It's a pretty sad state of affairs when you're business is failing and the strategy for getting back in the black is suing the customers who are leaving you rather than retaining those customers while trying to obtain new ones.

GFY still hosts at Jupiter/Navisite.

Out of respect to those who have been burned by this new company I would like to be the first to demand that GFY leave Jupiter and tells them to Go Fuck Themselves.

I realize it is an unfair request. But from all the stories I have been hearing I think it would make a strong statement.

Break the contract.

Join the family.

Yes many companys use contracts,but as i previously said,i would never go with company no matter what service it provide and how good they are it if they require contract.Contracts are simply bad things generaly beacuse there is good chance you will have xyz line which will allow to fuck you in ass as in your case and which you wont notice it.Happened to me once,since then i am very careful what i sign.

I dont think they have forgotten about you.

This is some serious business. I hope it doesn't cross my path in the future.

EXACTLY! I didnt leave Jupiter/Navisite just for the hell of it, or for fun, I left them because their services sucked, support tickets went untouched and then closed without any reply, my promised DDoS protection was never delivered to me like they claimed etc etc, I wish we could've had a long happy relationship, but plain and simple, if you want to have a successful business without hassle and without lies and deception, do NOT go with their hosting :disgust

Is it even legal for contracts to auto-renew indefinitely?

You would think that after an intial term the billing would change to month-to-month, the same way as a cell phone contract.

Reading your story about copying domains one by one via FTP made me fucking glad I ran away to NatNet... I noticed some time ago that it's not the Jupiter Hosting it used to be before acquisition. :disgust

Your cell phone contract is month to month? What carrier does that?

Well, it's a good thing that Lensman is not here anymore. If he were, all you guys talking shit about Jupiter would be banned....that's just the kind of guy he was :thumbsup

I think SweetT offered some great advice.

Sorry to hear about your situation BP. :(

He said after the initial contract expires (two years usually) it goes month-to-month.

As far as I know, all the major carriers do that.

Boneprone,

You were with Jupiter longer than October 2004. I remember it was well before that.
And I know you had a bunch of servers with them. What became of all those? You keep mentioning 1 server. Sounds like this was the smallest one.

And they are coming after you for that? What about the others?

Woe to thee whom blasphemy the gods!!

http://media.economist.com/images/20080405/1408BK1.jpg

As far as I know, yes, as long as that is what is stated in the contract and is signed and there is a termination clause of course. But I am no lawyer :)

Okay, missed that, however, that contract said it auto renewed as I recall.

it'll be really funny if jupiter/navisite gives GFY a bill for breaking their contract

Oh the Irony when Mutt posted the other day why dosent Boneprone have his own board.

Yeah it did have that in there....although I think there would be a limit to how many times that could happen and still be enforceable, depending on what State we're talking about.

I'm no expert, but like I was saying before, just because it's in a signed contract doesn't mean it's enforceable. Consumers have rights that they aren't allowed to sign away even if they want to.


Oh, and 300 shakedowns, and 300 years of auto-renewing contracts, and 300 soon to be bankrupt hosting companies.

Congrats to all the winners!

bump - Jupiter= Stupider Hosting with NaviShit...

Terrible hosting service stay away!!!

:mad:

Tony,

Very sage advice, but let me add some stuff from someone has been in hosting for a long time as well. Back in the day when hosting was really growing we (BBN/Genuity) changed out terms often for numerous reasons. . First off , when the contract reads 12 months , with only a month to month auto renewal the company is only allowed to project revenue for 13 Months, when the contract is 1 year auto renew you can actually project that as much as 2 yrs revenue to the street. (Back when such things mattered) I know that we , because of our competitive environment , did not do an auto renew mainly because our goal was to reach out to our customers one quarter prior to try to get them to commit to a higher level or more services. The risk with any contract especially during the Internet explosion was that the companies we were dealing with were all about getting sites up fast and then once they were up if they did not gte results they would try to cancel only a few months in , this is after we negotiated lease terms on equipment , which was not cheap at the time, and already committed man hours to expedite delivery of the site for them. In these cases we would commonly pursue relief for the entire terms of the contract , if only to recover our HW investment.
Now since you have no leverage here , since you fully intend not to move forward with this provider, collecting as much as possible is their only recourse. Once they add as much "fees" as they can, the next step is to tack on Legal fees once it gets coded as a 7 or 14 (collection codes) for Legal action , In this case the attorney now gets 1/3 of whatever is recovered and the company has written off the debt. In these cases the Attorney will usually approach with a settlement .50 on the dollar or something. If you can cut a good deal you may want to consider it, because in court it really looks like they got you, and the terms will absolutely hold up in court even if it was a week, or a day, does not matter, a deadline is a deadline.

