# Can someone give me the lowdown and TLDR version of 'CVPS' & LowEndTalk



## Dillybob (Jun 13, 2015)

Title says it all. Why is 'CVPS' so hated on LET? Who are they, why and how. Thanks  :wub:

I bought service from them and it was fine... (I bought a small 256 box for 75 cents [with a coupon lol]) had no issue their performance, billing, etc.


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## joepie91 (Jun 13, 2015)

They are selling services for unrealistic prices, and pretty much single-handedly kickstarted the "race to the bottom" of offering heavily-oversold 2GB-for-$7 plans.
They are part of ColoCrossing, and both have a history of shady practices; they are dishonest at every turn, constantly try to fluff themselves up to look like they're more than they actually are, engage in what I can really only call ID fraud (read back on the UGVPS saga), and so on.
They quietly acquired LEB/LET, at the time the _single_ big community around cheap low-spec VPS hosting - effectively monopolizing the community around this. They neglected the site, and kept the acquisition quiet for months (years?), pretending that LEB/LET were still "community-run", when really they were using it as their marketing front.
They keep acquiring other providers - quietly and with complete disregard for the customers. Forced migrations from EU to US (wtf?), not even informing their customers, etc. In fact, 

In short; ChicagoVPS and ColoCrossing are pretty much everything that is (ethically) wrong with the low-end VPS industry. They're dishonest scumbags with complete disregard for their customers and the community.

EDIT: I may be missing some points. I just woke up, and this drama has been ongoing for years.


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## Dillybob (Jun 13, 2015)

joepie91 said:


> They are selling services for unrealistic prices, and pretty much single-handedly kickstarted the "race to the bottom" of offering heavily-oversold 2GB-for-$7 plans.
> They are part of ColoCrossing, and both have a history of shady practices; they are dishonest at every turn, constantly try to fluff themselves up to look like they're more than they actually are, engage in what I can really only call ID fraud (read back on the UGVPS saga), and so on.
> They quietly acquired LEB/LET, at the time the _single_ big community around cheap low-spec VPS hosting - effectively monopolizing the community around this. They neglected the site, and kept the acquisition quiet for months (years?), pretending that LEB/LET were still "community-run", when really they were using it as their marketing front.
> They keep acquiring other providers - quietly and with complete disregard for the customers. Forced migrations from EU to US (wtf?), not even informing their customers, etc. In fact,
> ...


Seems like they are the Kevin O'Leary of VPS's. Didn't know CVPS was behind LET though. Is there mission to buy everyone out and retain as much customers as possible or something? Was L.E.T a lot more active than before this? (only reason I ask this is because I remember it being super active and now it seems just like a normal forum) if that makes sense .

Thanks for the inside scoop.


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## Kayaba Akihiko (Jun 13, 2015)

Dillybob said:


> Seems like they are the Kevin O'Leary of VPS's. Didn't know CVPS was behind LET though. Is there mission to buy everyone out and retain as much customers as possible or something? Was L.E.T a lot more active than before this? (only reason I ask this is because I remember it being super active and now it seems just like a normal forum) if that makes sense .
> 
> 
> Thanks for the inside scoop.


LET/LEB is under colocrossing


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## telephone (Jun 13, 2015)

Adding onto what @joepie91 said:

1. For a few years Chris (from CVPS) was a complete douche, ass-hat, troll, dick, "fake it til you make it", and SPS (small penis syndrome). Where do you think Jonny Nguyen learned to act?

2. Chris felt the need to incessantly compare penis size (active nodes) with BuyVM. I really felt sorry for @Francisco.

3. If you had a problem with their servers being overloaded they would feign ignorance.

4. Multiple security breaches swept under the rug (CVPS) without any notice sent to customers!

5. Don't know if this one is 100% true, but throwing Jeremiah (jshinkle) under the bus. He was everything for CVPS.

If you have time, I recommend you read the threads from a few years ago. They're still very amusing!


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## joepie91 (Jun 13, 2015)

Dillybob said:


> Seems like they are the Kevin O'Leary of VPS's. Didn't know CVPS was behind LET though. Is there mission to buy everyone out and retain as much customers as possible or something? Was L.E.T a lot more active than before this? (only reason I ask this is because I remember it being super active and now it seems just like a normal forum) if that makes sense .
> 
> Thanks for the inside scoop.


They are unusually aggressively working on obtaining more and more IPv4 space. There are (plausible) allegations of them trying to sell as much as possible at bottom-of-the-barrel prices, and with plentiful distribution of cheap IPs, just to obtain more IPv4 space (as they need justification to get more allocations). They could then sell those ranges later at a profit, when IPv4 has become even more scarce.

Naturally, this is denied by Colocrossing/CVPS - but then again, so was every (true) allegation before it. Given their habit of lying about absolutely anything and everything, and this being a plausible explanation for their business model (and really, the _only_ plausible explanation), I'm inclined to believe the allegation is true.

Aside from that; LET has become more active, but the quality of posts has dropped considerably. I suspect the 'race to the bottom' of offering as many resources as possible at the lowest possible price, has driven away the techies and attracted the type of crowd that purchases 'unlimited' shared hosting just because it looks like a 'deal'.

In other words; there may be more _overall_ activity, but less _interesting_ activity.


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## Francisco (Jun 13, 2015)

joepie91 said:


> In other words; there may be more _overall_ activity, but less _interesting_ activity.


VPSBoard lucked out in that it gained a lot of the smarter customers & hosts. LET still draws a lot of newbie people and you're right, it's still a major selling floor for most.

