 24 hours: dataword@gnax.net
        In the meantime, you can contact jhinkle@gnax.net for any questions or assistance.
        Once again, please be aware that everyone is trying to help clean up the mess. So sending threatening or abusive emails yelling will not help. Please also try not to submit multiple emails for the same issue as that only creates more unnecessary work to go through.

        Please note, we are no longer in the loop with any of this. We have not sent out any bills nor charged anyone. Gnax will be taking over and care of the entire dataword situation. All dataword's servers have been given to them, which contains their billing system and customer contact info.

        Any further contacts to us regarding this will be forwarded directly to Gnax.

        We apologize again but with all due respect to the late Steve Hetrick, the mess left to us made it virtually impossible to clean up in a timely or practical manner.

        Thank you,
        Coast Internet Solutions, Inc.


        !! DO NOT REPLY TO THIS E-MAIL !!
        To VIEW or RESPOND to this ticket, please go to
        Redirecting..

        We realize you have a choice in web hosting, and we appreciate your business. Please e-mail our Quality Assurance department at qa@coastinc.com if you have any concerns or questions relating to the quality of service you receive from us.

        Thank you,
        Coast Internet Solutions, Inc.

        ---------------
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        • Profile picture of the author Willie Crawford
          [QUOTE=ChasHicks;3353541]I just got this today - a bit different than what Mark posted.

          I only have 2 DOMAINS out of dozens across 10 reseller accounts that are working.

          Now the game is changing again:

          -----------------------------------------

          I just got the same email. I have hundreds of customers and thousands
          of domains across a lot of servers down.

          The note essentially says Coast is throwing up their hands after several
          days of trying to unravel it all, and passing it up to GNAX.

          Willie
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  • Profile picture of the author Caleb Spilchen

    I just got the same email. I have hundreds of customers and thousands
    of domains across a lot of servers down.

    The note essentially says Coast is throwing up their hands after several
    days of trying to unravel it all, and passing it up to GNAX.

    Willie
    You have to feel for coast in this situation, because I mean there could be over 100 servers involved in this, that they have no map to.. And people are yelling at them, and saying that they made this mess for themselves, and all that..

    It's really sad for them, and I really hope someone finds some sort of map to all this...

    1000's of sites? wow.... Have any of yours come up yet Willie? Interesting to see if they can get you all set up soon .
    Signature

    Canadian Expat Living in Medellin, Colombia

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    • Profile picture of the author Willie Crawford
      Originally Posted by Caleb Spilchen View Post

      You have to feel for coast in this situation, because I mean there could be over 100 servers involved in this, that they have no map to.. And people are yelling at them, and saying that they made this mess for themselves, and all that..

      It's really sad for them, and I really hope someone finds some sort of map to all this...

      1000's of sites? wow.... Have any of yours come up yet Willie? Interesting to see if they can get you all set up soon .

      Most of my servers are offline. Some never went down. I don't see
      any real rhyme or reason for why certain ones are offline and others
      are not.

      Willie
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      • Profile picture of the author Caleb Spilchen
        Originally Posted by Willie Crawford View Post

        Most of my servers are offline. Some never went down. I don't see
        any real rhyme or reason for why certain ones are offline and others
        are not.

        Willie
        By the sounds of it, they may have been turning them off rack by rack, and so one rack, may be off and another may not be... It's kinda crazy...

        Now, what confuses me, is if datawordpro.com was hosted by them, then they would have the database of whatever he used to track his customers, which would show the location of there files, because usually they have an auto suspend system when people dont pay.

        Then again, I'm sure that's confidential information, and can't be released.

        This just keeps getting more interesting.

        Caleb
        Signature

        Canadian Expat Living in Medellin, Colombia

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        • Profile picture of the author ChasHicks
          I don't doubt it's very difficult for Coast and now Gnax. It must feel very daunting to have to figure out all the servers, IPs, accounts, etc. with no master list.

          What I don't understand is why they shut down access to begin with! Whether they actually shut them down, changed the routers for the IP blocks, or whatever means they used to deny access, it just doesn't make sense to me.

          Someone had to make that conscious decision to deny access to these sites, servers and WHM accounts. Who, Why? Perhaps it was a knee-jerk reaction? Was it Coast personnel? Was it someone at DataWebPro? GNAX?

          Whomever it was had to know they were affecting the businesses and lives of hundreds, if not thousands of folks. It defies logic.

          Based on what I've heard and seen so far I am coming to the conclusion it could take weeks to sort this out. For a a few of my key sites I have decided to start rebuilding them as best I can with what I have. In some cases I can't.

          Like Willie said, some sites remained up. I had a couple sites on one WHM account that stayed up last weekend. They are now down. So, if you find ANY of your sites are up I would STRONGLY suggest that you do a CPANEL full backup and download the backup file immediately. I wouldn't take a chance and trust that they will stay up.

          I wish everyone the best. Let's continue to share any info if something changes.

          Charlie
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  • Profile picture of the author Caleb Spilchen
    Someone had to make that conscious decision to deny access to these sites, servers and WHM accounts. Who, Why? Perhaps it was a knee-jerk reaction? Was it Coast personnel? Was it someone at DataWebPro? GNAX?
    I would assume that the dedicated servers were rented from gnax, through coastinc... Which means, that coastinc would have to in turn, pay gnax for the use... Say he had 100 servers, thats a lot of money for them to pay.

    Just saying.
    Signature

    Canadian Expat Living in Medellin, Colombia

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  • Profile picture of the author Mark Hendricks
    latest update - Saturday afternoon from CoastInc.

    I received a message after this one, that stated that the following message only appliled to those who have shared server accounts, and not to those who have a dedicated server.

    - - -

    Once again we apologize that this is taking longer than expected. When we were practically forced to take over these accounts, we had no idea what we were getting into. We found that almost every customer had multiple accounts spread across multiple servers and there were literally thousands of domains like this, even including multiple different class c/secondary ips, custom nameservers, etc. We had no list of domains, no accurate server names, no ip distribution, etc. To make matters worse, dataword recently moved many of the ips from old to new servers and when customers gave us the information to reactivate it did not exist.

    The rep from dataword has stopped responding to us and did not provide any helpful information on where accounts were located, who the customers are, which servers they were on, etc. In fact, we still do not know how many customers they had.

    Even after setting up a dedicated staff team to work solely on this issue 24x7, we are still inundated with requests to find ips/accounts that can't be located and are receiving numerous outraged emails from people that are simply not understanding the complexity of this mess and that WE are the good guys trying to help. We did not make this mess nor cause it. We were working as fast as possible to resolve it but logistically takes a long time. Unfortunately after discussing with the president of the datacenter, Gnax, this is something that they are better able to handle. We will be giving all the servers back to them and they will be in contact with you to deal with any remaining issues.

    An email account specifically for these issues will be setup within 24 hours: dataword@gnax.net
    In the meantime, you can contact jhinkle@gnax.net for any questions or assistance.
    Once again, please be aware that everyone is trying to help clean up the mess. So sending threatening or abusive emails yelling will not help. Please also try not to submit multiple emails for the same issue as that only creates more unnecessary work to go through.

    Please note, we are no longer in the loop with any of this. We have not sent out any bills nor charged anyone. Gnax will be taking over and care of the entire dataword situation. All dataword's servers have been given to them, which contains their billing system and customer contact info.

    Any further contacts to us regarding this will be forwarded directly to Gnax.

    We apologize again but with all due respect to the late Steve Hetrick, the mess left to us made it virtually impossible to clean up in a timely or practical manner.

    Thank you,
    Coast Internet Solutions, Inc.
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    • Profile picture of the author Willie Crawford
      Originally Posted by hunteridge View Post

      latest update - Saturday afternoon from CoastInc.

      I received a message after this one, that stated that the following message only appliled to those who have shared server accounts, and not to those who have a dedicated server.

      - - -
      Mark, all of my servers are dedicated, and I didn't get that
      second message from CoastInc.... so they "may" have just sent it to
      customers on dedicated servers who they had already taken care of.

      Willie
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      • Profile picture of the author Netafile
        I've had some sites come up, only to have them disappear again before I could back them up.

        I got the same email as pasted above.

        I've emailed Jeff at GNAX with the info needed, and now I just have to cross my fingers and hope this gets sorted out.

        Meanwhile, I'm rebuilding the important sites from backups I've got.

        All an incredible hassle, big lessons learned.
        Signature

        Howard "OutSourcerer" Tiano -OutsourceOuttakes.com
        FREE video e-zine on Outsourcing - Video tips from the "Gurus"

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  • Profile picture of the author abundantliving
    I find a couple of things about this situation very unprofessional and downright dishonest.

