# Shardhost Info - Urgent Client Action



## ShardHost (Nov 12, 2013)

[SIZE=14pt]Due to recent unexpected trading circumstances Shard Hosting Solutions LTD has ceased trading with immediate effect.  We urge all clients to take a backup of their data immediately as we cannot guarantee how long services will operate for before being disconnected by our upstream suppliers. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=14pt]If you feel you are a creditor please contact:[/SIZE]

*[SIZE=14pt]PHILIP LAWRENCE[/SIZE]*

*[SIZE=14pt]email:- [/SIZE]*[SIZE=14pt][email protected][/SIZE]

Baverstocks Limited Dickens House, 3-7 Guithavon St, Witham CM8 1BJ


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## Aldryic C'boas (Nov 12, 2013)

Folks sometimes ask me why we don't compete in price (the 7$/2GB 'RAM Race', etc).  I believe this shall be my new example.


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## MartinD (Nov 12, 2013)

Question is, how long did you know it was coming and why is this so 'urgent'.


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## Jack (Nov 12, 2013)

Aldryic C said:


> Folks sometimes ask me why we don't compete in price (the 7$/2GB 'RAM Race', etc).  I believe this shall be my new example.


Don't believe it was the 7$/2GB RAM Race that created this... More the 1GB KVM $30/year plan...


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## clarity (Nov 12, 2013)

Jack said:


> Don't believe it was the 7$/2GB RAM Race that created this... More the 1GB KVM $30/year plan...


If this is the case, there is another host that I should be worried about. They offer plans even lower than that.They advertise here all the time!


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## Francisco (Nov 12, 2013)

MartinD said:


> Question is, how long did you know it was coming and why is this so 'urgent'.


It's likely the $10/y KVM's were just to get some float and then things went bust.

It's unlikely they had any assets, meaning they were renting most everything.

TL;DR - Join the pony, enjoy the free SSD upgrades 

Francisco


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## Jack (Nov 12, 2013)

Looks like big boots Biloh pulled the plug.


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## Aldryic C'boas (Nov 12, 2013)

It's an easy thing to do when you never actually face up to someone.


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## wlanboy (Nov 12, 2013)

MartinD said:


> Question is, how long did you know it was coming and why is this so 'urgent'.


Delayed filing of insolvency was my first thought too.


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## MannDude (Nov 12, 2013)

So was anyone here actually a customer? Seems a handful of LETers got burnt, but overall I think our userbase makes wiser purchasing decisions. 

Seems as if they sent the notice out an hour before shutting people down. You could have ordered yesterday and spent hundreds of dollars, and it looks as if refunds are not a guarantee for you.

So let me express this as eloquently as possible.... What the *fuck* happened? Don't tell me you didn't see this coming and then this month couldn't pay your server bill(s). Yanked this link from our buddy AnthonySmith who left us: http://companycheck.co.uk/company/07679837/SHARD-HOSTING-SOLUTIONS-LTD/company-summary Looks like ShardHost, if this site is in anyway at all accurate, wasn't in horrible financial setting and had good enough credit rating to keep things floating if needed.

If you're a client, good luck.

ShardHost, what actually happened?


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## RiotSecurity (Nov 12, 2013)

That seems interesting, I wonder what happened. Could be stupid things like blackmail, but it could just be family emergencys/issues within the owners, so they have to close, etc.

I'd really like to know the reason.


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## MartinD (Nov 12, 2013)

MannDude said:


> So let me express this as eloquently as possible.... What the *fuck* happened? Don't tell me you didn't see this coming and then this month couldn't pay your server bill(s). Yanked this link from our buddy AnthonySmith who left us: http://companycheck.co.uk/company/07679837/SHARD-HOSTING-SOLUTIONS-LTD/company-summary Looks like ShardHost, if this site is in anyway at all accurate, wasn't in horrible financial setting and had good enough credit rating to keep things floating if needed.


You can't take information on those sites too seriously. Accounts here in the UK are filed 1 year after the account end period. There are many ways to mess around with the accounts to show figures that you want to appear... be it a nice positive balance or a negative balance (each of which has its benefits depending on what you're trying to do).

Looks to be  a husband and wife team (both directors, both shareholders) so it could well be someone needs to get rid of assets quickly so some other entity can't get their hands on it.

Really, there's no way of knowing unless the accountant, liquidator or ex-directors tell us.


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## concerto49 (Nov 12, 2013)

Francisco said:


> It's likely the $10/y KVM's were just to get some float and then things went bust.
> 
> 
> It's unlikely they had any assets, meaning they were renting most everything.
> ...


ShardHost have their own hardware and colo with Colocrossing?

Either way, yes, those prices don't work - especially when something happens.


