Nick_A
Provider of the year (2014)
Let me first explain why I am making a post like this. I'm not here to bash. I am here to simply state the truth. I am going to stay as matter of fact as possible so that no one has any grounds to accuse me of libel or embellishing.
As many of you know, we recently added NTT to our Seattle bandwidth blend. We now have a direct account with NTT, but it started off through a reseller - Timothy Lee from Zeneva. Tim also appears to operate brands known as Bandwidth LLC and CoreXLayer. Our contract was specifically with Bandwidth LLC.
I got a great deal on the port from Tim. NTT does not allow resellers, but Tim assured me they would allow it this one time. I was later told by multiple NTT sources that reselling is strictly prohibited (no exceptions). They apparently thought RamNode was part of Zeneva, which caused delays in getting my own port after my contract with Tim was terminated.
For a while, though, the port was running very well. Tim was constantly asking me how the port was working for me. I had no reason to suspect that things were not right behind the scenes. Then, at 11:13 AM EST on January 21, 2014, my NTT line went down. Checking my router, it became clear the issue was on their end. I contacted Tim to see what was going on.
The following are the chat logs between me and him regarding the downed line. Notice the time stamps and dates. I am inserting [...] where extended time passed or where an irrelevant comment was made. I removed unrelated parts from some of this (for instance, where he tells me about how he has to sell his dedicated server business). I have screenshots of all of this for further proof. You may want to read the chat again after reading the rest of this post. There is a lot of irony to be seen in hindsight.
So, I decided it was time to investigate beyond this line of communication. You would think if NTT were having 48 hour outages in Seattle, they would be willing to respond to a general inquiry about it, right?
Also, I should note that the bad reviews of Zeneva and Timothy Lee started popping up right around the time I signed the contract for NTT through him. I didn't see them until the deal was done. I had been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt up until this point.
My email conversation with [email protected] (my text is italic, comments with ########):
So, judging by the NTT emails, there was never a line card failure or any hardware issue in the Seattle POP. My line was down for apparently significant billing reasons. But I had paid Tim on time. Logical conclusion: Tim lied, and expansively at that. How many times did he say there was an engineer on the case? Someone onsite? Hardware being overnighted? etc, etc. You can see it all for yourselves above and judge accordingly.
Anyway, I had had enough. Time to deal with Tim directly now that his lies were exposed:
Anyway, at this point I forwarded the matter to my lawyer. Tim tried to tell us that he did indeed pay NTT on time, but you can see NTT's side of the story above. Whether he paid them for something or not, my port was down due to billing issues on his end, and there was clearly no hardware issue causing days of downtime. A mutual termination of contract was recognized between RamNode and "Bandwidth LLC" after some back and forth. As I said above, I now have a direct account with NTT and the Seattle port is up and running. (We're also adding them to Atlanta shortly but that's unrelated
).
Again, my point here is to simply state the truth about what happened to our NTT port and about the conduct of Timothy Lee (Zeneva LLC, Bandwidth LLC, CoreXLayer). Make of it what you will.
As many of you know, we recently added NTT to our Seattle bandwidth blend. We now have a direct account with NTT, but it started off through a reseller - Timothy Lee from Zeneva. Tim also appears to operate brands known as Bandwidth LLC and CoreXLayer. Our contract was specifically with Bandwidth LLC.
I got a great deal on the port from Tim. NTT does not allow resellers, but Tim assured me they would allow it this one time. I was later told by multiple NTT sources that reselling is strictly prohibited (no exceptions). They apparently thought RamNode was part of Zeneva, which caused delays in getting my own port after my contract with Tim was terminated.
For a while, though, the port was running very well. Tim was constantly asking me how the port was working for me. I had no reason to suspect that things were not right behind the scenes. Then, at 11:13 AM EST on January 21, 2014, my NTT line went down. Checking my router, it became clear the issue was on their end. I contacted Tim to see what was going on.
The following are the chat logs between me and him regarding the downed line. Notice the time stamps and dates. I am inserting [...] where extended time passed or where an irrelevant comment was made. I removed unrelated parts from some of this (for instance, where he tells me about how he has to sell his dedicated server business). I have screenshots of all of this for further proof. You may want to read the chat again after reading the rest of this post. There is a lot of irony to be seen in hindsight.
At this point, there was no other conclusion to make: Tim had to be lying. I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it just didn't add up. NTT is the #2 ranked carrier in the world. There was no way it would have taken them over 48 hours to fix my port. The line card was supposed to be there earlier that morning according to Tim, but there we were at midnight still scratching our heads. All the while, I'm feeding my clients misinformation on Twitter, telling them there's a hardware issue and that things will be up shortly.
So, I decided it was time to investigate beyond this line of communication. You would think if NTT were having 48 hour outages in Seattle, they would be willing to respond to a general inquiry about it, right?
Also, I should note that the bad reviews of Zeneva and Timothy Lee started popping up right around the time I signed the contract for NTT through him. I didn't see them until the deal was done. I had been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt up until this point.
My email conversation with [email protected] (my text is italic, comments with ########):
According to https://connect.data.com/directory/company/list/k5j1vrT1H-pvqfh1YQFG4g/ntt-america?page=3, Crystal Toland is the Credit and Collections Analyst at NTT.
So, judging by the NTT emails, there was never a line card failure or any hardware issue in the Seattle POP. My line was down for apparently significant billing reasons. But I had paid Tim on time. Logical conclusion: Tim lied, and expansively at that. How many times did he say there was an engineer on the case? Someone onsite? Hardware being overnighted? etc, etc. You can see it all for yourselves above and judge accordingly.
Anyway, I had had enough. Time to deal with Tim directly now that his lies were exposed:
(It was of course not restored by that deadline...)
(I never received those promised communications from NTT through Tim. Clearly he wasn't talking to them about a line card failure, though...)
I think around now he realizes I know more than he has told me:
Not sure what a "mis-sight" is, but it sounds like a partial admission to wrongdoing.
Anyway, at this point I forwarded the matter to my lawyer. Tim tried to tell us that he did indeed pay NTT on time, but you can see NTT's side of the story above. Whether he paid them for something or not, my port was down due to billing issues on his end, and there was clearly no hardware issue causing days of downtime. A mutual termination of contract was recognized between RamNode and "Bandwidth LLC" after some back and forth. As I said above, I now have a direct account with NTT and the Seattle port is up and running. (We're also adding them to Atlanta shortly but that's unrelated
).Again, my point here is to simply state the truth about what happened to our NTT port and about the conduct of Timothy Lee (Zeneva LLC, Bandwidth LLC, CoreXLayer). Make of it what you will.