    First, if you'll note on page 1 of this thread, I originally contacted gnax.net and was told by them that they are NOT the ones who house the actual servers. They would not disclose the name of the company who they said housed the servers (stated it was confidential) but had me fill out a support ticket which they supposedly forwarded to the company that they said housed the servers... which turned out to be CoastInc. Now CoastInc is saying that gnax is the company that actually houses the servers. CoastInc has unwittingly exposed gnax.net as a dishonest company that is more than willing to LIE to their customers... telling us that they don't house the servers. (LIE!). I would never do business with such a dishonest company and am glad I transferred my sites to hostgator!

    Second, both CoastInc and Gnax were aware of Steve's demise before any of us were. In fact, it was during the conversation with gnax that I started wondering what was going on, and googled datawebpro, and found this thread on the forum. I was so shocked that I blurted out "oh my God, he's dead!" And the gnax rep said, "Yes. But we weren't at liberty to disclose that information." Since they were aware of the situation, WHY ON EARTH would they simply turn off the servers? They KNEW Steve had hundreds (if not thousands) of customers... and they knew how it would affect all of us. If they were intelligent business people, they would have contacted the customers and explained that datawebpro was no longer able to provide webhosting, and offered to take over the accounts.

    Which brings me to my 3rd observation...

    I find it impossible to believe that nobody at either company has any contact information for any of Steve's customers (after all, if we were Steve's customer and Steve was their customer, then WE are THEIR customer. It's simple gradeschool math. If A=B and B=C then A=C). If nothing else, they could have used whois to look up the contact information... it would have taken them a LOT less time than dealing with the hordes of angry customers, and they could have turned it into a profitable venture simply by offering to take over the hosting services.

    I am one of the few lucky ones whose server came back up long enough to transfer the data to another host, and I thank God every day for that blessing. However, whether or not I was able to transfer my data, I would NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS continue hosting with a company that is so unprofessional and downright dishonest.

    Personally I suggest you don't simply wait around hoping the hosting company will fix things for you. You need to get a new hosting service and start rebuilding what you lost. (I had already rebuilt a portion of my websites when my server came back up. Why didn't I sit around waiting for the old server to come back up so I could simply transfer the data? Because there was no guarantee that would ever happen... and every moment that passed was costing me money). If you start rebuilding and the server comes back up, you can simply transfer the data to the new server. If you don't start rebuilding, and the old server never comes back up (or takes a few more weeks to be available), then you've lost that much more money while you're waiting.

    Please... don't wait around for the hosting company to get their act together. They've already shown us they don't know what they're doing. Get out there and rebuild your business before you lose any more money! (I know it's easier said than done but, unless you DO it, it may not happen).
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  • Profile picture of the author Steve Garratt
    I am with Holly on this one. I started to see signs of a problem early in February when my tickets were not being answered and when Saturday (1 week ago) came and most of my sites went down I decided it was time for a contingency plan. I opened an account with Hostgator and started to rebuild. I figured that I could allways switch back when Dataweb gote sorted. I am very glad that I did this. It has taken me a good week but I now have everything that was important to my business back up and running.

    The lesson to be learned is to make sure that you allways have up to date full backups of all your sites and keep the backups under your control, prefferably on your own local PC. I always thought that I was pretty good at keeping backups in case of catastrophy but even I have lost some lesser important stuff. I can imagine exactly how I would be feeling now if I had no local backups at all. I would be out of business.

    My thoughts go out to you all and I hope that you get your problems resolved as soon as possible.
    Signature
    Please visit my blog and if you have an interest in electronics then please join me at Home DIY Electronics
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  • Profile picture of the author John Reed
    I'm one of Willie's customers as he recently took over Niche Simple from David Perdew. Luckily I only had 3 domains of my 5 working and had given up another 5 a few months ago. I really feel for the users with many sites and livelihoods depending on them! This is yet another example of poor, or non-existent, contingency planning and seems to demonstrate a total lack of common sense in the handling of the situation. I would have expected anyone in the Server Business to have an understanding of the consequences in turning off the servers!!!???

    What a total and unnecessary bog-up!! Apparently followed by lies and panic as everyone concerned seemed to get their umbrellas up and start denying responsibility for anything........ "Litigation Mentality" has a lot to answer for?

    Get yourself hosted by Dan and Paula at D9Hosting and Im darned sure you'll never run into this sort of problem.

    John O'York
    Signature

    Ex Army Major hates Hype!!
    http://www.major-reviews.com

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    • Profile picture of the author tamshelton
      For those of you who had DatawebPro/Godaddeo for a Domain Name Registrar, I contacted Godaddy because I could not get to the Datawebpro's reseller link to manage my domain names.

      They asked me to pass along the link to manage your domains if you didn't already find it.

      https://mya.securepaynet.net/default...og_id=dataword

      I just moved 12 domains from Datawebpro's reseller account to my Main Godaddy account.

      However you don't have to do anything, they informed that in this situation, they'd pass all accounts to another Reseller since DatawebPro is out of business.
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    • Profile picture of the author John Stiles
      By the way, ALL of my correspondence with Coastal Inc has been professional and tactful. In no way was I ever beligerant with them.

      After attempting to work with coastal in getting access to my sites for some time now and not getting anywhere. I got an email from them Yesterday basically saying they are giving up and turning over control to Gnax, the parent company.

      Below is a pasted copy of the email. But first, I have a few things to say on the subject.

      One word about their statements: Bulls#!t

      They could have easily handled the problem by issuing a public statement on their status. In the statement, they could have said we will activate all the servers and give customers the option to get their data. They could have set a time limit on the active servers of 2 weeks or so as well as offered to pick up the accounts of customers who wish to stay. Problem solved.

      Instead, they chose to go through every account, reset passwords, set up a suspended page and make it impossible to get our sites. Going through each account like this wasted a great deal of time, rather than making any attempt to help existing customers. Basically they screwed things up to the point where they throw up their hands and give up.

      Again, this could have been resolved easily. They chose to mess with the servers and accounts when they could have opened them up for a period of time. Flipping bulls#!t.

      To say "We apologize again but with all due respect to the late Steve Hetrick, the mess left to us made it virtually impossible to clean up in a timely or practical manner."
      Again, I say bulls#!t. My stuff all worked before coastal got a hold of it. All they had to do was shut the servers off during the black out period. Then fire them up for a 2 week period giving us the option to open an account with coastal or get our data and move to another server.

      Now that they took all the time to alter the passwords to our accounts, there may be no chance to sort it out. Way to go coastal. Their attempt to take control of Steve's accounts backfired and now all of us who were customers are screwed.

      They can play this off as Steve's fault and his mess. Again I say bulls#!t. My Stuff worked great when Steve managed it.

      "Gnax will be taking over and care of the entire dataword situation. All dataword's servers have been given to them, which contains their billing system and customer contact info." Looks like Coastal had all our contact info all along, as we suspected.

      Lets hope that Gnax handles things more professionally, but with all the time Coastal spent altering accounts, passwords and setting up the landing pages, the accounts may be too messed up now.

      I sent this to Jeff Hinkle at Gnax:
      _______________________
      "As a gesture of good will, something that would help calm the masses could be:
      Make an announcement about the status of the servers and accounts. Offer to take on existing customers with current pricing. Fire up the servers with say a 2 week window where customers could get their data and either move on or stay with you.

      The above is just a thought. It's a tough time for all customers, providing options would be a good thing to do. Some will likely stay with you, some won't. Either way, you look good to all concerned."

      ________________________

      Again, lets hope they handle things professionally and do the right thing!

      End of Rant.
      John

      ________________________ email from coastal inc:

      Once again we apologize that this is taking longer than expected. When we were practically forced to take over these accounts, we had no idea what we were getting into. We found that almost every customer had multiple accounts spread across multiple servers and there were literally thousands of domains like this, even including multiple different class c/secondary ips, custom nameservers, etc. We had no list of domains, no accurate server names, no ip distribution, etc. To make matters worse, dataword recently moved many of the ips from old to new servers and when customers gave us the information to reactivate it did not exist.

      The rep from dataword has stopped responding to us and did not provide any helpful information on where accounts were located, who the customers are, which servers they were on, etc. In fact, we still do not know how many customers they had.

      Even after setting up a dedicated staff team to work solely on this issue 24x7, we are still inundated with requests to find ips/accounts that can't be located and are receiving numerous outraged emails from people that are simply not understanding the complexity of this mess and that WE are the good guys trying to help. We did not make this mess nor cause it. We were working as fast as possible to resolve it but logistically takes a long time. Unfortunately after discussing with the president of the datacenter, Gnax, this is something that they are better able to handle. We will be giving all the servers back to them and they will be in contact with you to deal with any remaining issues.

