NOT HOT! Just FYI: Cyberwings - Received an email from DomainsPricedRight.com

[MontyBurns]

Originally posted by: Cocytus



But it might corrupt me...I'd have to throw it all into the lava of Mount Stupid, where it was forged.

I honestly just spit liquids all over my keyboard. Thanks a lot.



By the way: Remember Wolfie said he "checked" to verify the specs on those drives. Who did you check with Wolfie? Don't tell me YOU were mislead?

 

[iwearnosox]

Just fyi- it's not illegal to retain the servers and equipment until CW pays lightship. It's done all the time, and is typically written into the contract. Even if it's not it's standard practice in the hosting industry. The equipment is still technically owned by the defaulter until a judgement is legally rendered, but the access is removed.

I remember visiting exodus SC3 facility in Sunnyvale. There were plenty of dot bomb's there, and their equipment was made inaccessible in the same manner until their bills were paid.

 

[iwearnosox]

For those that need a real world example: go rent some space at one of those store-it warehouses, then get behind on your bill. They'll slap their own lock onto your unit until it's brought current. That's why most of them have "double lock" accomodating hardware on the front of them.

All perfectly legal...

Weeeee....

 

[MontyBurns]

But Cyberwings isn't behind in its bills. Don't you read Wolfgang's posts?

 

[RideFree]

I remember last Dec.? when Hostica.com moved from upstate? Ca to somewhere else in CA.
They were down at least 2 hours at about 2am on a Sunday morning...

(OK! Maybe it was from lower CA to upstate CA.)

Is anyone besides me starrting to get suspicious? Remember, I'm not paranoid or skitzoid.
(And, neither am I!)

 

[labgeek]

Originally posted by: Carapace


...Every T1 or T3 I have had to deal with always took somewhere from 30 to 60 days to get installed, even though the line and loop at my location was already laid.

I've had simple reprovisioning take 4 weeks before!

Even if LS wants a cancellation fee. It appears to be in the contract. Why did he sign it? Anyone in business will tell you not to sign a contract until you understand all of the provisions, and they are acceptable.

OK now I'm going to put on my swami hat (goes well with the fire-proof underwear). In the next month or two, CW will fold totally. When it does, it will be all OUR faults. Mr CEO will say something to the effect. "...with all the rumors, lies, and unfounded negativity CW can't survive. I tried my hardest to make it work. Some people just wouldn't let it..." Just like now, he'll take no personal responsibility - it's everyone else's fault.

I also predict the Maine Attorney General office will be looking hard at CW (if they aren't already)... And before certain people start claiming it isn't fraud, better go read about the Washington state v. matrixcubed.com. There is a precedent now. They have failed to provide the service they promised. Period. Whether it was intentional or not apparently no longer matters. Some of that wealth may become independent of Mr CEO and make a new home at the lawyer's firm...

 

[iwearnosox]

I read it, but I don't believe it. Did you read airmail's post?

"Contrary to Cyberwing Communications' assertions, the ongoing outage being experienced by customers of Cyberwing has resulted from Cyberwing's repeated failure to pay to Lightship certain contractually-agreed amounts."

Regardless my point was that it shouldn't come as a suprise to anyone that equipment gets held like that.

My opinion is that Shawn & co are liars at best.

 

[Cocytus]

Right. And as soon as this is straightened out in a day or two...all previous customers will be basking in the free upgrades and months upon months of low cost, quality, hosting solutions.

For further inquiries contact CW's PR oufit: El Dorado...where fame and fortune is always just one ocean, 4 spanish galleons, two major continents, 10 mules, 750 angry natives, and a swarm of rabid crotch beetles away.