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## DomainBop (Nov 12, 2013)

MannDude said:


> Yanked this link from our buddy AnthonySmith who left us: http://companycheck.co.uk/company/07679837/SHARD-HOSTING-SOLUTIONS-LTD/company-summary Looks like ShardHost, if this site is in anyway at all accurate, wasn't in horrible financial setting and had good enough credit rating to keep things floating if needed.


Those figures are from their last accounts March 2012.  A lot can happen in 20 months. They owned their own equipment and were coloing w/CC.  Chances are most of that cash was long gone and spent on growing the business.  They also owned minecraft host Shardgaming.com (formerly DaddyCheese.com).


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## drmike (Nov 12, 2013)

I hate seeing any company fail.  

This seemed inevitable though.  As I always point, annual sales in mass are the man on his knees in the church of VPS.  Praying buyers show in mass and float the next month.

Next victim of the ec-on-o-meee and low price can't float a dingy let alone a boat?


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## drmike (Nov 12, 2013)

DomainBop said:


> Those figures are from their last accounts March 2012.  A lot can happen in 20 months. They owned their own equipment and were coloing w/CC.  Chances are most of that cash was long gone and spent on growing the business.  They also owned minecraft host Shardgaming.com (formerly DaddyCheese.com).


They owned equipment?  Couldn't meet CC's rates?  Ouch that's no sales scenario.

DaddyCheese?  WTF?  What a name.  (staples own hand)


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## Jack (Nov 12, 2013)

I personally don't see the gear all being owned... I think some was RTO.


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## Francisco (Nov 12, 2013)

concerto49 said:


> ShardHost have their own hardware and colo with Colocrossing?
> 
> Either way, yes, those prices don't work - especially when something happens.


Are you 1000% sure of that?

Francisco


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## Alto (Nov 12, 2013)

I had one of their low-end specials that were offered on request back in October, before the AnnualKVM brand appeared I think. Everything was actually pretty decent until this weekend when the I/O turned to shit and tickets weren't responded to for days.


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## concerto49 (Nov 12, 2013)

Francisco said:


> Are you 1000% sure of that?
> 
> 
> Francisco


I can't be 1000% sure. No one can. The filing also did say they have assets. This is likely hardware.

If it was rented - I wonder why there just wasn't a spat on LET about payment and cc like some other threads we've been seeing


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## drmike (Nov 12, 2013)

From LEB offer:

*"They currently serve over 3500 clients on their fully owned vps hardware."*

How does a company with 3500 clients go instantly tits up?


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## Francisco (Nov 12, 2013)

concerto49 said:


> I can't be 1000% sure. No one can. The filing also did say they have assets. This is likely hardware.
> 
> If it was rented - I wonder why there just wasn't a spat on LET about payment and cc like some other threads we've been seeing


Maybe it was owned before they moved into CC Dallas?

Francisco


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## Francisco (Nov 12, 2013)

drmike said:


> From LEB offer:
> 
> *"They currently serve over 3500 clients on their fully owned vps hardware."*
> 
> How does a company with 3500 clients go instantly tits up?


Hostrail had like 10k active VM's or something like that.

Francisco


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## Jack (Nov 12, 2013)

Francisco said:


> Hostrail had like 10k active VM's or something like that.
> 
> 
> Francisco


Atleast Shard didn't email saying CC are increasing our bills by 65% we need more money.


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## mightyschwartz (Nov 12, 2013)

Jack said:


> Atleast Shard didn't email saying CC are increasing our bills by 65% we need more money.


I would have paid to have access for one more day... I now am out one year of prepaid service and a little data. Nothing major, but 1 hour notice is classless.


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## XFS_Duke (Nov 12, 2013)

Odd thing to happen so quickly. Who all has lost data?


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## Francisco (Nov 12, 2013)

XFS_Duke said:


> Odd thing to happen so quickly. Who all has lost data?


75%+ probably.

Total "heads up" was < 2 hours I think?

Francisco


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## drmike (Nov 12, 2013)

Francisco said:


> Hostrail had like 10k active VM's or something like that.
> 
> 
> Francisco


Really?  All I can say is how stupid.  

If you have thousands of customers, that has value.  At minimum moving them to another viable company is good business sense.  Monetarily, perhaps not profitable, but should yield something to at least pay some of your debt.

There is a reason why you see "fire" sales and other closeouts... It's because of foreseen failure and inability to continue.  It's proactive right thing to do.  A hosting company at such scale didn't fail yesterday magically.


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## Francisco (Nov 12, 2013)

The problem hostrail had was they charged pennies per VPS and would give away a lot of VM's just because.

When they closed they had something like $20k in debt owed to limestone networks.

When clubdowntime went bust the rumour was that they owed $40k+ between them and brohoster.

Francisco


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## Alto (Nov 12, 2013)

Francisco said:


> 75%+ probably.
> 
> 
> Total "heads up" was < 2 hours I think?
> ...