      An email account specifically for these issues will be setup within 24 hours: dataword@gnax.net
      In the meantime, you can contact jhinkle@gnax.net for any questions or assistance.
      Once again, please be aware that everyone is trying to help clean up the mess. So sending threatening or abusive emails yelling will not help. Please also try not to submit multiple emails for the same issue as that only creates more unnecessary work to go through.

      Please note, we are no longer in the loop with any of this. We have not sent out any bills nor charged anyone. Gnax will be taking over and care of the entire dataword situation. All dataword's servers have been given to them, which contains their billing system and customer contact info.

      Any further contacts to us regarding this will be forwarded directly to Gnax.

      We apologize again but with all due respect to the late Steve Hetrick, the mess left to us made it virtually impossible to clean up in a timely or practical manner.

      Thank you,
      Coast Internet Solutions, Inc.
      Signature
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      • Profile picture of the author Jeremy Kelsall
        I've got 2 sites lost in the shuffle from when I took advantage of the hosting ia someones link in a product I bought.

        I'm writing those sites off as I don't want to go through the emailing, signing, faxing, etc etc etc..

        The lesson that I got out of all of this is to stick with BIG ESTABLISHED hosting companies, and not to jump into hosting with what for the most part boils down to an INDIVIDUAL.
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        • Profile picture of the author ChasHicks
          For me the bigger lesson is to have complete, frequent, off site backups of all my sites no matter where they are hosted.

          ANY hosting company can have problems - whether it is a problem with the owner, communications, natural disaster, terrorism, fire, personnel incompetence, power, etc.

          Rackspace, a premier hosting company, had a major outage a while back.

          I should listen to my own advice I've given for years: I've been involved in multiple disaster recovery / business continuity planning projects for my own consulting clients. I feel sick about what I allowed to happen to my sites and not take my own advice.

          It won't ever happen again to me or for those I have hosted sites for.

          For now I am doing CPANEL full backups and ftp'ing them to my storage units in my office.

          I am looking for a good, automated solution that I can put on the server and automatically perform a scheduled full backup and then transfer it to S3 or similar storage.

          Charlie
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          • Profile picture of the author dcushion
            I'm tending to go with Jeremy's thinking. As good as Steve was, a larger company would at least have other people to sort things out efficiently.

            And John makes some very good points about what didn't work and how it could have been handled. It did seem, at first, that Coastal could solve all this. But, it appears they may have tried to do it the hard way... especially, considering all the accounts that needed attention.

            Lessons learned.
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  • Profile picture of the author abundantliving
    I really have to get this off my chest... it's been bothering me that I forgot to mention it in the post I made about CoastInc/Gnax's dishonesty with us.

    Mark (username: hunteridge) shared the email he received from CoastInc in which CoastInc states:

    "First and foremost, we want to assure you that his servers were "not" shut off because he passed away... Since we had none of the customer's information to contact them directly, we had no other choice but to put an explaination page up on the websites requesting the customers to contact us."

    We all know the company DID simply shut the servers off (starting on Saturday), and the servers didn't come back up with messages on the websites for owners to contact CoastInc until Monday... AFTER a bunch of us made a big stink about the servers simply being shut off without any warning.

    Just one other example of how this company doesn't play fair. First they turned the servers off without warning. Then they try to cover their tracks by stating they didn't just turn the servers off, they posted a message on the sites so the site owners would contact them.

    They don't play fair, and they don't play honestly. Just another example of their underhanded practices.

    Everyone should move to another hosting company as quickly as possible... a larger one (not one run by an individual: lesson learned) with a better reputation than CoastInc/Gnax (do some research online and you'll see they had a very bad rep even before this fiasco).
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    • Profile picture of the author billybob
      I have to agree with Holly's posts. I too, am a bit suspicious of GNAXs story.

      However in their favor, they seem to be pretty big, with over 6,000 servers, and an upper management team of 9 people.

      https://www.gnax.net/company/management.html

      So fingers crossed . . . . again.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mark Hendricks
    Here is something to try - it was not given to me as a sure thing, it is just what I would do if you're still not up and running:

    If you are not on a dedicated server (therefore on shared server or on multiple shared servers), or if your dedicated server is not up, try this for each domain you have:

    Go here: Better Whois: The WHOIS domain search that works with all registrars.

    Type in your domain(s) name

    Look at the registration and see what the nameserver domain is

    Just copy the domainname.com part, not the ns part

    Go to this site: IP WhoIs lookup and Domain WhoIs

    Type in the nameserver domain name and extension (like .com) you got from betterwhois

    Press the button

    Scroll down a bit and see the Server Details:
    It will look something like....

    Nameserver.com Server Details
    IP address:
    12.34.56.789
    Server Location:
    City, Town in United States
    ISP: Whatever Company

    Once you have that for your domains, match up your domains and ip addresses, along
    with their corresponding nameserver domain names and nameserver ip address and server info you found, and then provide those to gnax at:

    www.gnax.net - Powered By Kayako SupportSuite

    Tell them you are caught up in the datawordpro and coastinc situation, and as frustrated as you are in this, just say please and thank you - and how you appreciate their help in getting things straightened out.

    Hope this helps.

    Mark Hendricks
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  • Profile picture of the author JasonGNAX
    The passing of Steve is definitely an unfortunate one and we're here to try and make sure that there is as little disruption as possible.

    We (GNAX) are the sole operator of a 74,000sqft Data center here in Atlanta, GA where we house thousands of customers. Steve was one of those customers. However, he is *not* a direct customer of ours in our facility and the servers which you have all been used to are via a company whom utilizes our facility.

    Coast Internet Solutions, Inc.
    https://www.coastinc.com/support/

    You can contact us and we will work collegiately to get these matters resolved. There isn't much more I can say other than has already been mentioned here. The passing of Steve is an unfortunate one and I can understand your fury. But please do contact us to get matters resolved.

    Hopefully in all we can get your websites and accounts restored - if you are looking for new servers in our facility, we operate our own dedicated server brand also - Virtual Private Data Center - Dedicated Server Hosting - Cloud Server Hosting - Atlanta Hosting - Dallas Hosting and we'd be happy to assist in migrating you over to a stable solution.

    If you're in a position of needing to migrate to a stable solution - we have no problems catering for you.

    Thank you.

    Jason Scales
    Senior Account Manager

    1100 White St., SW
    Atlanta, GA 30310
    Office: (404) 230 9150 (ext. 221)

    Direct Line: (404)-753-2172

    Fax: (404) 230-9149
    jscales@gnax.net
    GNAX | Home
    Virtual Private Data Center - Dedicated Server Hosting - Cloud Server Hosting - Atlanta Hosting - Dallas Hosting
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  • Profile picture of the author Mark Hendricks
    Here's a better site to get the DNS records for your domains, put your domain address at the end of this url, like this: http://sitetrail.com/bypasspublisher.com

    Then go down the page and copy the DNS records area, I think that is what coastinc and/or gnax really need for each of your domains, and/or server.

    Mark
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  • Profile picture of the author abundantliving
    Willie, I'm glad to hear that - a week and a half later - they are FINALLY addressing your situation. Since you were on dedicated servers with specific IP addresses, there really is no excuse for it taking them this long... unlike the seo accounts which were spread among multiple servers and multiple IP addresses, your accounts were connected to specific servers with specific IP addresses.

    I read thru what Gnax sent you, and found myself once again shaking my head in disgust...

    First of all, CoastInc's letter led everyone to believe that Gnax was now handling all accounts... when, in fact, it now seems that CoastInc is still handling (at the speed of molassas) the dedicated servers.

    Secondly, they couldn't get the name DataWebPro correct? They started off with the typo "Data" and copied it throughout their form letter. If they can't get the name of Steve's company right, it makes me wonder what other kind of stupid mistakes they are making with the servers (I don't want a website administrator who isn't detail oriented... too many things can go wrong with the servers and, if they can't even spell the name of a company they are very familiar with correctly, how do I know they won't make the same type of stupid oversight when troubleshooting a server issue?).

    Although they provide you with a contact phone number, they want you to ask questions through their support desk. My experience with their support desk is that it takes up to 24 hours to get a response. If I'm having a server issue, I don't want to wait up to 24 hours for it to be addressed and fixed... I want to be able to contact someone who will fix it ASAP. From what Gnax wrote, they obviously are NOT a company that is set up for those type of quick responses to server issues. Another reason I will not use them.