 

[Carapace]

Originally posted by: labgeek


OK now I'm going to put on my swami hat (goes well with the fire-proof underwear). In the next month or two, CW will fold totally. When it does, it will be all OUR faults. Mr CEO will say something to the effect. "...with all the rumors, lies, and unfounded negativity CW can't survive. I tried my hardest to make it work. Some people just wouldn't let it..." Just like now, he'll take no personal responsibility - it's everyone else's fault.
------------------------------------------

It is HIS fault. He has been squirming from the pressure for day one. The guy lies so much he should be a politician. He should have been honest from the beginning. I can't think of many questions he has answered with a straight and honest answer. I think the thing he forgets it there has to be some people he hosts that need their site to make a living. We are going on 2 weeks with no service or email. I would be in a jam if I up and lost 2 weeks of pay with no prior notice. Not to mention the long term effects of not having service for 2 weeks and not being able to notify your customers or cilents in advance. It doesn't matter whether or not we paid 20 bucks for a year or 500 bucks for a year. The fact is we were all promised something that we have not gotten, and has been handled very unprofessionaly to boot.

Now, maybe I can answer some of the questions about emails. In my opinion, we will not get any emails that were sent since the last time we checked then while we had service. They guy has already said he has no backups, and my guess is that the POP servers were stored in the DC in Maine. Now, depending on your ISP, if an email message gets returned, it may sit in a qeue where it will keep trying to reach the POP server. After a certain period of time (specified by ISP) the original sender will get a mailer daemon error saying the recipient could not be reached. Typically these are set to 48 hours, but I have seen some go as long as a week, it all varies. Other times the sender will just get a mailer daemon message immediately. I just dont think there is any way we will be getting our emails unless their mail servers were somewhere else. This ticks me off the most since the only reason I bought one of their plans was so I could have unlimited POP accounts.

 

[stingygrrl]

i moved my dns to zoneedit and am also using their email forwarding. it's all free (I think). I haven't received a bill adn think I 'm only using their free services. www.zoneedit.com

I'm thinking about going woth dixiesys but they are down right now too. so i think i'll wait a couple of days to see what develops over there.

Also the time frame for getting a refund from your credit card is 60 days. amex credited me for 1 CW account and have disputed the other 3 ($6). I wonder if Shawn's trying to drag this out so that the 60 days has passed for most people, so that the charges can't be reversed?

I have gotten a couple of pieces of email after i changed to zoneedit, but it 's delayed about 1-2 days. thankfully, i only used CW for fun only and for personal email after yahoo changed to a paid service for POP access. anyway, when this whole fiasco started I sent a mass mail to my address book telling them to use yahoo mail until further notice.

even if CW comes back up I would advise people to make alternate arrangements for the interim

 

[Wolfgang]

I've still no idea why anyone (well, anyone paying attention) is surprised at what LS is saying now. Their line has been predictable (and predicted) for a week or more, but people are treating it like news.

It guess it's moved from the obvious LS stand to the expressly stated LS stand--but so what? To old-timers on this thread, there's no new information.


Question for those who have been trying to get info out of lightship: What do they say about the lethal pipeline problems CW was having in the weeks before LS limited bandwidth and then pulled the plug?

I imagine it'd either be "What problem", or "not our problem!", or perhap even the non-answer "At Lightship, we're eager to help our customers resolve any technical problems." Probability for something along those lines: about 99%.

But who knows, maybe this time they could say something genuinely surprising: "We were having serious, recurring difficulties with one of our routers, but this does not warrant a client's unilaterally terminating any contract without paying all fees associated therewith." But that's a 1% probability IMHO--not when there's a bunch of money at stake, and (who knows) not when it may not be their fault at all, and presumably absolutely isn't from their point of view. (I mean, presumably if they thought they had some defective equipment or software or something, they'd have fixed it.)

 

[huesmann]

Come on Kwad Guy, we're all waiting with bated breath for the next communication from CEO Shawn!

 

[Packy]

We'll, I can safely say I got my $5 worth out of CW, but this is pitiful. I put in my refund request this morning and a few minutes ago I signed up w/ dixiesys. HELLOOOO reliable service! At least I'll be able to check my email in a few days!

Good luck (seriously) to all those who try to stick it out with CW.

 

[clarkmo]

Originally posted by: Wolfgang
I've still no idea why anyone (well, anyone paying attention) is surprised at what LS is saying now. Their line has been predictable (and predicted) for a week or more, but people are treating it like news.

It guess it's moved from the obvious LS stand to the expressly stated LS stand--but so what? To old-timers on this thread, there's no new information.


