This one never made it to the Gunnels Collective. It was written in a personal blog and started back on 2 July 2004:
2 July 2004:
I've been with one particular web hosting company for several years now, and I thought I was getting a great deal. That company was
super.nu, also known by the name of
fidpac. Plenty of disk space and bandwidth, and a reasonable annual fee. I didn't have too many problems, and when I did they were addressed pretty quickly. I thought I was doing well, and I recommended this hosting company to others. I know at least some of them took up hosting with the company.
When I was offered an upgrade, I jumped at the chance. Big mistake.
I paid for the upgrade and started transferring my domains back in March. Unfortunately, many of the things I was promised in the upgrade package failed to materialise. The most important of these was the ability to have fully-functioning subdomains within any but one of the domains I was transferring. These subdomains were running on the previous server, and were crucial to the operation of the domains I was transferring.
I have had nothing but trouble from the hosting comany since I upgraded back in March. They failed to answer my emails, they tried to tell me what I wanted to do was technically impossible (even though it was working fine under my previous account, and was among the many promises they made me), then they tried to sell me the solution to my problem at an additional cost when it was part of the package I had purchased. My attempts to try to get them to solve this issue have either been ignored or fobbed off. Four months down the track I am no closer to a solution.
So I am no longer recommending
super.nu, or
fidpac as a web hosting company, and I am warning people not to deal with them or their CEO,
Steve Gunnels.
4 July 2004:
"I'll speak to my tech and see if anything can be done."
After almost four months of explaining what needing fixing with my web hosting account, and almost four months of delaying, fobbing off and feigning ignorance, this is the best my web hosting company could come up with this week! It's a comment almost identical to one or two I got about three months ago.
Yesterday I asked for a little more information and offered some clarification (just to ensure that they didn't fob me off for another three months with more questions). No answer.
So keep that web hosting company name in the back of your mind - super.nu, also known as fidpac.com, and the CEO Steve Gunnels. Steer clear of them. They're full of hot air!
14 July 2004:
You may recall my irate ramblings about my webhosting company, FIDPAC (also known as
www.super.nu) and their boss STEVE GUNNELS (if not, just read on below). Well it's now been three to four weeks since I last heard from them ...
The week before July 4, Steve Gunnels finally sent me an email, though yet again he failed to offer a solution to my hosting problem, he merely fobbed me off with yet another delaying tactic. For at least the second time he gave me a 'let me speak to my tech guy about ... (blah blah)'. Fine, I thought - and replied that I looked forward to seeing his rapid reply.
The following week, he failed to respond to any of my emails - in fact, there were not even any read or delivery receipts, which I have flagged on all my emails to him for the last two or three months. I wasn't too worried. I knew it was the Fourth of July in the states, and I figured he may have been taking a day or two off. A week later, I was generous enough to think he may have taken a whole week off (and yet not had anyone check his email for him??? Very unprofessional!).
Well, today is July 14, so it's about three weeks since I last heard from him. And that includes a complete lack of read receipts (so he's not even reading my email). A break is a break, but the yanks generally don't take three week holidays in the middle of the year as far as I can tell. So what's going on? He hasn't read or replied to my emails for around three weeks, and he hasn't got anyone else reading or replying to his emails either. Is he abandoning his business?? The web sites continue to be live, so the equipment at least hasn't been shut off. But where is the boss???
Is FIDPAC dead? Is STEVE GUNNELS broke? Have all the webhosts been abandoned????
21 July 2004:
It seems I'm not the only person to have had trouble with Steve Gunnels and FIDPAC (also known as super.nu). I haven't heard from him for weeks now. He hasn't read any of my emails (and so obviously hasn't replied to them). He must have my name on his email filtering - and I've sent emails to probably five of his different email addresses. (Might be time to send them from some of my several email addresses!!)
But a little Googling has unearthed a long string of very unhappy customers!!!!! Check out these links:
http://www.freewebspace.net/forums/showthread.php?t=53818webhostingtalk forumhostspotSO THE GUY IS A SYSTEMATIC AND REPEAT SCAMMER AND CON ARTIST. AVOID HIM AND HIS COMPANY LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!!
26 July 2004:
After more than four months of the worst service I've ever had from any company (see my complaints below), I finally had a mad rush of help from my webhost - but not from Steve Gunnels. After four or so weeks of no response from Steve Gunnels, I tried a different tack. I noted some of the other webhosting companies that this person (and FIDPAC and super.nu and hostingservicesllc) are supposedly connected with that I received from some of the posts complaining about this webhosting company (see links below). One of these was BESTHOST1. I went to their website, found a customer support feedback form, and tried again. This time with some success.
I got a response from someone called Daniel. I still don't know his last name (the other posts would suggest his last name might also be Gunnels), [Note: it was Dan Levesque, a very helpful person, and now running his own hosting company, ServerConnectix.] but I had been forwarded an email by him from the infamous Steve Gunnels in which he said what I was after could not be done. Daniel remembered my plight and took it upon himself to address many of the things I had been asking Steve Gunnels to do for months. And they were done.
Now I have a webhosting account that includes the SDS package I purchased. Now I have subdomains working within domains on the new hosting box.
Steve Gunnels has still failed to respond to me in all this time. So that's now around six or seven weeks of silence and inaction on his part. Absolutely pitiful!!
Thank God Daniel had a little more ethics, and chose to deliver what I had been promised.
4 January 2005:
Just when they seemed to have redeemed themselves, my webhost proves once again what assholes they are. For those of you who haven't been keeping up to date with the story, read of my unfortunate exploits with Steve Gunnels and FIDPAC (also operating under other names like super.nu, Hosting Services LLC, and besthost1 among many others) further down below.
This time, they stole money from me. No other way to put it. They stole money from me, and cannot bring themselves to pay it back.
In October, Fidpac withdrew $99 USD from my credit card. They had no right to do so. They did not have the authority to do so. It was illegal. It was theft.
When I complained to them, they told me that it was the standard annual fee for the Shared Dedicated Service (SDS) that I was receiving from them. There are two problems with that. First, my account was only 7 months old at that time, so there was no way any annual payment for anything could have been due. And secondly, the SDS package that I was using was offered to me by them FREE FOR LIFE. Yes, that's right - they had offered me this web hosting deal with a once-only-lifetime payment, and the SDS was part of the package. So I had already paid for it, for life. I would never have to pay them anything ever again.
But still they illegally withdrew $99 USD from my credit card account. And they will not pay it back.
Oh they've offered to, and then failed to do it. Steve Gunnels himself said that he would deposit it back, and didn't. I suggested he send me a cheque, or a $100 bill by mail, and for reasons known only to himself he was unable to do that. He suggested he could wire it directly to my bank if I gave him my bank details. Get real Steve - you just stole $99 USD from my credit card, do you honestly think I'm going to give you my bank account details????
So here it is, three months later, and now Steve Gunnels is refusing to answer my emails again. I get no replies. No response. I complain to the FBI again, and it seems to make no difference to him. The guy is a crook, and a thief.
At all costs - DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH STEVE GUNNELS, FIDPAC, SUPER.NU OR ANY COMPANY ASSOCIATED WITH HIM/THEM.