    Anyway, just sharing my observations so nobody gets sucked in to Gnax's "politically correct" it's time to "make nice" with the customers before we lose them, last ditch effort to sucker us into staying with them.
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    • Profile picture of the author JasonGNAX
      Originally Posted by abundantliving View Post

      Willie, I'm glad to hear that - a week and a half later - they are FINALLY addressing your situation. Since you were on dedicated servers with specific IP addresses, there really is no excuse for it taking them this long... unlike the seo accounts which were spread among multiple servers and multiple IP addresses, your accounts were connected to specific servers with specific IP addresses.

      I read thru what Gnax sent you, and found myself once again shaking my head in disgust...

      First of all, CoastInc's letter led everyone to believe that Gnax was now handling all accounts... when, in fact, it now seems that CoastInc is still handling (at the speed of molassas) the dedicated servers.

      Secondly, they couldn't get the name DataWebPro correct? They started off with the typo "Data" and copied it throughout their form letter. If they can't get the name of Steve's company right, it makes me wonder what other kind of stupid mistakes they are making with the servers (I don't want a website administrator who isn't detail oriented... too many things can go wrong with the servers and, if they can't even spell the name of a company they are very familiar with correctly, how do I know they won't make the same type of stupid oversight when troubleshooting a server issue?).

      Although they provide you with a contact phone number, they want you to ask questions through their support desk. My experience with their support desk is that it takes up to 24 hours to get a response. If I'm having a server issue, I don't want to wait up to 24 hours for it to be addressed and fixed... I want to be able to contact someone who will fix it ASAP. From what Gnax wrote, they obviously are NOT a company that is set up for those type of quick responses to server issues. Another reason I will not use them.

      Anyway, just sharing my observations so nobody gets sucked in to Gnax's "politically correct" it's time to "make nice" with the customers before we lose them, last ditch effort to sucker us into staying with them.
      On behalf of Harry Hinkle, Principal, CEO of GNAX.

      Holly, I am disappointed that you are shaking your head in disgust at the letter I sent to the customer of DataWrodPro. You seem to focus on me shortening the company name to Data after the first mention instead of focusing on us doing everything we can to get the customers of DWP restored. I repeat, what happened to the customers were not of our doing. DWP was a customer of Coast Inc. which is our customer and was the owner of the servers.(owner meaning they were leasing them and had possession of them and their contents) The issues were between them and DWP and DWP successors. We got involved after Coast decided they could not/would not handle the shared accounts and asked us if we would pick it up. We did not determine the timing of this, it was between Coast and DWP. As soon as we were advised, we put together a plan of action and started the restoration process. Realize that we had no knowledge of the customers or this company and are wading in with both feet to do our best to get everyones business back up and running. You now flaming us for helping makes me shake my head in disgust! I understand your frustration, but understand we are trying to help. For you to make negative remarks about us not knowing anything about us is quite frankly a bit ironic. If you think we are as bad as we say, your best bet would be to immediately move your services somewhere else. However, if you want to give us a try, we will do our best to demonstrate that we are indeed a very good provider. I wont guarantee that we will not have some bumps in the early going as we try to handle the mountain of issues we have taken on, but we will do as if eating an elephant. It will be done "one bite at a time". If you have any issues that we need to address, just open a ticket or email us and we will handle it.
      I invite anyone who is having issues with dedicated servers to reach out to us. If you are continuing to have issues with regards to Shared, reseller or VPS services - please do e-mail the address we have setup for this matter and if you still feel inadequately dealt with - *please* reach out to me directly and I will investigate your specific case.

      Jason Scales
      Senior Account Manager

      1100 White St., SW
      Atlanta, GA 30310
      Office: (404) 230 9150 (ext. 221)

      Direct Line: (404)-753-2172

      Fax: (404) 230-9149
      jscales@gnax.net
      GNAX | Home
      Virtual Private Data Center - Dedicated Server Hosting - Cloud Server Hosting - Atlanta Hosting - Dallas Hosting
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      • Profile picture of the author ChasHicks
        FWIW - some of my reseller accounts are coming back up this morning.

        Gnax appears to be getting things done. There is hope...

        Charlie
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        • Profile picture of the author ASH063
          My reseller accounts are also coming back today ... thank you GNAX. I also see some of my BAM sites have returned.

          I am going to begin by doing full backups of my sites, including the data bases.

          Al
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          • Profile picture of the author JasonGNAX
            Originally Posted by ChasHicks View Post

            FWIW - some of my reseller accounts are coming back up this morning.

            Gnax appears to be getting things done. There is hope...

            Charlie
            Originally Posted by ASH063 View Post

            My reseller accounts are also coming back today ... thank you GNAX. I also see some of my BAM sites have returned.

            I am going to begin by doing full backups of my sites, including the data bases.

            Al
            Things are getting done - let me assure you

            Jason Scales
            Senior Account Manager

            1100 White St., SW
            Atlanta, GA 30310
            Office: (404) 230 9150 (ext. 221)

            Direct Line: (404)-753-2172

            Fax: (404) 230-9149
            jscales@gnax.net
            GNAX | Home
            Virtual Private Data Center - Dedicated Server Hosting - Cloud Server Hosting - Atlanta Hosting - Dallas Hosting
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            • Profile picture of the author billybob
              Hoooray for GNAX!

              My sites are all up again, on multiple (shared) servers.

              They worked FAST, it seems to me.

              Holly . . . I think your last post was a bit harsh . . . misdirecting your anger with COAST onto GNAX. Rather premature.

              PS: It was doubly ironic that the CEO of GNAX made yet another typo . . . "DataWrodPro", but heh, I assume he has better things to do than type replies to overly harsh critics.
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              • Profile picture of the author abundantliving
                Actually, I don't think I've been harsh enough. Even though Gnax says that all the servers are up, we know from the comments on this thread that that's not entirely true (just ask tamshelton).

                Also, gnax says: We have been able to obtain all the billing records for the
                Data customers and are sending this email to each advising
                of the changes.

                It just goes to prove... where there's a will there's a way. I don't know why it took them over a week to get info that would allow them to get in touch with Steve's customers. But, even without those billing records, the bottom-line is this:

                => They knew Steve had passed away. Instead of turning off the servers, they could have simply posted the same notice they ultimately posted on our sites - that Datawebpro was unable to continue to provide hosting, and to get in touch with gnax or coastinc.

                They could have done this in a way that benefitted them (by turning Steve's customers into their customers) and without hurting over 1500 entrepreneurs (I guess you didn't lose a lot of money... but most of us lost quite a bit while our servers were down).

                I'm not transferring my anger with CoastInc onto Gnax... I'm equally disgusted with both of them. If you read my previous posts, you'll see that a gnax rep lied directly to me. Both companies could have dealt with us honestly (I've pointed out the lies they've been caught in... we don't know how many more lies they told that we don't know about).

                So, I'll end as I began... I don't think I've been harsh enough.

                Originally Posted by billybob View Post

                Hoooray for GNAX!

                My sites are all up again, on multiple (shared) servers.

                They worked FAST, it seems to me.

                Holly . . . I think your last post was a bit harsh . . . misdirecting your anger with COAST onto GNAX. Rather premature.

                PS: It was doubly ironic that the CEO of GNAX made yet another typo . . . "DataWrodPro", but heh, I assume he has better things to do than type replies to overly harsh critics.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mark Hendricks
    see next page (4) for the time and call in number, etc....

    I was just contacted by Jason at GNAX and we are trying to setup a teleconference.

    More soon... please let others know to check here.

    Mark Hendricks
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  • Profile picture of the author Mark Hendricks
    IMPORTANT UPDATE:

    Teleconference tonight with Jason Scales, Senior Account Manager of GNAX.com

    Date : Tuesday, February 15
    Time : 6:30pm Eastern USA time

    The replay is now available at:

    http://hunteridge.com/datawordpro

    Jason will discuss the overall situation and answers questions.

    Please spread the word to others, thanks.

    I will post a replay after the call.

    See you there.

    Mark Hendricks



    .
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  • Profile picture of the author Mark Hendricks
    If you had hosting with Steve Hetrick of Datawordpro.com

    Then you may want to listen in to this teleconference.

    If you cannot make the time, then I will have posted
    a replay mp3 on the page link noted at the bottom of this
    email:


    IMPORTANT UPDATE:

    Teleconference tonight with Jason Scales, Senior Account Manager of
    GNAX.com

    Date : Tuesday, February 15
    Time : 6:30pm Eastern USA time

    Phone : 712 432 3100 ext 301725

    Jason will discuss the overall situation and answers questions.

    Please spread the word to others, thanks.

    The replay is now available at:

    http://hunteridge.com/datawordpro

    See you there.