As for Chris, it wasn't just us that he was having his wars with. There was at least once where someone made an offer on LEB that was cheaper than his and he proceeded to post in their offer a cheaper deal via coupon. It was really really really sleazy. He has been humbled a lot, though, with the compromises as well as the other public beat downs he has taken. He doesn't message me anymore to try to have e-peen arguments, usually it'll be tech related if he's stumped on things. I kinda get the feeling that CVPS isn't attached at the hip to CC as much as they used to be.

As for CC/LE*, there was a lot of issues with how the 'ownership transfer' happened. The community was given to Joel to help grow it and that was the only reason he was picked. Problem is, the minute he got it CC was trying to buy it off him. LEA stated that CC tried to buy the site before he did the transfer just weeks before, so there's a lot of tinfoil'ing going on in regards to the DDOS that LE* ate post transfer. Once the transfer happened they kepy denying it stating that we were all full of it and didn't know what we were talking about. They got hacked multiple times and Alex finally admitted that sure enough, the tinfoilers were right and that they had purchased the site ~1 year prior.

CC had major spam issues and anyone that spent a few minutes writing some scripts could see spammers being rotated around ranges. Ultimately they've spent quite a bit of time & man hours to getting their new anti-mail system in place but the tinfoiler in me says they're only doing that because they *need* the IP space to help sell their new location in Buffalo.

It's whatever. The amount of comments that LEB gets on offers has dropped heavily. The only ones that get any sort of high comment count on are usually selling the shirt off their back to cover bills. mpkossen has started taking it upon himself to start cold writing articles which is great and was how LEB originally started.

Personally, the LowEndWars are over and the consumers lost. When you allow a "suicidal" smurf of a "CEO" run around causing a shit storm within your company and no one is putting him in his place? There's no winners in that except the smurfs ego. They're out $X,XXX and there is *no* reason for him to ever pay it.

Francisco


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## drmike (Jun 13, 2015)

Francisco said:


> Personally, the LowEndWars are over and the consumers lost. When you allow a "suicidal" smurf of a "CEO" run around causing a shit storm within your company and no one is putting him in his place? There's no winners in that except the smurfs ego. They're out $X,XXX and there is *no* reason for him to ever pay it.



Would this be the smurf you are referring to?







Jonny Spazz Nuggets modeled his insanity, pricing and sell at any unsustainable cost from Fab.  

You can see my avatar for an example of Colocrossing's racks in the past. There is a thread or two on here about that insane episode.

As for Lowend History Class.. I'll inject this for those not in the know:

LEB offers were submitted by BuffaloVPS. Back then the offers were more reasonable (but for the time were deep underpricing).  LEAdmin after two of those got Fab and Co on his radar and some of the offers started to get snippy.  There was a mandate that Fab could only run one brand (he had started running offers for ChicagoVPS on LEB also).  

After that, BuffaloVPS got all strange, 'flipped' to CVPS, etc.   The BuffaloVPS ads stopped and was CVPS ads there on out.

Now this was prior to Colocrossing being all Buffalo or having a DC or anything. Jere Shinkle was in the middle of all of that. He was the common link then (worked at CC and for CVPS).  My understanding that BuffaloVPS and CVPS were both Jere's ideas / doing.

Things have gone mostly quiet in CC / CVPS world, part of it is that I haven't bothered them much lately with research.  Last August they tried to get things more quiet as I assume they attempt to transition more into a local / regional provider.  Comments and research heat like I've put out is just stuff real business customers won't tolerate in their upstream.  Thus them going quiet and trying to clean things up (dealing with SPAM, throttling ports since their network is all spoofable)....

I don't think any of their intentions matter though.   They fail to invest in staff and a company at scale can't exist with shitty customer support customers of CVPS / BlueVM / name the other acquisitions have dealt with.  Things are a bit better on the Colocrossing side, but don't go asking for network related anything as they avoid such like the plague.  Great delays even where you are paying them royally for such.

LET + LEB acquisition was a hostile takeover.   That shituation was about them asking the original owner if he'd sell to them, and the guy saying NO IT IS A COMMUNITY aka it's non commercial.  So when the site was handed off to Joel (FOR FREE), CC either had pre-arrangement to buy it from Joel or Joel made contact with CC and struck the sneaky ass deal.  Joel only cared about cash money and his own self.   

CC is only in LE* because they couldn't get traction on local business / enterprise sales.  They didn't intend to be a low end provider selling e-crack to children.   It just happens to be what they are / have been / know how to do.


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## joepie91 (Jun 13, 2015)

drmike said:


> Great delays even where you are paying them royally for such.


IPv6 will arrive any day now!


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## drmike (Jun 13, 2015)

joepie91 said:


> IPv6 will arrive any day now!


Yeah that would require upgrading those circa 2003~ switches playing top of rack routers.


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## AuroraZero (Jun 14, 2015)

I left LE for awhile just before the hand off but I expressed my concerns over Joel to LEA before leaving. I have no clue why he handed the reigns of the place over to him to begin with. I told him exactly what he was and how he acted. I see it made no difference in the end.

The whole deal turned into one big fustecluck and it is what it is now.


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## Dillybob (Jun 14, 2015)

Gosh Damn drMike, what was your old account on LET?


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## drmike (Jun 14, 2015)

drmike   

I had a few, but mostly lurked LET as I do now.


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## Dillybob (Jun 14, 2015)

Edit: Wrong Thread sec


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