Less than an hour intact. My email came through at 18:55 GMT, reports of the nodes shutting down started coming in at 19:40 GMT.


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## drmike (Nov 12, 2013)

Ouch < 2 hours notices... These fools knew of inevitable doom for months.  Dirt-fucking-bags.


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## fizzyjoe908 (Nov 12, 2013)

This is weird. I know the DaddyCheese / ShardGaming portion of the company had several thousand active Minecraft hosting clients but they did get hit pretty hard during the last WHMCS exploit.


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## Francisco (Nov 12, 2013)

Alto said:


> Less than an hour intact. My email came through at 18:55 GMT, reports of the nodes shutting down started coming in at 19:40 GMT.


Good christ.

Well, Jon claims he knew nothing of this shutdown and I'm kinda believing that. Shardhost has already ripped their entire twitter down and ran for the hills.

Maybe the data breach costs were huge?

Francisco


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## drmike (Nov 12, 2013)

Forgive my stupidity, but cleaning up from data issue would be time, usually.  Unless they got compromised and wiped.  

It would have costs, but shouldn't KO a company.

Even if they got gut punched by the WHMCS issue, that damage should have been reported to customers back then.   Can't say if they communicated, but I suspect they didn't say much.  Right?


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## MannDude (Nov 12, 2013)

I thought the WHMCS exploit was back in March? That's the one where the emailed clients.

Unless they were hit again?


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## RiotSecurity (Nov 12, 2013)

MannDude said:


> I thought the WHMCS exploit was back in March? That's the one where the emailed clients.
> 
> Unless they were hit again?


Who knows, lol.


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## WebSearchingPro (Nov 12, 2013)

MannDude said:


> I thought the WHMCS exploit was back in March? That's the one where the emailed clients.
> 
> Unless they were hit again?


My dealings are with U.S. Law so I'm not quite sure to what extent this may be applicable.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/29/contents

ShardHost was a company registered in the UK, where their data was stolen, maybe someone took legal action against ShardHost. 

The thing is there are just to many possibilities to cover, we will have to wait for an official announcement or perhaps a leak from a former employee.


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## concerto49 (Nov 12, 2013)

WebSearchingPro said:


> My dealings are with U.S. Law so I'm not quite sure to what extent this may be applicable.
> 
> http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/29/contents
> 
> ...


Legal action is a possibility. The other thing I can see is tax implications. They could have been filing tax returns and the accountant realized the numbers didn't add up etc?


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## mightyschwartz (Nov 12, 2013)

You don't just close up shop with less than 1 hour notice. Even if there were circumstances beyond their control, they knew about them way earlier than they shut down servers. They chose to continue accepting money for services they knew they would not be able to deliver. I would rather have been told and allowed to seamlessly move my test env, but they chose to bend their customers over until zero hour.


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## DomainBop (Nov 12, 2013)

> Forgive my stupidity, but cleaning up from data issue would be time, usually.



Potential fines and lawsuits are the main thing to worry about when there is a database breach.



> WHMCS exploit...........Unless they were hit again?



Shardhost sent out an email on October 3rd notifying customers that their WHMCS database had been breached.  On October 21st they sent out another email notifying clients of a WHMCS password reset.



> My dealings are with U.S. Law so I'm not quite sure to what extent this may be applicable.
> 
> http://www.legislati...998/29/contents
> 
> ShardHost was a company registered in the UK, where their data was stolen, maybe someone took legal action against ShardHost.



Copying and pasting one of my old LET posts...UK databreach requirements:



> The security breach notification sent to customers should include the following information:
> 
> 
> 3) Notify breaches to your subscribers
> ...




notification that should have been sent to ICO:


*Service providers must notify the ICO that a personal data breach has occurred within 24 hours of becoming aware of the basic facts* . Full details must be provided as soon as possible. The ICO provides a secure online form for all notifications


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## lbft (Nov 12, 2013)

mightyschwartz said:


> They chose to continue accepting money for services they knew they would not be able to deliver.


Deary me, IANAL but if that's true that sounds an awful lot like trading while insolvent.


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## DomainBop (Nov 12, 2013)

TheRegister, one of the largest UK tech news sites, has an article on the ShardGaming shutdown:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/12/shard_gaming_shut_down/


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## concerto49 (Nov 12, 2013)

DomainBop said:


> TheRegister, one of the largest UK tech news sites, has an article on the ShardGaming shutdown:
> 
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/12/shard_gaming_shut_down/


Somehow due to rdns giglinx got into this.


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## WebSearchingPro (Nov 12, 2013)

I was actually surprised to hear that it was DaddyCheese, thats a brand I've seen more than enough times. Quite large in the gaming community.