    Mark Hendricks
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  • Profile picture of the author Mark Hendricks
    this was sent to me by Regina Smola....

    Apparently, Steve had dedicated & VPS servers at Burst.net and the nameservers may be masked with HOSTNOC.NET.

    If you get an email from GNAX or Coast that is similar to the one below than your account is hosted elsewhere...

    ----
    I checked our records and checked with gnax and XXX.XXX.XXX.X was never with us.
    This appears to be at another datacenter that Steve worked with. Unfortunately we don't have any details on this. It appears to be at www.burst.net or one of their resellers. You can contact them and they should be able to help. If you need any assistance with this, let me know and we'll gladly help any way possible.

    -----

    If you have one of these mystery accounts, you need to contact BURST immediately!!!!

    Servers and their IP addresses:

    JQ10 - 64.191.72.149
    VXHOST2.NET - 184.82.43.44

    These are "unsuspended" accounts until Friday, Feb. 25 - you must move, or contact Burst - I would contact them either way.

    - - -


    How to trace your IP address...
    1. Go to http://monitor.fseek.me
    2. Enter in your IP address and click “Verify Domain.”
    3. Scroll down to the 3rd section == DNS for XXX.XX.XXX.X
    4. If your nameserver says HOSTNOC.NET then your site is hosting on Steve’s reseller account at http://burst.net.
    Contacting BurstNET Technologies, Inc.
    For the fastest response, send an email to custserv@burst.net.
    Include in your email:
    • Your name
    • Your company name (if applicable)
    • Mention you are a customer of Steven Hetrick’s whom passed away
    • Your account IP address
    • Any issues you’re having with your account and/or that you would like it transferred from Steve’s reseller account to them directly.
    Rules for email:
    • Do not send from a yahoo.com email, they will bounce.
    • Do not send any attachments.
    • Only send text emails (no html).
    • Once you send your email, you will receive a reply email shortly with the subject line containing your Ticket # (will start with 100-).
    • Only reply to the email containing your ticket number.
    • Reply from the same email address.
    • When responding to a ticket, do not change the subject line.
    • When replaying from mobile devices, be sure the subject line does not change.
    • Please do not open multiple tickets, this will confuse the system and slow down your response time.
    • There will be a link to view your ticket status in the reply email, this link will not work until your account has been transferred to Burst directly. So watch your email for ticket responses and reply from your email only.
    • Be patient. BurstNET is aware of the situation and will assist you asap.
    mystery accounts
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  • Profile picture of the author Mark Hendricks
    An update from Burst.net (this only affected two servers):

    Hi Mark, My name is Colin Joyce and I’m the customer service manager here at BurstNET Technologies, Inc.

    I am sorry to hear about Steve. He was a great customer here.

    I was hoping you could post this update to your site:

    We believe we have all the servers Steve had hosted with BurstNET accounted for. Regardless, we have all of Steve’s services with us back online for the time being so people can access their data/sites, and they will remain online until February 25th.

    Thanks.

    Colin Joyce
    Customer Service Manager
    BurstNET Technologies Inc.
    Office: 570-343-2200 Ext 117
    Toll Free: 1-877-287-7869
    Fax: (570) 343-9533
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    • Profile picture of the author Willie Crawford
      Originally Posted by hunteridge View Post

      An update from Burst.net (this only affected two servers):

      Hi Mark, My name is Colin Joyce and I'm the customer service manager here at BurstNET Technologies, Inc.

      I am sorry to hear about Steve. He was a great customer here.

      I was hoping you could post this update to your site:

      We believe we have all the servers Steve had hosted with BurstNET accounted for. Regardless, we have all of Steve's services with us back online for the time being so people can access their data/sites, and they will remain online until February 25th.

      Thanks.

      Colin Joyce
      Customer Service Manager
      BurstNET Technologies Inc.
      Office: 570-343-2200 Ext 117
      Toll Free: 1-877-287-7869
      Fax: (570) 343-9533

      Thanks Mark, Regina, and Colin.

      Regina is absolutely amazing at tracking down
      who can help resolve problems FAST once it is
      determined that yet another party/company is
      in someway involved.

      An example is when I discovered that BURST
      was who I needed to talk with to fix problems
      on a server. Within minutes, Regina had me on
      the phone with the right people who told me how
      to deal with IP problems, problems with cPanel
      licenses, etc.

      This whole episode with DataWebPro-related problems
      has been a real challenge for many of us. If you are
      a casual observer, imagine having customer scattered
      across numerous servers, at numerous locations,
      controlled by numerous parties to varying degree, and
      only discovering some of these relationships when an
      IP tied to perhaps a DNS server expires.

      While it is frustrating, and I understand tempers flaring,
      I appreciate the positive contributions of those most
      who, instead of seeking to vent, asked how can we just
      get people's websites back online... and realized spreading
      negativity often just slows the process dramatically.

      Willie
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      • Profile picture of the author ppc4profit
        Originally Posted by Willie Crawford View Post


        This whole episode with DataWebPro-related problems
        has been a real challenge for many of us.

        Willie
        Willie,

        I am a customer of yours ( NicheSimple ) and having ongoing access problems to multiple cpanel accounts and sites. In particular one cpanel and all its sites have been inaccessible since early January.

        I have raised many tickets in the NicheSimple support system but there have been no replies, suspect that your support team are very busy. Do you want us to raise our issues direct with Jason who appears to be very helpful and responsive?
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        • Profile picture of the author Willie Crawford
          Originally Posted by ppc4profit View Post

          Willie,

          I am a customer of yours ( NicheSimple ) and having ongoing access problems to multiple cpanel accounts and sites. In particular one cpanel and all its sites have been inaccessible since early January.

          I have raised many tickets in the NicheSimple support system but there have been no replies, suspect that your support team are very busy. Do you want us to raise our issues direct with Jason who appears to be very helpful and responsive?

          Steve had leased servers from other providers than just GNAX and CoastInc. He also had custom NameServers set up in various other places.

          GNAX and Coastal have been very helpful at unraveling the spaghetti, where the DNS records often showed conflicting data as to what the IP's and DNS servers were for some accounts.

          Willie
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  • Profile picture of the author TheTroglodyte
    That is exactly why I stick with Host Gator now. I've tried several other companies and I ALWAYS have problems with them.
    Signature
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    • Profile picture of the author JasonGNAX
      Originally Posted by RobertClarkMTFS View Post

      That is exactly why I stick with Host Gator now. I've tried several other companies and I ALWAYS have problems with them.
      I disagree. There's many smaller companies out there who deliver top class service. Steve gave his clients top class personal touch priority service - something you won't get at HostGator and other corporate shared hosting companies.

      Jason Scales
      Senior Account Manager

      1100 White St., SW
      Atlanta, GA 30310
      Office: (404) 230 9150 (ext. 221)

      Direct Line: (404)-753-2172

      Fax: (404) 230-9149
      jscales@gnax.net
      GNAX | Home
      Virtual Private Data Center - Dedicated Server Hosting - Cloud Server Hosting - Atlanta Hosting - Dallas Hosting

      "I keep doing because the world was built by doers!"
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    • Profile picture of the author Willie Crawford
      Originally Posted by RobertClarkMTFS View Post

      That is exactly why I stick with Host Gator now. I've tried several other companies and I ALWAYS have problems with them.

      I've tried a dozen companies over the past 15 years ranging in price from free to over $400 per month for packages. It all depends upon what your needs are.

      I liked the personal attention that I got from Steve a Data because I had a lot of dumb questions that he patiently took the time to answer.

      If a company charges too little, they can't afford to have a lot of customers calling in with questions, and special requests. They will also pack as many accounts onto a server as is practical, hoping that they most use a tiny fraction of the allocated bandwidth. When you exceed acceptable usage standards... usually not that clearly specified, then you are asked to go with a dedicated server.

      I got on my first dedicated server because I was invited by one of those large companies to take my business elsewhere. Then again, I've had ISP's make the same request since I use so much bandwidth just in uploading/downloading files :-)

      I do think that you need to know that who you are dealing with has a contingency plan and that your business is protected. I don't think that large companies do that any better than smaller companies in that respect. Some of the largest companies often have complete idiots working for them who follow a checklist when troubleshooting. They won't get your business back up any faster than some techie with servers sitting in his basement.

      It does make a lot of sense to do your due diligence regardless of who you go with.

      Willie
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      • Profile picture of the author John Stiles
        As a follow up to my rant post on page 3.
        "Lets hope that Gnax handles things more professionally, but with all the time Coastal spent altering accounts, passwords and setting up the landing pages, the accounts may be too messed up now.