Question for those who have been trying to get info out of lightship: What do they say about the lethal pipeline problems CW was having in the weeks before LS limited bandwidth and then pulled the plug?

I imagine it'd either be "What problem", or "not our problem!", or perhap even the non-answer "At Lightship, we're eager to help our customers resolve any technical problems." Probability for something along those lines: about 99%.

But who knows, maybe this time they could say something genuinely surprising: "We were having serious, recurring difficulties with one of our routers, but this does not warrant a client's unilaterally terminating any contract without paying all fees associated therewith." But that's a 1% probability IMHO--not when there's a bunch of money at stake, and (who knows) not when it may not be their fault at all, and presumably absolutely isn't from their point of view. (I mean, presumably if they thought they had some defective equipment or software or something, they'd have fixed it.)

There is an equal, if not better, chance that the problems were caused by the enormous upsurge of bandwidth generated by all the zaps, specials, etc.
And the lack of 120gb 10k ide drives.

 

[MontyBurns]

Wolfgang, you never cease to surprise me.

 

[Wolfgang]

Clarkmo,

You could be right.

Shawn has suggested BW was never an issue, but given that he's not a techie, I'm not sure if he realizes that ACTUAL maxima typically fall well below THEOERTICAL maxima. I've actually tried to talk with him about this, but have no idea if I've had an impact: if you think you're going to get 100 Mbps from a 100 Mbps pipe, you're likely to be sadly mistaken, and probably delivering poor performance too (since you'll think there's plenty of spare capacity, when in fact you've run out).

On the other hand, numerous people traced the previous problems to "looping routers", though I'm not enough of an internet expert to spell out what that really means. (A routing to B routing to A to B to A ...?) I don't think the Zaps and such really took hold before the tech problems started, but that's more of an impression than any knowledge.

Wolfgang

 

[DealLurker]

 

[RandomCoil]

Regarding the 10k rpm IDE drives, Shawn may be underestimating their speed a bit. After all, two 5400rpm IDE drives in a super-safe <cough> RAID 0 woud actually be 10,800 rpm; closer to 11k than 10k.

Anyway, my sites are on the RackShack CW-servers and working beautifully <knock, knock>, so I'll be sticking with CW for a while longer. I've certainly gotten my $4-worth out of them hosting-wise, and there appears to be no end the entertainment value.

And thanks to WOLFGANG for playing devil's advocate. It takes some real guts to have what appears to be the minority opinion.

 

[Wolfgang]

Oh, and on a trivia note: there ARE 10k EIDE drives, but they're smaller ones. And there were going to be a BUNCH of them--but market demand wasn't high enough (i.e., if people were willing to pay for 10k or more, they were preferring UltraSCSI). (WDC cancelled a line of them, e.g., ironically enough.)

I bet when I hear back from Shawn, the drives will be at 7200 rpm. Again, not a techie; he shouldn't try to talk like one unless he's unusually certain of what's he's talking about.

 

[Kwad Guy]

Another (rather short) missive from CEO this afternoon. This seems an addendum to the message
he sent me (and I posted) this morning...

Kwad,

Thanks for helping me get the word out...I think it's working. I just dropped by the chat room
and several people congratulated me on my hard work. Note that I am still on my bike ride
(gotta keep the head clear), but I brought along my 600Mhz IBM Thinkpad, which is a business
traveler's delight...Anyway, I just wanted people to know two more things:

1) We are current in communication with Internic about collapsing all our IP addresses down to just
one. My contact at Fry's (who is now in negotiations to become a full time consultant with us, so
I can't mention his name) showed me how the entire operation can be run off a single IP address
with a special piece of hardware that will make it look like we have all the IP addresses we need.
He says this will GREATLY increase our efficiency and lower our costs of doing business. That means
we'll be able to offer even greater sales in the very near future.