I couldn't advise Tony's recommendations more ,just thought you'd want another view.

Jupiter went to shits after they sold to NaviSite

Navisite sucks bad service and bad support ect ect. :321GFY

Never EVER! even if i have to drop a line and a server
in my bedroom to host...i will NOT host at NAVISITE AGAIN

I see two sides here. First, to get in the right frame of mind consider
a punter who signs up for a monthly recurring membership at your site.
Let's say you have really unique content and charge $60 / month.
The punter joins on Oct 1st, then on January 5th he says he wants
to cancel and he does not want to be charged for the rest of January.
He didn't cancel before the January bill was due, so he has to pay
for January, right? (You might be nice and refund him, but you don't
have to.)

Under the contract you posted and said you signed, you signed up for
an annually recurring deal, just like the punter you signs up for a monthly
recurring deal. You contract runs for a year from oct. 22nd each year.
According to what you just said your contract runs for a year from Oct. 22nd
each year and you owe them. You signed a contract the recurred yearly.
You didn't cancel before it renewed, so you had another one year contract.
That's the contract you signed. This is why we don't sign year long
contracts.

That said, the question is DAMAGES - by breaking your year long
contract, how much did you cause them to lose? Most places have
specific laws about leasing real estate such as homes and apartments
for a year. They say that although you have a one year lease, if you
break that contract the law limits the damages. Typically if you
break your lease you owe 1 1/2 month's rent, or until the apartment
is rented to a new tenant. Rental contracts often call for more, saying
you owe for the whole year, but the law says otherwise. Why? Because
the landlord can rent that apartment (or server) to someone else, thereby
recouping some of the money they lost when you broke the contract.
In fact, they have a legal duty to try to rent it out or otherwise limit their
damages. Were you to go to court, you could bring up the question of
damages, asking how much Jupiter actually lost when you left, assuming
they rented that server out to someone else as soon as practicable.
You could say that we need to look to the statutes for a guideline as
to reasonable damages, then ask the judge to take judicial notice of
the laws limiting damages regarding broken leases. Reasonably, you
could be expected to compensate Jupiter in an amount equal to 1-2
months of fees since you broke the contract.

Legalisticly, another question is the transferability of the contract.
Is Jupiter a corporation and did you have a contract with that corporation?
If so, the fact that the corporation has new stockholders doesn't effect
your contract. On the other hand, if their was no corporation, your contract
may have actually been with Lensman and the others. The deal was that
those guys would provide hosting with their own level of professionalism
and you may not have to accept the substitution of hosting by some other
people who provide the service with a different level of professionalism.
You don't have a contract with the new owners and they old contract
may not be transferable - unless the contract says it's with Jupiter Inc.

Even if it is a deal with Jupiter Inc., you have another way to go. If I sign a
record contract with Madonna's Management, Inc., to have Madonna do
an album, they can't have Miley Cyrus do the album instead. I signed up
for a album by Madonna, and one by Cyrus isn't the same. If you had regular
contact with Jupiter staff ad had them do work beyond just housing the server,
ad if the new owners got rid of all the old staff, they may have been the ones
to break the contract. Your deal was to have hosting like the old Jupiter
provided, with Bobby the Super Tech managing your server or whatever.
When they got rid of the good staff and had Cluless Curtis trying to admin
your server, they were the ones who didn't hold up their end of the deal.

The main point, though, is that you signed a contract which renewed yearly
and you didn't cancel it before it renewed, so now you owe them some
reasonable amount of money unless they somehow violated the deal first.
That's why you don't sign year long contracts for things that can be done
monthly. The only reason I can see that a host would insist on a year long
contract is because they already know you'll probably want to leave after a
couple months. (Unless of course you're leasing specialized hardware that
they have to buy specially for you, in which case a year is reasonable but
it shouldn't renew). That, I think, is the root cause of the problem - you
screwed up by signing a yearly renewing contract and they aren't being
nice about letting you out of the deal. They may be being unreasonable if
$5,000 is more than two month's hosting costs, but you gt yourself into it
by signing the yearly contract, then more so by not paying attention to
when you could cancel.