        I sent this to Jeff Hinkle at Gnax:
        _______________________
        "As a gesture of good will, something that would help calm the masses could be:
        Make an announcement about the status of the servers and accounts. Offer to take on existing customers with current pricing. Fire up the servers with say a 2 week window where customers could get their data and either move on or stay with you.

        The above is just a thought. It's a tough time for all customers, providing options would be a good thing to do. Some will likely stay with you, some won't. Either way, you look good to all concerned."

        ________________________

        Again, lets hope they handle things professionally and do the right thing!"
        Jeff Hinkle and his team has come through for us and gets high marks for handling things in a professional way!

        Mark Hendricks has been a real voice of calm in a very tense situation. It was great to be on the call with Mark and Jason from Gnax the other day. 220 plus servers and roughly 16000 sites affected.

        With as many accounts and servers that Willie had, his calm voice still made it through loud and clear. And no, we really should stay off the subject of Willie's timing in buying a hosting company.

        Under the circumstances some additional real life lessons can be learned from these seasoned pros.

        And speaking of seasoned pros, Jeff Hinkle gets passed a huge job in getting all our sites and servers back online. It's one thing to get the job directly, it's another to get it after another company has made an attempt at it.

        Within hours after this crisis was given to Gnax, some servers started to come back to life.

        All my support tickets were handled professionally and quickly. Under the circumstances, they worked very fast. While there are still a few random quirks, even these get handled with a smile. Just let support know and it gets fixed.

        With 220+ servers and 16000 sites involved, Gnax stepped up to the plate and got things moving in the right direction.

        My only wish is that Gnax was passed the job sooner.

        A huge lesson in business and customer service can be learned here. The old saying "shoot first, ask questions later" applies here. Instead, just "fire up the servers, sort out the customers later". The key as always is putting the customer first. That is a lesson we all learned from Steve, he put customers in front of everything.

        To answer the final statement in my previous rant:
        "Again, lets hope they handle things professionally and do the right thing!"

        The answer is yes, they did the right thing and handled things professionally.

        If you still have server issues, contact Gnax with the special email address they provided, it works.

        Now lets smack ourselves upside our own heads too. I had someone say to me recently that we should be good stewards of our own data. We all should take some responsibility in our sites going down. We all should have our own set of backups. I'm guilty here, it was too easy to rely on Steve to just handle it. If we all had proper backups, this would have been far less painful.

        As many have said, going with a large company may only be part of the answer here. I see nothing wrong with small companies that offer better customer service. A simple backup kept on our own hard drives would cover you no matter what size company you go with.

        One thing for sure, I'll miss the service Steve provided. No matter what you needed help with, he was there with patience to help you. Finding someone to provide that kind of service and be a great friend too will be impossible to do. Priceless!

        John
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        • Profile picture of the author JasonGNAX
          Originally Posted by John Stiles View Post

          As a follow up to my rant post on page 3.
          Jeff Hinkle and his team has come through for us and gets high marks for handling things in a professional way!

          Mark Hendricks has been a real voice of calm in a very tense situation. It was great to be on the call with Mark and Jason from Gnax the other day. 220 plus servers and roughly 16000 sites affected.

          With as many accounts and servers that Willie had, his calm voice still made it through loud and clear. And no, we really should stay off the subject of Willie's timing in buying a hosting company.

          Under the circumstances some additional real life lessons can be learned from these seasoned pros.

          And speaking of seasoned pros, Jeff Hinkle gets passed a huge job in getting all our sites and servers back online. It's one thing to get the job directly, it's another to get it after another company has made an attempt at it.

          Within hours after this crisis was given to Gnax, some servers started to come back to life.

          All my support tickets were handled professionally and quickly. Under the circumstances, they worked very fast. While there are still a few random quirks, even these get handled with a smile. Just let support know and it gets fixed.

          With 220+ servers and 16000 sites involved, Gnax stepped up to the plate and got things moving in the right direction.

          My only wish is that Gnax was passed the job sooner.

          A huge lesson in business and customer service can be learned here. The old saying "shoot first, ask questions later" applies here. Instead, just "fire up the servers, sort out the customers later". The key as always is putting the customer first. That is a lesson we all learned from Steve, he put customers in front of everything.

          To answer the final statement in my previous rant:
          "Again, lets hope they handle things professionally and do the right thing!"

          The answer is yes, they did the right thing and handled things professionally.

          If you still have server issues, contact Gnax with the special email address they provided, it works.

          Now lets smack ourselves upside our own heads too. I had someone say to me recently that we should be good stewards of our own data. We all should take some responsibility in our sites going down. We all should have our own set of backups. I'm guilty here, it was too easy to rely on Steve to just handle it. If we all had proper backups, this would have been far less painful.

          As many have said, going with a large company may only be part of the answer here. I see nothing wrong with small companies that offer better customer service. A simple backup kept on our own hard drives would cover you no matter what size company you go with.

          One thing for sure, I'll miss the service Steve provided. No matter what you needed help with, he was there with patience to help you. Finding someone to provide that kind of service and be a great friend too will be impossible to do. Priceless!

          John
          Wow - thank you for your comments John - we appreciate them and it's been a pleasure working closely with many people here to restore their websites and services.

          Thank you - if anyone is still having issues, please do e-mail dataword[at]gnax.net and we will endeavor to assist you.

          Jason Scales
          Senior Account Manager

          1100 White St., SW
          Atlanta, GA 30310
          Office: (404) 230 9150 (ext. 221)

          Direct Line: (404)-753-2172

          Fax: (404) 230-9149
          jscales@gnax.net
          GNAX | Home
          Virtual Private Data Center - Dedicated Server Hosting - Cloud Server Hosting - Atlanta Hosting - Dallas Hosting

          "I keep doing because the world was built by doers!"
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  • Profile picture of the author wpsecuritylock
    I just spoke to my contact at Go Daddy corporate to help those of you that might have purchased a domain name or hosting from Steve's reseller account at Search, Register and Transfer Web Domain Names and More.

    Currently Steve's reseller account there is still active. If that account does get canceled or expires, customers will automatically be migrated to another reseller account setup at Go Daddy. You will not lose access to your account. More information can be found here.

    If you have any questions or need support, you can contact Go Daddy directly at 480-505-8877.

    Have a great weekend everyone.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jesus Perez
    Because of this thread, I've finished setting up a complete RSYNC backup solution for my LiquidWeb VPS and Hostgator Shared hosting solution. I now have incremental backups of every file and database being backed up nightly to Remote Backup using Rsync or FTP.

    Total cost: $10/mth for 10gb of backup (and some serious peace of mind).

    I recommend everyone that's been impacted investigate their own backup solutions once Gnax gets things online.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jesus Perez
    For those of you that still don't have your sites up and only had a few static HTML pages, you might be able to pull copies and images from Internet Archive: Wayback Machine.

    It's a painfully slow solution, but will at least allow you to get some of your site back up asap on a new host.
    Signature

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    • Profile picture of the author ppc4profit
      Originally Posted by Jesus Perez View Post

      For those of you that still don't have your sites up and only had a few static HTML pages, you might be able to pull copies and images from Internet Archive: Wayback Machine.

      It's a painfully slow solution, but will at least allow you to get some of your site back up asap on a new host.
      Good tip for many people.

      We have full backups and can recreate a site on a new host in15 / 20 minutes.

      Our issue is that we would appreciate a reply, any reply would do, from our host (NicheSimple) so we know what route to take - to wait or to forget this all as a bad dream and hightail with our business, associated customers and future recommendations to elsewhere.
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      • Profile picture of the author billybob
        Originally Posted by ppc4profit View Post

        Our issue is that we would appreciate a reply, any reply would do, from our host (NicheSimple) so we know what route to take - to wait or to forget this all as a bad dream and hightail with our business, associated customers and future recommendations to elsewhere.
        Seems doubly ironic and sad that the owner of NicheSimple hosting, Willie Crawford, is here on this very thread complaining about the lack of communications from HIS host sellers up the line, and yet he seems to be not doing a good job of communicating with his OWN customers. Strange!
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      • Profile picture of the author Willie Crawford
        Originally Posted by ppc4profit View Post

        Good tip for many people.

        We have full backups and can recreate a site on a new host in15 / 20 minutes.

        Our issue is that we would appreciate a reply, any reply would do, from our host (NicheSimple) so we know what route to take - to wait or to forget this all as a bad dream and hightail with our business, associated customers and future recommendations to elsewhere.

        We have an update going out today. 90% of the NicheSimple customers are fully back online but we had one DNS server down that wasn't from either of the providers previously mentioned in this thread. So, we've spent the past four days wrestling control of that server from the provider who's contract was with Steve Hetrick. I held off on sending out the update because I wanted something definitive.

