I’ve been scouring the net to get answers on who 110mb actually is and what is behind the awful service and found some interesting tidbits.
First this http://110mb.grd.net.pl/server-monitor/ is a server monitor report for 110mb.At the time this review was written there were huge amounts of red and orange on almost all the boxes and some were completely red and orange.Eight of their twelve server boxes were over 60% or completely red or orange.This means that more than half of their service is faulty or non-responsive.This seems extremely excessive for a company that’s main job is to maintain servers.It really makes you wonder what exactly they’re doing to have so much trouble.I suspect that they just don’t have the technical savvy and probably can’t pay for datacenter service or have low funds or poor hardware.
Typically a datacenter will do their end of things as long as you pay them and respect them so 110mb must not be doing one of those.
This link http://who.is/website-information/110mb.com is a link to the last registered website information for 110mb.Most of this will look like gibberish to you but what stood out to me was the registrar info.Speedsuccess is listed as the owner.It’s registered with a company called RocketForce Media Group LLC and when I googled them I found a highly facinating review of them on the Better Business Bureau Website.You may not be surprised to know they received an F.
This is the link: http://www.bbb.org/louisville/business-reviews/web-design/rocketforce-media-group-llc-in-crayne-ky-159138524/#reasonrating
And this is the most recent complaint filed with the BBB on them on 3/26/13:
“Complaint: Rocketforce Media Group operates 110mb.com. Part of that site offers free hosting. I have a web site on that host, ***************************** . For several months now I have been trying to log in to edit my site. My password does not work, I have tried the two it could be, I use no others for such situations, and netiher let me in. I have tried the ‘lost password’ help on the 110mb site, it states they will send me an e-mail with a password, it never comes. I have done this many times, 5-10 times, over the last 7 or 8 months. I have sent messages to the help/service e-mail I found on the site, they never have gotten back to me. I have also done this many times. I have also done a whois (how I found out Rocketforce Media runs 110mb) and e-mailed the contact on the whois, rocketforcemedia@gmail.com, have not received a reply and it has been several weeks. When you go to 110mb.com they still have a free web hosting selection, but they also have pay host selections. I run this site as a service to others that hand build bicycle wheels and need to figure spoke length for an unusual build or wish to do something different, I make no profit from it. I have tried everything over the last few months I can think of in order to gain access so I can edit my site, but nothing has worked. For all practical purposes 110mb has stolen intilectual property from me.
Desired Settlement: I now wish to remove my site from the 110mb system. They need to either give me a password so I can do this, or remove the content themselves. Inform them that if they do not do this I will be starting legal actions for theft of intilectual property.
BBB’s Final Determination: Business failed to respond to the BBB to resolve or address the complaint issues”
They are not BBB accredited and haven’t responded to the BBB on any filed complaints.
This is all the information the BBB has on them:
RocketForce Media Group, LLC
Phone: (206) 350-0729
P O Box 111, Crayne, KY 42033
http://www.110mb.com
Enjoy that because I highly doubt 110mb will give you this information freely or at all.
Now this http://www.110mb.info/status/ is their Notices blog where they supposedly update members on the status of servers.It hasn’t been touched for months and they’ve certainly had quite a few downtime issues to report so I can only surmise this is out of sheer laziness and they just don’t give a crap about their service anymore.Might as well be consistent I guess….
Now I also googled SpeedSuccess because I remembered it being the name of the old owners of the company so logically I thought “Why wouldn’t rocketforce bother to change that? Maybe they’re still involved..” The answer is no.Most likely it was to be confusing or that they were too lazy to get it changed.You have to scour the whois account to find their information because otherwise you’d look and assume speedsuccess was the culprit behind this fiasco of a webhost.