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## drmike (Nov 12, 2013)

DomainBop said:


> TheRegister, one of the largest UK tech news sites, has an article on the ShardGaming shutdown:
> 
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/12/shard_gaming_shut_down/


Wowzers on The Register covering it...


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## Nick_A (Nov 12, 2013)

WebSearchingPro said:


> I was actually surprised to hear that it was DaddyCheese, thats a brand I've seen more than enough times. Quite large in the gaming community.


That's what I'm surprised about, too. I have no idea how well the ShardHost brand was doing, but DaddyCheese was one of the most popular back when I ran MCLayer and frequented the MC circles. They were well known and generally respected, so I can only imagine they had a ton of clients.


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## drmike (Nov 12, 2013)

Somehow I am beginning to think that Shardhost client count was inclusive of the DaddyCheese brand too... explains the 3500 customer claim.

DaddyCheese bears similar BOO-YA notice:



> Down for Maintenance (Err 3)
> Due to recent unexpected trading circumstances Shard Hosting Solutions LTD has ceased trading with immediate effect. We urge all clients to take a backup of their data immediately as we cannot guarantee how long services will operate for before being disconnected by our upstream suppliers. If you feel you are a creditor please contact: PHILIP LAWRENCE email:- [email protected]


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## mightyschwartz (Nov 12, 2013)

lbft said:


> Deary me, IANAL but if that's true that sounds an awful lot like trading while insolvent.


My statement was conjecture on my part, but it seems odd that they would suddenly just BOOM go out of business with no foresight at all. In fact, I think you'd have to be pretty stupid to believe it.

This is akin to telling your wife that the power company is outside about to cut off the power due to non-payment and that she had better move quickly to save the contents of the fridge while you sit silently and refuse to acknowledge that you had hidden all of the bills and disconnect notices from her. She is rightfully going to be livid because you lied by omission and should have given her more of a heads up about the situation.

Shardhost's proprietors owe its customers an apology and an explanation and not some BS form letter that went out 40 minutes before they cut hosting and they know they screwed up. That is why they pulled their social media stuff beforehand... as if they had a brand or reputation worth saving the face of at that point. At this point, as a customer who purchased 6 months of service month-to-month before purchasing a years worth, I think they are crooks and arseholes.


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## drmike (Nov 12, 2013)

Baverstocks

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

Baverstocks is the trading name of Baverstocks Limited, company no. 01997854.

Registered office Dickens House, Guithavon Street, Witham, Essex, CM8 1BJ

Philip Lawrence     Development Partner

The firm =  Chartered Accountants.


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## ChrisM (Nov 12, 2013)

Sad that this had to happen. Stay tuned! We have a Refugee sale for their MineCraft clients in the works!


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## yolo (Nov 12, 2013)

I heard PytoHost also does the first month free if coming from shard gaming.


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## lbft (Nov 12, 2013)

Chris, did you really intend to bounce your link via Facebook?


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## ChrisM (Nov 12, 2013)

lbft said:


> Chris, did you really intend to bounce your link via Facebook?



Haha no but thanks for pointing it out dude. I just decided to copy paste the facebook post done by another member of our staff here and didn't notice the referral.


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## earl (Nov 12, 2013)

@manndude

I actually bought the $10/yr plan from vpsboard.. but it's $10 and I got 5 months worth of service out of it so, I don't really care. I swore after the whole RackVM incident that I would never buy another yearly deal but how soon we forget lol..

The only thing was I kinda like my IP, but it was on a blacklist anyways..oh well.


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## drmike (Nov 13, 2013)

earl said:


> The only thing was I kinda like my IP, but it was on a blacklist anyways..oh well.


Another company on the get rich and bail wagon... with ... a dirty IP range... Go figure...  Sad.


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## earl (Nov 13, 2013)

drmike said:


> Another company on the get rich and bail wagon... with ... a dirty IP range... Go figure...  Sad.



yeah, that was the second IP that they swicthed for me.. both were on a blacklist. I think they metioned that most of ther IP were on a blacklist, maybe it's cheaper?

Did not care thought.. was not planning on emailing anyone anyways..


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## Coastercraze (Nov 13, 2013)

Wow.. DaddyCheese was a pretty big name in the Minecraft Hosting world... glad I didn't use them, a friend of mine did though.


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## drmike (Nov 13, 2013)

Is your brand really called CreeperHost?  Oy!


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## Coastercraze (Nov 13, 2013)

drmike said:


> Is your brand really called CreeperHost?  Oy!


One post wonder... spam and run to the next site!


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## MannDude (Nov 13, 2013)

I removed the offers from this thread. Post your refugee deals in the appropriate forum, please.


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## ToXIQuE (Nov 13, 2013)

Sure  There are quite a few people helping out the refugees!


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## peterw (Nov 13, 2013)

drmike said:


> Ouch < 2 hours notices... These fools knew of inevitable doom for months.  Dirt-fucking-bags.


