Shardhost Info - Urgent Client Action

[ToXIQuE]

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

 

[peterw]

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.

 

[Francisco]

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

Thank you for your recent email. We were asked to undertake a review of the financial affairs if the company and following the review it was evident that the company did not have sufficient cash resources to continue trading. Our advice therefore was for the company to cease trading as soon as possible.

Application for Refunds

Any person allegedly due a refund for prepaid services is effectively an unsecured creditor of the company. There are insufficient funds to meet the liabilities due to unsecured creditors and therefore no refunds will be possible.

There being no assets or funds available it is unlikely that the company will enter into a formal insolvency procedure.

Further action for recovery of alleged refunds will therefore prove futile.

Server Requirements and Back Up.

The director has asked us to issue the following statement:-

“Under the terms of service you are responsible for your own data and backups. It was hoped that you would have had longer to take any additional backups you may require; however, upstream providers made a decision to withdraw their services as soon as the announcement was made that the company had ceased trading. European services should be reachable for backup collection; you should take a copy of the data immediately as the length of time that these will be available is uncertain”.

We cannot offer any further information at this present time.

Yours faithfully

Baverstocks

 

[Francisco]

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

 

[MartinD]

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.

 

[astutiumRob]

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

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.

 

[MannDude]

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.

 

[Aldryic C'boas]

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.

 

[MartinD]

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


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

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.

 

[Francisco]

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

 

[drmike]

 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/

 

[mikho]

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

 

[MartinD]

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.

 

[Francisco]

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

 

[drmike]

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

 

[drmike]

" 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?

 

[astutiumRob]

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 !

 

[Francisco]

" 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?

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

 

[drmike]

I think we found those servers creditors may want  

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

 

[Nick_A]

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.