2) The response to our BUZZ packages has been so great I can't keep up. Right now, we are running
32-34 days behind in BUZZ fulfillment. But hold tight, because we're working as fast as we can
to come up with new sales. And here's the first one. For the next 24 hours ONLY we are offering the
greatest BUZZ upgrade package ever: The FLAMING BIG KAHUNA MEGA ULTRA BUZZ account. With this
account, we will 6.23x your bandwidth, 4.17x your disc space, allow you to host porn and cracked
apps (subject to maximum upload of 2mb/month), 7.74x your fixed price guarantee, PLUS we'll include
the following: A "Don't Follow Me I'm Lost" T-shirt, a Hang In There kitty poster, 4 16x CDR blanks,
Macintax 1996 (4 floppies), an original Macintosh one button mouse (collector's item), a free 1 week
subscription to Netflix, a very high quality 1200 baud external acoustic coupled modem, and a hash
pipe. The price for all of this? $189.72.

Well, gotta run, or should I say, peddle. Biking is great at taking your mind off of silly business
problems, I have to say. You all should try it. And don't forget to buy the FLAMING BIG KAHUNA MEGA
ULTRA BUZZ before I change my mind and cancel the offer.

CEO

 

[gfgray]

He talks like a con artist. He keeps trying to get more money even though he is not delivering on the last promise he gave us.

 

[DealLurker]

 

[jrichrds]

EDIT: Argh, Don't know if this already has been posted, as the forums is sooooo slow for me right now I can't even read the previous pages.

From WHT:

According to Lightship, their lawyers have advised not to make a public statement but they are responding directly to CW scammed customers:
--------------------------------------------------------
Good morning. Lightship has decided for the time being to not post information on the company website regarding Cyberwing. However, we are replying to direct inquiries from concerned Cyberwing customers that contact us.

Contrary to Cyberwing Communications' assertions, the ongoing outage being experienced by customers of Cyberwing has resulted from Cyberwing's repeated failure to pay to Lightship certain contractually-agreed amounts. Lightship was ready and eager to continue to provide Internet services, including technical support, to Cyberwing.

We would request that Cyberwing customers contact Cyberwing directly regarding any service, support and data-related issues.
-------------------------------------------------------------

As most of us thought, a large company like LS would not get "pissed" because Shawn is moving to Virginia and shut him down. They had a reason. At least their statement makes sense.

You still get banned in the IRC channel #cyberwings for mentioning this.

 

[Wolfgang]

Originally posted by: MontyBurns
Wolfgang: I have read your notes, and I'll ask you again, though I suspect you'll continue to dodge the question: What exactly did you base your "speculation" on that CyberWings was receiving poor service from LS, wanted out of the contract, and got slapped with hefty, unfair cancellation fees?

I just can't help but notice that your "speculation" tends to always favor CyberWings. Whereas many others here seem to "speculate" in the other direction -- that perhaps the problems facing the company now are all of its own doing.

So, again: What has led you to speculate that this is anything OTHER than cyberwings not paying its bills, and LS demanding payment? I have no facts, beyond what both companies have said. I haven't even "speculated" either way. But you have, repeatedly, and so I've asked, repeatedly, what you're basing your speculation on.

Have you been in contact with CEO?

Okay. I don't think you're read my notes at all, but I'll give one really, really last try--I don't want my "last tries" to be like Shawn's "Final Sale!"--final until the next one.

As I've stated many times before--as you no doubt know since you're read my notes, right?--there's no "speculation" about the tech troubles--they were real, regardless of whose fault. (So: no speculation regarding the fact; plenty of speculation regarding the fault, with LS and CW disagreeing completely over why CW was having pipeline problems.)

And there's no longer much, if any, speculation about a lack of payment from CW. This was my speculation more than a week ago now, and was confirmed by the anonymous LS posting and now an official LS e-mail, and while Shawn hasn't confirmed this, he certainly hasn't even hinted at a denial either, and has made it very clear that he refused to put up with what he saw as LS's poor technical support. (Check www.cwstatus.com if you don't remember this, but it's been plain as day for quite a while.) The issue is: is this non-payment a function of Cyberwings' evident dissatifaction with LS, or simply a matter of its being out of money? The reason I continually, over and over again point out the former possibility is that (a) the latter seems to be the only one people understand, and (b) many people--you, for example--don't seem to realize that there were serious pipeline problems long before service was restricted and then suspended, no matter how many times this is explained. And this I why I point out that you haven't read my notes.