They started promos knowing that it will end bad for their new customers. And they closed the doors on twitter and facebook first to cover their backs. Last point on their todo list was informing their customers. Reckless double dealers.


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## Francisco (Nov 13, 2013)

It's not often I see "Go fuck yourself" in legal jabber, but here's what was shoved onto WHT:



> To Whom It May Concern
> 
> Shard Hosting Solutions Limited
> 
> ...


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## Francisco (Nov 13, 2013)

After a quick email to Mr. Lawrence, it seems that they didn't own the equipment they were hosting on.

I asked him if there was equipment spare that could be liquidated to pay for refunds but he sent back a simple reply of "No significant assets.".

If they had 20+ some odd hardware nodes, even moving them for $500/ea would have likely paid off the majority of refunds.

When was the move into CC? Only within the last few months or were they always there? Maybe they were purely RTO's?

Francisco


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## MartinD (Nov 13, 2013)

That's utter crap.

You can force the company into liquidation if enough people contact the relevant authorities. You can't just shut/close a Ltd company (cease trading) when there are debts and expect to get away with it. As directors, they have certain legal responsibilities.

To me it sounds as though there's a bigger issue and this 'accountant' is trying their best to protect the directors. I wonder then if they were guarantors for some finance deals or if there's a large, outstanding directors loan.

That being said, there are still ways to ensure you get money back though I would imagine it'll only be worth the time and effort for those who have a lot of money to recover.

Edit: Might be an idea for the affected clients to get together and get the servers brought back online for a short period to get their data back or even, as a collective, keep them online.


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## astutiumRob (Nov 13, 2013)

MartinD said:


> You can't just shut/close a Ltd company (cease trading) when there are debts and expect to get away with it.


If they'd reached the point of trading insolvently, then the directors are obliged to cease operations immediately.
From a read of the accountants response it sounds like a typical insolvency practitioners reply, and it's 'game over' for the clients.

Clientbase however is an asset, so unless it was very small, it's suprising there wasnt an attempt to sell that off and provide a transition period.

I've looked at 2 'going out of business' hosts this week witha view to taking on the clients so they continue to get service(s) so it looks like we're going to see the usual number of Quarter-4 failures 



MartinD said:


> That being said, there are still ways to ensure you get money back though I would imagine it'll only be worth the time and effort for those who have a lot of money to recover.


With no assets, unless you can prove they deliberately traded fraudulently (notoriously hard to do), it's impossible to get anything as a creditor.


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## MannDude (Nov 13, 2013)

MartinD said:


> Edit: Might be an idea for the affected clients to get together and get the servers brought back online for a short period to get their data back or even, as a collective, keep them online.


Or it could be a god idea for the datacenter in which owns the servers to do them a solid by simply turning them back on for 24 hours, allowing the clients in question an opportunity to get their data.


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## Aldryic C'boas (Nov 13, 2013)

astutiumRob said:


> Clientbase however is an asset, so unless it was very small, it's suprising there wasnt an attempt to sell that off and provide a transition period.


Historically, these CC deadpoolers would quickly get absorbed into CVPS.  But it looks like Fabozzi hasn't made a move to "buy" (haha, right) the leased gear..  Nor has a "new brand" suddenly sprung up to take over.  I'm finding that far more interesting right now than the initial situation.


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## MartinD (Nov 13, 2013)

astutiumRob said:


> If they'd reached the point of trading insolvently, then the directors are obliged to cease operations immediately.
> 
> 
> From a read of the accountants response it sounds like a typical insolvency practitioners reply, and it's 'game over' for the clients.
> ...


Indeed - it reminds me of a certain spongebob plan... and I'm sure you know what I'm talking about as we both frequent that particular resource.

However, as I had said previously elsewhere, the clientbase was an asset and could have been sold. This would then provide solvency for any liquidators and would result in clients either able to get a refund or continue service with a new provider/owner. As the clientbase hasn't been sold off to provide said solvency or liquidity, I can only presume (as I mentioned before) that there is something else at play here such as a directors loan issue or that they were indeed trading fraudulently. Either way, they both have a lot to answer for.


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## Francisco (Nov 13, 2013)

MannDude said:


> Or it could be a god idea for the datacenter in which owns the servers to do them a solid by simply turning them back on for 24 hours, allowing the clients in question an opportunity to get their data.


It's always possible. Leaseweb did this twice but then again, leaseweb is on a completely different scale than CC or 99% of the providers in this market. LW turning those people up likely cost them only a little bit on power, where as Jon has to deal with the possibility that it'll spike his 95% enough that he'll have to pay money for that good deed.

Someone's lying in the end. Shardhost and co' claim their DC's bit down on them, where as CC claimed in one post that they were completely side swiped over it all.