        Willie
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  • Profile picture of the author Steve Garratt
    I just wanted to let everyone know that Paypal awarded me a refund for my annual subscription. I claimed pro-rata for the service I hd not recieved. It worked out to about 11 months so I got a refund of 11/12 of my subscription.

    Somehow I'm not as pleased as I should be. I wanted to let anyone else who paid annualy that they should be able to do the same.
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    • Profile picture of the author dftrus
      Originally Posted by howdo-i View Post

      I just wanted to let everyone know that Paypal awarded me a refund for my annual subscription. I claimed pro-rata for the service I hd not recieved. It worked out to about 11 months so I got a refund of 11/12 of my subscription.

      Somehow I'm not as pleased as I should be. I wanted to let anyone else who paid annualy that they should be able to do the same.

      I paid for annual hosting through Paypal on 12-12-10, and my sites began going down 2-6-11. When I called Paypal I was told I couldn't get a refund because 45 days had passed.

      Was your refund within Paypal's 45 day grace period? Or should I have played the "pro-rata" card?
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      • Profile picture of the author Steve Garratt
        Originally Posted by dftrus View Post

        I paid for annual hosting through Paypal on 12-12-10, and my sites began going down 2-6-11. When I called Paypal I was told I couldn't get a refund because 45 days had passed.

        Was your refund within Paypal's 45 day grace period? Or should I have played the "pro-rata" card?
        I paid for annual subscription on Christmas Day and when I put the refund claim in it was like 43 days which was just under the 45 day limit. I used the "Product not as described" reason because it was an annual subscription and cancelled by the vendor in just over 1 month. I did ask for a pro-rata refund because I couldn't bring myself to ask for it all and that's what I got back safely into my credit card account.

        If I were you I would go back to Paypal and point out that the product was deliberately cancelled and discontinued by the seller and ask them to consider waiving the 45 day limit as you had no way of knowing that the product was not as described until after the time had expired.

        I hope that you get it sorted ok.
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  • Profile picture of the author Steve Garratt
    Is this a cheek or what? I just recieved this email from GNAX "reminding" me of an unpaid invoice. They even had the audacity to attempt to make an automatic payment from my card. This is the first communication that I have had during this whole affair and I moved my accounts to a new host within 24 hours of my sites dissappearing. The email is below and I would welcome any suggestions as to how I should respond.

    >>>>
    Dear ,

    This is a notice to remind you that you have an invoice due on 02/25/2011. We tried to bill you automatically but were unable to because we don't have your credit card details on file.

    Invoice Date: 02/25/2011
    Invoice #9496
    Amount Due: $615.18 USD
    Due Date: 02/25/2011

    Please login to our client area at the link below to submit your card details or make payment using a different method.

    http://datawordpro.com/host/viewinvoice.php?id=9496

    DataWordPRO Hosting / GNAX
    Support: https://www.gnax.net/support/index.p...up=datawordpro
    <<<<
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    • Profile picture of the author Mark Hendricks
      howdo-i:

      I just received something similar.

      Forward the info to:

      jscales@gnax.net

      Explain *politely* the confusion.

      I've found him to be very helpful.

      Mark Hendricks




      .
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      • Profile picture of the author Steve Garratt
        Originally Posted by hunteridge View Post

        howdo-i:

        I just received something similar.

        Forward the info to:

        jscales@gnax.net

        Explain *politely* the confusion.

        I've found him to be very helpful.

        Mark Hendricks

        .
        Aww do I have to be polite? They don't seem to have shown me any politeness yet.
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      • Profile picture of the author Steve Garratt
        Originally Posted by hunteridge View Post

        howdo-i:

        I just received something similar.

        Forward the info to:

        jscales@gnax.net

        Explain *politely* the confusion.

        I've found him to be very helpful.

        Mark Hendricks

        .

        So I sent a *polite* email yesterday to the address you suggested and what do I get today? Another reminder that I haven't paid the bill. I have now recieved 3 of these emails in 3 days. This outfit is seriously bad news.
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  • Profile picture of the author abundantliving
    Well, I guess polite is one way. But I have to admit, I'm with Steve on this. I think it's pretty presumptuous for Gnax to try to bill Steve's credit card without first checking to see if he wants to continue hosting with them... especially since he is one of the people whose servers were down so long that he had to MANUALLY move all the data to a new hosting service.

    I realize that some of you HAVE to play nice-nice with Gnax because of the precarious position you are in with hundreds of websites, etc. However, I was able to move my data to another hosting service so I am no longer at their mercy... this means I can just call it as I see it.

    The fact that Gnax attempted to charge Steve's card without his permission, just reinforces my original opinion that Gnax is less than honest. During my first interaction with them, they lied directly to me on the phone. Now, they're trying to bill people without first getting permission... which is paramount to stealing.

    I'm SO glad they showed their true colors early so I wasn't suckered into continuing with them as my hosting company!
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  • Profile picture of the author Netafile
    Does anyone here have any contact info for Steve's heirs/survivors or whoever is dealing with the aftermath?

    Would appreciate it.

    Thanks in advance.
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  • Profile picture of the author KimW
    I just want to say I am sorry to hear the news about Steve.
    He seemed like a good guy.
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  • Profile picture of the author Caleb Spilchen
    They may have added you to the system, for processing, and it may have auto billed you. Your saying that they are trying to steal from you, but that might not be the case. They may just be working on transferring you to a new billing system, from the previous; datawordpro one.

    Just a quick note

    I just wanted to let everyone know that Paypal awarded me a refund for my annual subscription. I claimed pro-rata for the service I hd not recieved. It worked out to about 11 months so I got a refund of 11/12 of my subscription.
    Which would mean that in connection with promises made by GNAX to tender hosting services, which were paid for previously, you have no remaining time

    Because of that, you are probably being billed for there set up... I've got nothing against anyone here, and I want to stay out of this.. Just wanted to mention that.

    I am however, disappointed that GNAX lied to Holly, and I think that she should get an apology, and admittance from GNAX, if they want to prove themselves to get our trust.

    Good luck
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    • Profile picture of the author Steve Garratt
      Originally Posted by Caleb Spilchen View Post

      They may have added you to the system, for processing, and it may have auto billed you. Your saying that they are trying to steal from you, but that might not be the case. They may just be working on transferring you to a new billing system, from the previous; datawordpro one.

      Just a quick note



      Which would mean that in connection with promises made by GNAX to tender hosting services, which were paid for previously, you have no remaining time

      Because of that, you are probably being billed for there set up... I've got nothing against anyone here, and I want to stay out of this.. Just wanted to mention that.

      I am however, disappointed that GNAX lied to Holly, and I think that she should get an apology, and admittance from GNAX, if they want to prove themselves to get our trust.

      Good luck
      Hi Caleb,

      Yes I'm sure that is sort of what has happened but let me point out that my contract was with DatawebPro which was cancelled by DatawebPro themselves. Gnax or CoastInc have previously stated that any money paid to Datawebpro is nothing to do with them so they would be trying to bill me now even if I hadn't got a refund from Paypal.

      Also they have not even tried to ask me if I want to sign up with them. They can't now claim that they don't have my contact details because they clearly do.

      I know that you are trying to give Gnax the benefit of the doubt here but when the first contact I get from a business is an invoice and they fail to respond to my emails then I'm sorry but there is something seriously wrong with that business.
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      • Profile picture of the author billybob
        Originally Posted by howdo-i View Post

        I know that you are trying to give Gnax the benefit of the doubt here but when the first contact I get from a business is an invoice and they fail to respond to my emails then I'm sorry but there is something seriously wrong with that business.
        howdo-i . . . Have you tried phoning Jason Scales directly? He does talk on the phone. In fact he phoned me to see how things were going early on.

        The billing system and department are rather robotic sounding, but they told me to ask Paypal for a refund for a January payment, so that I can then turn around and pay GNAX the same amount. Annoying, but logical, since it was a different company that I paid, which failed to deliver the services.

        GNAXs ticketing system is a bit slow, but I sometimes found Steve's system slow, too. He seemed to ignore tougher requests for days, but very quickly responded to easy ones.
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        • Profile picture of the author Steve Garratt
          Originally Posted by billybob View Post

          howdo-i . . . Have you tried phoning Jason Scales directly? He does talk on the phone. In fact he phoned me to see how things were going early on.

          The billing system and department are rather robotic sounding, but they told me to ask Paypal for a refund for a January payment, so that I can then turn around and pay GNAX the same amount. Annoying, but logical, since it was a different company that I paid, which failed to deliver the services.