Ask yourself this: would you pay for close to a month of unacceptably poor service? Even if you were convinced that your provider was getting tons of cash in exchange for non-performance? Well, Cyberwings' wouldn't, it appears.

Similarly, Lightship appears convinced, even if wrongly convinced, that it hasn't failed in the least. So from its perspective, Cyberwings is simply not paying its bills.


As I spelled out earlier, a cancellation fee seems likely simply because these are common in low cost contracts (again, think of wireless contracts). The alternative would be no cancellation fee, but simply paying for all 12 months of an annual contract--but in effect, this is an even higher cancellation fee.

The amount that Cyberwings is in arrears I think can be very well guessed qualitatively this way:

one month of serious, unresolved tech problems with resulting no payment (fair or not, I'd GUESS that's why CW withheld the money) + (remaining months of service OR a cancellation fee).

The LS anonymous poster said CW owed $30K--that may be about right, so far as LS is concerned.


But I'm open to other scenarios too. It does seem unlikely to me that Shawn is just flat-out lying--that's not his way, as I think even you may admit--even as it seems very likely to me that he hypes things a lot. (I imagine you'll agree there too) So it's easy for me to imagine that since he got seriously put out by Lightship's perceived lack of support, perceived to be in violation of the contract, he therefore decided to abrogate the contract and jump ship to a new DC. And it takes no imagination at all to conclude that Lightship would see this as a breach of contract requiring immediate financial remuneration for the cancellation.

Now, MontyBurns, you haven't speculated either way, yourself? Please--be serious.

Or do you not only fail to read what I write, but also to read what you write? Or I suppose you just consider continual innuendo and smearing matters of fact, and not speculation? If only people would label speculation as speculation, this would be a more fruitful and more enlightening conversation.

And I have been in contact with Shawn about the HD and server stuff, but he will not talk about the LS stuff. Tried to get info out of him, obviously, but he's not talking, beyond saying that what the anonymous LS employee posted was false and misleading, telling at best one side of the story. (He's convinced there's a confidentiality agreement, and he wants to protect his legal options, he has said. He believes the Ls "leaks" strengthen his hand, legally.) But all that's been on cwstatus.com for some time.

No more for today.

 

[RobsTV]

Originally posted by: Wolfgang

And there's no longer much, if any, speculation about a lack of payment from CW. This was my speculation more than a week ago now, and was confirmed by the anonymous LS posting and now an official LS e-mail, and while Shawn hasn't confirmed this, he certainly hasn't even hinted at a denial either, and has made it very clear that he refused to put up with what he saw as LS's poor technical support. (Check www.cwstatus.com if you don't remember this, but it's been plain as day for quite a while.) The issue is: is this non-payment a function of Cyberwings' evident dissatifaction with LS, or simply a matter of its being out of money? The reason I continually, over and over again point out the former possibility is that (a) the latter seems to be the only one people understand, and (b) many people--you, for example--don't seem to realize that there were serious pipeline problems long before service was restricted and then suspended, no matter how many times this is explained. And this I why I point out that you haven't read my notes.

Ask yourself this: would you pay for close to a month of unacceptably poor service? Even if you were convinced that your provider was getting tons of cash in exchange for non-performance? Well, Cyberwings' wouldn't, it appears.

Of course you would pay to maintain the 90% to 99%+ customers that were not having problems (like myself).
You would realise you made a mistake, and have to answer to the 1% to 10% of your customers having problems.
Then you would rush to find a new location before you stopped paying!

I suppose if your boss upset you, you would immediately quit and remain unemployed for weeks, stop paying your bills,
let your life and family go down the tubes, and slowly, (very slowly), find a new job where everything would be hunky-dory again!
The point is, you do not burn your bridges before you find a new home. When you do that, you are done............

You can play the guessing game all you want.
Facts are, many people waited to sign up until the last few weeks, when he really started pushing deals.
I signed up for 3 accounts, and got about 1 week out of then before CW went under.
The last few weeks before going under were probably the biggest cash windfall CW has seen.
It also put severe strain on the servers, as I'm sure client base went up tremendously.
So look at the cash windfall, and look at the unpaid bills, and what do you have left???
Someone with a big grin on their face.