It's always possible they owed CC a lot of money and were racking up more every day as servers came up for renewal. It's really seeming like they didn't own much of their servers, if any. It's always possible it was RTO's but I've yet to confirm how long they were with Jon.

If they were only with them in the last 3 - 6 months as some people were claiming, then they've been fibbing this whole time or ditched all their owned gear for some reason. They've claimed to own their equipment for a long long time.

It just sucks for the end user and even CVPS_Chris couldn't work out a deal to bring them back online.

Francisco


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## drmike (Nov 13, 2013)

Impressed with the last few UK resident comments...

Seems like a formal legal inquiry should be pursued over the screams of their accounts.

I cry foul and crime.

http://lowendbox.com/blog/shardhost-13year-20-256mb-ssd-kvm-vps-in-dallas-texas-or-buffalo-ny/

*September 25, 2013 @ 5:19 pm, by Liam*



> ShardHost have been featured on LowEndBox twice before. Marc tells us that on their last offer, they were inundated with signups, picking up nearly “1000 happy clients” as a result of being featured on here. They’re using Supermicro Servers with the Intel E3 1240v3 and 6 x Intel 520 SSDs with the Raid 10 LSI 9271 8i with Cachevault. The infamous DD test is apparently pushing 1.4-1.5 GB/s! *These servers are owned by shard host and colocated with Colocrossing.* ShardHost is a registered UK company (reg 07679837), who have been in business since June 2011. Reviews on their previous posts have been pretty decent.


Note the bolding.  

Who was lying on this ad less than 2 months ago?

That Intel E3 + the 520 SSD's is fingerprint of CC's equipment / deals.   My money is on some RTO deal / lease.  Now how you implode this quick again...

Note the other LEB offers this year... All on CC's network:

ShardHost – $30/Year 1024MB KVM in Dallas, Texas

July 13, 2013 @ 10:22 pm, by Liam

http://lowendbox.com/blog/shardhost-30year-1024mb-kvm-in-dallas-texas/

ShardHost – $7/Month 1024MB KVM & 2048MB OpenVZ in Dallas, Texas

March 24, 2013 @ 1:16 pm, by Liam

http://lowendbox.com/blog/shardhost-7month-1024mb-kvm-2048mb-openvz-in-dallas-texas/


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## mikho (Nov 13, 2013)

Chris posted on. LET that he were trying to contact Sarah for a buyout or atleast try to get something from the leftovers.


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## MartinD (Nov 13, 2013)

mikho said:


> Chris posted on. LET that he were trying to contact Sarah for a buyout or atleast try to get something from the leftovers.


Legally, ShardHost/Bakerwhateverthefuck can't do that unfortunately.


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## Francisco (Nov 13, 2013)

OK so after some hunting it adds up.

- Shardhost started offers in March, initially out of coreexchange

- By June they were moved into ColoCrossing Dallas supposedly using the same equipment

- Total of 3 offers were put on WHT, each around the time that an LE offer went up

It's unknown if they ever owned their equipment but they did provide a coreexchange IP for testing so they were there. Their later builds were the usual Intel 520's that are common for CC SSD offerings.

No real word on what servers they had but it's likely they were RTO'ing with CC since their rates

are pretty unbeatable.

Francisco


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## drmike (Nov 13, 2013)

http://www.shardgaming.com/ seems to be included in this #fail


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## drmike (Nov 13, 2013)

" By June they were moved into ColoCrossing Dallas supposedly using the same equipment"

Seemingly the same equipment.

I didn't see SSDs in their offers prior to CC.  And we know how CC loves those old 520's.

Wonder where the "owned" servers went?


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## astutiumRob (Nov 13, 2013)

Francisco said:


> It just sucks for the end user


Sadly too true.
From calls I've taken today, they had at least 6 minecraft clients, all of whom have lost access to their service, and only 1 of those had any backups at all of their data

Irrespective of provider, you can _never_ have too many backups !


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## Francisco (Nov 13, 2013)

drmike said:


> " By June they were moved into ColoCrossing Dallas supposedly using the same equipment"
> 
> Seemingly the same equipment.
> 
> ...


The 520's are still good drives. I was planning to use them for our SSD upgrades if they still made the bigger models.

I just don't know of many other DC's offering the 520's besides CC. Everyone else seems to be enjoying samsungs and things like that.

Francisco


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## drmike (Nov 13, 2013)

I think we found those servers creditors may want  

http://vpsboard.com/topic/2608-123systems-announcement-server-upgrade/


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## Nick_A (Nov 14, 2013)

If the problem was really they ran out of money (someone correct me if I'm reading that wrong), then this should be a wake up call to all low end providers.


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## Francisco (Nov 14, 2013)

Nick_A said:


> If the problem was really they ran out of money (someone correct me if I'm reading that wrong), then this should be a wake up call to all low end providers.