          GNAXs ticketing system is a bit slow, but I sometimes found Steve's system slow, too. He seemed to ignore tougher requests for days, but very quickly responded to easy ones.
          Why on earth would I want to phone him? I have no intention of using them. I live in the UK and I just want them to stop sending me invoices (4 recieved so far, one every day). Jason Scales still has not responded to my email.
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          • Profile picture of the author JasonGNAX
            Originally Posted by howdo-i View Post

            Why on earth would I want to phone him? I have no intention of using them. I live in the UK and I just want them to stop sending me invoices (4 recieved so far, one every day). Jason Scales still has not responded to my email.
            Hey there,

            It's possible I was working on your e-mail and it has passed over. Can you remind me of your e-mail either via PM here or forwarding it back to me and I'll get any outstanding issues taken care of promptly.
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            • Profile picture of the author John Stiles
              Just a little follow up...

              Yea, in my previous post, I gave good marks to Gnax for getting the servers online.

              But then...

              I get an email stating that annual customers would be getting a bill soon. "Payment terms are within 5 days unless you have a valid credit card on file for automatic payment." Automatic payment if you have a valid CC on file.

              Without some sort of agreement in place and terms of payment. I cut my card off so it couldn't get zapped. Then I did get a bill, saying: "We tried to bill you automatically but were unable to because we don't have your credit card details on file."

              My take is that this could have been handled much better.

              During this time, my servers seemed to have rolling blackouts. Without a monitoring service, it's hard to say how often my sites were up or down. Some servers seemed overloaded as well as having sections on the drives full. Due to the overload, it was difficult to get backups of data on some of the servers. Ultimately, I had to try multiple times to get some of the data.

              Perhaps if Coastal and Gnax had handled all of this differently, I may have considered staying on as a customer.

              On the surface, it looked like there was a mad scramble to do what ever could be done to "take control" of Steve's customers. I have to say that the chain of events was in very bad taste. Not to mention that it was just bad business to just take down the businesses of so many potentially good customers. A power grab for a large customer base that were paying for hosting services? Maybe, maybe not.

              Like I said, the chain of events were in bad taste. Due to that, there was never any doubt that I was leaving.

              Some have said that it was a big task to take on for Coastal, then Gnax. I don't disagree with that. From a pure business perspective, all of it could have been handled much better. Paying customers should be treated better, ones paying on an ongoing basis should be treated like gold.

              Others here have said that they were lied to, right Holly? I doubt we will ever know the truth in all this. It does seem that Gnax has taken over all of Steve's company. Was it a leveraged takeover? Did they buy the company? Does anyone know? Just check the links on datawordpro and godaddeo (just to name 2), they all go to Gnax now. Seems like one thing to take control of the servers, but this seems to go much further than that.

              I guess we can speculate all day long, I doubt we will ever know the full truth.

              After my last post giving praise for Gnax stepping up to the plate and getting the servers back online. I thought a follow up was in order. I still give them credit for getting the servers back online. It's all the other events that leave many more questions about the underlying motives that leave me uneasy.

              John
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              • Profile picture of the author billybob
                Originally Posted by John Stiles View Post

                It's all the other events that leave many more questions about the underlying motives that leave me uneasy.
                It seems to me that Steve was a very small player, so grabbing his customers would not be that much of a coup. He was using about 30 of GNAX's servers, and they have 6 or 7,000 total. Also, I am not sure they really wanted an influx of small customers doing shared hosting, since they were targeting larger players previously.

                Hosting is only marginally profitable, which is why many hosts do not offer phone support . . . it is too costly to maintain.
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                • Profile picture of the author Mark Hendricks
                  IMPORTANT Update - GNAX and nameservers are expiring

                  I've heard of this situation from two people.

                  If you are now with GNAX, you will need to watch out for this as
                  I believe I heard they took over all of the shared server accounts (those
                  people who did not have dedicated servers).

                  Shared server accounts have nameserver names that were registered by Steve Hetrick, as time goes by those nameserver domain names expired due to non-payment.

                  Therefore the are not propagating the website domains (yours) that are hosted on that particular server, and when this happens your domains will not be able to be seen anymore.

                  So, if you know the nameserver of your domains (this is the domain you insert into nameservers at your registrar), do a search at betterwhois.com and see when it expires as a registered domain.

                  OR....

                  Contact GNAX and have them do it.

                  AND...

                  Ask GNAX to change the nameserver of the server your account is on PRIOR to having this nameserver situation happen to you.

                  As always, my best to you -
                  Mark Hendricks
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                  • Profile picture of the author wpsecuritylock
                    Great Advice, Mark! Thanks for staying on top of this issue and helping all of those affected.
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                    • Profile picture of the author billybob
                      True. GNAX just lets old DWP servers expire without telling us.

                      Terrible customer service . . . . also exemplified by the 24 - 48 hours they take to respond to tickets about sites that are down, or cpanel problems etc.
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                      • Profile picture of the author Mark Hendricks
                        I suggest that you may want to take a proactive position and not wait until the server name expires. Login to your account, find the server name domain, do a search on Better Whois: The WHOIS domain search that works with all registrars. and find out the date that the domain expires.

                        Then contact GNAX and have them get you off of that server domain name, and into a safer place.

                        It's your business, take responsibility now that you know their is a problem on the horizon.

                        Be proactive rather than reactive.

                        As always, my best to you --

                        Mark Hendricks
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    • Profile picture of the author Steve Garratt
      Originally Posted by Caleb Spilchen View Post

      Which would mean that in connection with promises made by GNAX to tender hosting services, which were paid for previously, you have no remaining time
      When did they make that promise? and who to? It certainly wasn't made to me at any time.
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      • Profile picture of the author Caleb Spilchen
        They should however send out updates..
        Originally Posted by howdo-i View Post

        Hi Caleb,

        Yes I'm sure that is sort of what has happened but let me point out that my contract was with DatawebPro which was cancelled by DatawebPro themselves. Gnax or CoastInc have previously stated that any money paid to Datawebpro is nothing to do with them so they would be trying to bill me now even if I hadn't got a refund from Paypal.

        Also they have not even tried to ask me if I want to sign up with them. They can't now claim that they don't have my contact details because they clearly do.

        I know that you are trying to give Gnax the benefit of the doubt here but when the first contact I get from a business is an invoice and they fail to respond to my emails then I'm sorry but there is something seriously wrong with that business.
        I had thought it was in Jason's post above, but again.. I'm jst reading from the sidelines.


        Originally Posted by howdo-i View Post

        When did they make that promise? and who to? It certainly wasn't made to me at any time.
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  • Profile picture of the author Netafile
    For me, I need to have phone support to get things resolved right away. No patience for sending in a ticket, maybe 24 hrs later they respond with, "well have you tried xyz?"

    Got a business to run...

    Still not sure who to contact to get my annual subscription payment pro-rata refund. It's past PayPal's 45 day refund period.

    If anyone has any ideas, please post here or PM me.

    Thanks!
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    • Profile picture of the author Steve Garratt
      Originally Posted by Netafile View Post

      For me, I need to have phone support to get things resolved right away. No patience for sending in a ticket, maybe 24 hrs later they respond with, "well have you tried xyz?"

      Got a business to run...

      Still not sure who to contact to get my annual subscription payment pro-rata refund. It's past PayPal's 45 day refund period.

      If anyone has any ideas, please post here or PM me.

      Thanks!
      I would still give them a try. What have you got to lose? The product was clearly not delivered as stated so they might waive the 45 day limit.
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  • Profile picture of the author tamshelton
    Thanks for the update Mark. One of the Name Servers expired on 5/25 and I couldn't understand why my site was redirecting elsewhere.

    I'm also on the 12 Advance SEO Plan and it appears Gnax is getting ready to consolidate lump accounts on fewer servers if I go ahead and change all DNS right now. That's not what I paid for (pre-paid) in March, so that's going to be interesting.
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    • Profile picture of the author billybob
      Yes, consolidating. . . . in other words: SUCKING.

      They don't want to honor the same packages that Steve was running, which were admittedly rather unorthodox.

      However, GNAX seems happy to collect far too much MONEY for the account, and just consolidate them into one server. Effectively giving us a $6 per month shared account for far MORE money.

      Not to mention they take days to answer tickets, and when they do, they promise to reply soon, and then it is another 48 hours until you hear back.

      Then you reply quickly, and wait another 24 hours to hear again.

      Then you reply super quickly, and wait 36 hours to hear back again.

      Ad nauseum.

      Poooooor customer service in my experience.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jesus Perez
    I can't believe this is still going on.

    If anyone needs help transitioning websites to new servers, you're welcome to contact me. I can handle the transition for you with near-zero downtime.
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