First, my own story

I started with super.nu hosting many years ago. Around four years or so ago I purchased one of his too-good-to-be-true "Lifetime Hosting" packages - that is, pay me now and you'll have this webhosting package for life. Yup, sounded too good to be true, and as it turned out it was.

The lifetime hosting package was flawed from the start. It was supposed to include a number of Shared Domains, but that hadn't been set up. I queried it for months and got nowhere. Gunnels couldn't figure out how to do it. Finally, Dan Levesque, who was doing contract server admin work for Gunnels at the time (amd, it turns out, not getting paid properly for it) jumped in and set it up for me - thanks Dan.

Around this time, Gunnels charged my credit card $99USD. I hadn't bought anything. I queried it. He denied it, or said it was for something, but I continued to query it. Finally he relented and said he'd pay it back. For threee months he delayed and delayed and never paid it back - just long enough to run past the 90 day limit on credit card chargebacks. Then he refused to answer my emails.

Then, out of the blue, all his servers went down. Every one. Thousands of customers, thousands of websites, all off the air without notice. When some of us looked into it, we discovered that his hosting provider had turned off his servers because he hadn't paid them. I bought a new webhosting package (from Dan Levesque who was now out on his own) and moved all my stuff there - at my own expense. I then set up a new website called "The Gunnels Collective", where many of us who had been burned by this crook gathered to share our experiences and to dig deeper into what this man had done.

Gunnels himself was watching and eventually contributed - a pack of lies as it all turned out. He tried blaming his hosting company, he tried blaming Dan Levesque, he tried blaming everyone but himself. He fired up a new bunch of servers and told everyone that he would continue offering the services they had paid for (thus, we figured, trying to negate the investigations and pending lawsuits). I continued my new hosting service, but took him up on his offer - I never transferred any of my website to his servers; how could I again trust such a crook and conman? I just wanted to have the space.

Then he went to the host of my Gunnels Collective website and threatened them with legal action if they didn't take my site down. He was claiming libel and all that crap. Obviously, he just didn't want someone telling the world what he was really doing. We had around 100 members at the time - all customers of Gunnels who had been burned, robbed or conned.

Meanwhile he was still selling webhosting packages to unsuspecting people. Taking their money and seemingly providing a service - he even continued to sell his lifetime hosting packages!

Now here we are about a year down the track and his servers have suddenly and without warning gone off the air again. And he doesn't answer emails again. I've sent many over the last week or so, to several of the email addresses he used to use (and seemingly still does use, as his hosting company website is still up and running with a number of email contact points).

The message is clear: stay away from Steve Gunnels. Stay away from super.nu and fidpac. The man is a crook, a thief, a liar and a conman.