I gotta admit, its been a tough year.


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## RiotSecurity (Nov 14, 2013)

Francisco said:


> I gotta admit, its been a tough year.


For sure, must of been a really tough time eh?


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## mightyschwartz (Nov 14, 2013)

Nick_A said:


> If the problem was really they ran out of money (someone correct me if I'm reading that wrong), then this should be a wake up call to all low end providers.


You still know if you will be out of money more than an hour before... the fact that people are still having to speculate why these a-holes skipped town an hour before getting everything ruined is inexcusable and so fkn wrong.


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## Francisco (Nov 14, 2013)

Nick_A said:


> If the problem was really they ran out of money (someone correct me if I'm reading that wrong), then this should be a wake up call to all low end providers.


I'll add a proper reply instead of being stupidly cocky 

The very statement you've said gets said every time someone implodes and disappears. It was said about hostrail, rackvm, uptimevps, clubuptime, etc. Any time you see people pushing out unrealistic offers, especially on rented equipment? It's a ticket to the grave.

Some providers try to offset this by selling more and more... and more resources for more or less the same price just to keep people signing up. It turns into a vicious cycle.

Personally I feel that most of the providers out there are a disaster or two away from slamming into the fan. Bandwidth overages, a sale that didn't take off as expected, the guy 2U's down from you charging 1/10th what you do for the same thing, etc.

Francisco


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## Francisco (Nov 14, 2013)

mightyschwartz said:


> You still know if you will be out of money more than an hour before... the fact that people are still having to speculate why these a-holes skipped town an hour before getting everything ruined is inexcusable and so fkn wrong.


No one knows who's telling the truth. No one knows if their DC's pulled the plug or if they did.

Francisco


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## mightyschwartz (Nov 14, 2013)

Francisco said:


> No one knows who's telling the truth. No one knows if their DC's pulled the plug or if they did.
> 
> 
> Francisco


I concur with that. My point is that the DCs didn't just pull it without telling them what was going to happen. The idea that they only had the notice of 1 hour is not realistic. They had SOME IDEA of what was going on and could have told their customers.


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## Francisco (Nov 14, 2013)

mightyschwartz said:


> I concur with that. My point is that the DCs didn't just pull it without telling them what was going to happen. The idea that they only had the notice of 1 hour is not realistic. They had SOME IDEA of what was going on and could have told their customers.


It's unlikely that CC was at 'suspend' territory with their account and they shut down on their own.

I still don't know why they didn't try to sell but who knows.

Francisco


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## drmike (Nov 14, 2013)

Surely, they appeared to be fashionably tardy on their payments to their DC.  Think 3+ months.  Which is funny, because they weren't with that company more than maybe 6 months.  I think Biloh commented to this effect on LET.

I *never* will understand why one little datacenter/colo/dedicated server operation is just happy letting low end companies get into big and multi month arrears.   I swear it's the bait to accumulate customers and be first in line creditor.

I've never had an invoice go past maybe 3 weeks overdue.  Always some shutdown/off ultimatum by that point.  Heck was even like that when I was writing a $40k~ a month check to a datacenter.


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## mightyschwartz (Nov 14, 2013)

drmike said:


> Surely, they appeared to be fashionably tardy on their payments to their DC.  Think 3+ months.  Which is funny, because they weren't with that company more than maybe 6 months.  I think Biloh commented to this effect on LET.
> 
> I *never* will understand why one little datacenter/colo/dedicated server operation is just happy letting low end companies get into big and multi month arrears.   I swear it's the bait to accumulate customers and be first in line creditor.
> 
> I've never had an invoice go past maybe 3 weeks overdue.  Always some shutdown/off ultimatum by that point.  Heck was even like that when I was writing a $40k~ a month check to a datacenter.


Exactly... but they never said, "We're cutting you off in ONE HOUR!" You knew that threat was looming long before that point and you knew whether or not you had the money to pay it. If not, you probably would've done the decent thing and told your customers before telling your DC that you were going tits up and to just flip the switch.

The DC is totally within their right to disconnect their shit... it's on them to be forthcoming and not hide behind some shit form letter telling people it's their fault that they didn't see this coming and have that day's backup downloaded already and then tell them a refund is not likely. Why not e-mail all the people you fucked over and personally apologize instead of being a douche?


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## javaj (Nov 14, 2013)

Francisco said:


> The very statement you've said gets said every time someone implodes and disappears. It was said about hostrail, rackvm, uptimevps, clubuptime, etc. Any time you see people pushing out unrealistic offers, especially on rented equipment? It's a ticket to the grave.
> 
> 
> Some providers try to offset this by selling more and more... and more resources for more or less the same price just to keep people signing up. It turns into a vicious cycle.