I put the last site we did, for a local non-profit, on Phatservers because they have
no set up fee and no contract. The other hosts who offered low monthly price packages
had a set up which made them more expensive that Phat and had a contract so if we
weren't happy we were screwed. Plus Phatservers has always given us wonderful customer
service. Working with dozens of Phatservers clients, some haven't been as happy
with the set up time, which is weird because after you're set up their tech support
is super quick.

Brian....

While most of your points are valid I think they are not on target in this case. First, projecting revenues "to the street" is not grounds for damages so no court is going to honor that as a legitimate proof of damages.

In the first term of a contract the company has many expenses that it plans to recoup during the course of the contract and hope to make a little money too. Like you said above, if the customer just ups and cancels for no reason then it stands to cause "damage" to the company for all of the money that was invested in the contract and the company has a right to sue for "damages". The official term is "liquidated damages". The contract term that we are discussing in this thread was fulfilled not once, not twice, but three times through the auto-renewal phase and, according to the customer, no more money was invested in hardware on this account prior to the original contract execution. Any judge with half common sense is going to look at this and call the damages that the company is suing for "punitive" and not "liquidated". Punitive damages in most states are not allowed in contract disputes...I know Georgia is one....not sure about California.

Again, let me reiterate....it is fun pretending to be a lawyer but Boneprone (the OP) should absolutely not take my advice and should speak directly to an attorney to decide what is best for his specific case.


--T

Thank you.

Yep. I think this is something everyone can agree on here.

However I have been tempted to call the Attorney that is after me and say hey lets make this disappear. What will you settle on. And then be done. Would save me some personal attorney fees if thats pretty much all he will be doing for me anyhow.

If this guy is willing to settle on 50% he may be just as willing to do that with me as he would my attorney correct?

Its time for damage control here for me and to minimize the $$ loss. For it looks like it will be a loss either way.

UPDATE:

It looks like they are willing to do a 50% settlement.
This is coming from Navisite directly. Not attorneys.

Should I just settle? Or does anyone think that hiring an attorney to battle/settle it with their local attorney that is here threating me is the way to go.

I always like a good fight and I really dont like to be pushed around. If this were me 3 years ago Id tell up to stick it up their ass and fight em.

If I go hire an attorney to fight this, you think Ill be getting anything better than 50% - Attorney fees?

Id be intrested to know.

DEAL OR NO DEAL?

whats the 50% equal to?

Id tell em 25%

tell them you are black and to stop being racist agianst yoou and call the ACLU and call Al Shaprton also to show up and rally at there offices

Deal or No Deal.
They are willing to do 50%.

I want to hear some serious responses.

I have a meeting with an attorney tomorrow. I could avoid a lot of $$ talking with him and fighting this right here.

I can accept this shakedown. It sounds like a lot of the pros here are saying they have a case with this shitty contract. 50% may be a good DEAL.

DEAL OR NO DEAL?

Eep.. No but I am getting ripped on my hosting. I'm gonna cancel it now. Too bad I'll be losing my data.

screw them man...contract for hosting? please...its a service

if you dont like the service you should 100% be in the right to go elsewhere.

hell after 6 months the servers are paid for...maybe after 3...they sure dont replace them every 3 months.

oc3 and oxeo all the way

Agreed. In Most cases, as you said, the lawyer letter puts a stop to most of the nonesense.

From James Spiller at Navisite:

"I have talked to Navisite Controller, and he has approved a 50% settlement. That would be a payment of $4,413.65"

I'm didn't read through all 8 pages to see if anyone offered, but if you still need KC's digits hit me up on ICQ

I have them...

Do I fight or do I settle?

I just got an offer here people.

Since this is Money that they have already written off, there is no risk for them, anything they get from you is Gravy. Remember also that winning their case is half the battle, then they have to collect and garnish funds if necessary , which is no easy task. Your atty will usually ask for a retainer to fight this while their atty is working off a percentage of collected funds. I would definitely have a first meeting with him and get an estimate on his projected costs to fight this, and then just do the math. Also Counter Navasite at 25% and see what they say, if you can come to a reasonable settlement it may be worth avoiding the time and money suck of fighting it.

Make sure you get a letter from their accounting showing the settlement in full upon receipt of your funds.

Seems they easily changed there minds from the full amount and sinking lawyer on ya down to "Ok just give us 50%"

Id still get a lawyer and go after them if ya decide to settle obviously get shit in writing and so on

I think with a good lawyer you can pretty much tell em "Go fuck a goat "

:pimp