Basically its a kind of a ponzi scheme, but instead of securities there doing it with hosting, if you sign up for a plan when the host starts up you can probably have a really good run, but if your one of the poor suckers who signed up a couple weeks to even hours before the eminent collapse your screwed,

I don't know that most budget hosts who end up in this position have those intentions, I'm sure most of them don't because there really cant be any profit just trying to keep the lights on. But in essence its basically no different than a ponzi scheme, except in a Securities Ponzi scheme, the scam artist actually walks away with a good amount of money. I Cant see that happening with hosts who just keep digging a bigger hole.


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## mightyschwartz (Nov 14, 2013)

javaj said:


> Basically its a kind of a ponzi scheme, but instead of securities there doing it with hosting, if you sign up for a plan when the host starts up you can probably have a really good run, but if your one of the poor suckers who signed up a couple weeks to even hours before the eminent collapse your screwed,
> 
> I don't know that most budget hosts who end up in this position have those intentions, I'm sure most of them don't because there really cant be any profit just trying to keep the lights on. But in essence its basically no different than a ponzi scheme, except in a Securities Ponzi scheme, the scam artist actually walks away with a good amount of money. I Cant see that happening with hosts who just keep digging a bigger hole.


Indeed. I had been with them for several months and actually inquired about paying for a year up front just to secure my hosting with a little bit of a discount... stupid me.


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## concerto49 (Nov 14, 2013)

javaj said:


> Basically its a kind of a ponzi scheme, but instead of securities there doing it with hosting, if you sign up for a plan when the host starts up you can probably have a really good run, but if your one of the poor suckers who signed up a couple weeks to even hours before the eminent collapse your screwed,
> 
> 
> I don't know that most budget hosts who end up in this position have those intentions, I'm sure most of them don't because there really cant be any profit just trying to keep the lights on. But in essence its basically no different than a ponzi scheme, except in a Securities Ponzi scheme, the scam artist actually walks away with a good amount of money. I Cant see that happening with hosts who just keep digging a bigger hole.


Most calculate the margins too thin. They get a server and thibk that's the only cost, no buffers. What if you use over you bandwidth? What if you have no customers? What if many things aren't factored in.


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## Francisco (Nov 14, 2013)

concerto49 said:


> Most calculate the margins too thin. They get a server and thibk that's the only cost, no buffers. What if you use over you bandwidth? What if you have no customers? What if many things aren't factored in.


Most assume that it's like the old days:

- Make a crappy website or use a template

- put together some silly cheap offer

- fill a node right away

LE simply doesn't carry that kind of swing anymore and hasn't since LEA was there. Argue the point all you want but there is public records showing just how many sales front page LE posts (especially those that get left at the very top for long runs) generates.

Francisco


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## Nick_A (Nov 15, 2013)

I'm not sure my post was properly understood, mostly because I don't understand where you guys who responded to it are coming from. Oh well.


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## peterw (Nov 15, 2013)

Francisco said:


> Most assume that it's like the old days:
> 
> 
> - Make a crappy website or use a template
> ...


This can only work if you do not have many competitors in the same location. What should a newcomer offer in L.A. which the allready settled providers there are not able to offer? The newcomer can only adjust the price and will fail shortly after.


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## adamlake (Dec 14, 2013)

Since Daddycheese changed it's name and website etc. to Shard Gaming, it's been weird. I didn't see the point of them changing their name, but it didn't affect much, apart from a more user-friendly website. This didn't affect much, it didn't matter to any of the customers really. I carried on playing on my server with very little lag and enough players on. Then on October 29th (I think, correct me if i'm wrong) all customers received an email saying something about a password reset. I didn't check my emails until a week after that, and in a week, I get about 50 emails. So I didn't actually see this email.

I don't know when it was, but I imagine you already know this information. At whatever time on whatever date, I tried going onto my control panel on shardgaming.com. Instead of coming up with the usual displayed webpage, it showed the message which said email "some email address". I did, and he didn't reply and he still hasn't. Surprise surprise. I just tried to go on the shard gaming website again, and the websites down, obviously. But I did find something. Since I use Chrome, it allowed me to access the most recently available cached version of the website, which was the 3rd of December. It was the same old message. So we now know that the last time their website was up was the 3rd. 

I guess they knew about this before they set the website to this, so they were meant to let their customers know to take backup EARLIER. They left it very late before telling us. When I saw the message, I opened up the FileZilla client (FTP) and tried logging in. I know all the correct details, but there was two possibilities at this point - 

I couldn't log in because of the password reset thing that I didn't do

Or it was just too late to take any backup; they didn't warn us quick enough. 

I have read through all 5 pages of this thread, and most people seem to think that it wasn't Shard Gaming, but it was their providers (Since I am sure that Shard Gaming were renting). That's all I know so far, and I assume that some information will be leaked soon.


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