Speed Success was the owner prior to 2010,a company owned by Andre Vas who as you can see here http://au.linkedin.com/pub/andre-vas/2/bb1/93 lists being the former CEO of 110mb.He sold it to RocketForce in 2010 and they seem content to leave his name on the whois.It’s nice to assume they don’t know how to change it or don’t know the whois exists.In fact based on their waning technical skill it’s actually pretty damn likely they don’t know about services like whois.There’s another reason I have this theory and here it is: http://www.110mb.com/5reasons.htm
This the original about page used on the site when Vas was in charge. You can see the difference between his extensive presentation versus the current about page.If you consider when I mentioned in my post on tips for choosing a webhost that I said a reputable business is not afraid to tell you who they are this is what I meant.Vas clearly lists contact information and presents an aggressive business plan which he met.I had no downtime prior to 2010 with my 110mb account.In fact the problems have occurred almost solely in the last year or so and very rapidly with no show of improvement.
What does this prove about our not so tech savvy new owners? The page still exists on the 110mb server.They never bothered to get rid of it and it still comes up on a Google search if you use both the terms “speed success” and “110mb”.But to be fair they’d be screwed either way because the page was also cached in google and it’s now cached as a printed pdf on my computer.This page absolutely proves what was then and what is now.It describes to a tee what happened to a once great service.You can actually match it up side by side with my tips on choosing a webhost and see they were doing everything right and Vas obviously had more of a head for business than Jonathan Burdon who now runs the site and very poorly at that.
As a side note you can find Burdon and send him a love letter via his site here: http://www.jonathanburdon.com/
Most of his profile is dribble and will make you want to puke on his neatly tailored white blouse but this snippet should give you some idea of how he sees himself:
“I am an Entrepreneur and owner of AlreadyHosting.com and part owner of the RocketForce Media Group which owns and operates one of the biggest and a very well known hosting company called 110mb.com. I love marketing and enjoy taking struggling businesses and developing them into successful and profitable properties. In addition to operating these businesses also enjoy investing in promising startup opportunities.”
My question is why I had to scour the net to find you JB? Who are you hiding from exactly.Vas posted his name and information clearly and behaved like a CEO.His contact information is right there in plain sight on the older about page.I found no trace of Burdon’s information on the current page.I learned his name from an outside source initially and googled then found his happy sappy blog that pretty much proves he’s moving on to raising another defective animal and left 110mb to die in the woods.
His most recent posts were in late 2012 and are pushing a product completely unrelated to 110mb.In fact the last mention on his blog of 110mb is dated in April of 2011 and it’s not really about the services as much as “what he does”.I’d like to know that myself to be honest because I don’t see anyone on that site doing much of anything.
But going back to the 5 reasons page initially posted by Vas because I feel like I should seperate him from the current circus completely and reassure you he has nothing to do with what Burdon has done to 110mb…
Vas does something I really like and he does a compare and contrast.He went the extra mile and told you more than you needed to know which is great to me.He wasn’t afraid to inform his customers and he didn’t sugarcoat to make a sale.It’s a concise well prepared and professionally delivered proposal that lets the service speak for itself.A lot of companies will give you all hearts and flowers and not take the time to really tell you why you should give your time and money but he does his homework and that by itself deserves kudos.
In addition he does it without moving into mudslinging or naming specific rival hosting companies.He says “I’m better.This is why..” and does it without being slanderous or sleazy.I remember this page well because it really made me not only interested but willing to trust these people with my money.
I want to take a look at some of the points he made and let you see the true percentage of decline in 110mb because it really brings the point home as to how bad the company is really doing at this point.
Vas builds his business pitch on 5 points based on typical pitfalls of free webhosts and they were all well researched and well presented.They proved very well he had business sense and experience.
Points of his argument:
“Face it, free hosting sites these days are popping left and right. And if you monitor closely enough you’ll notice that for majority of free hosts, they:
1.Sell the business within 2-4 months. (Meaning owner couldn’t care less about it other then to make it look just good enough on the outside to sell it for lots of money to the naive buyer. And this is happening as we speak.
Infact we know couple of people that are buying or creating up to 5 free hosting sites a month. They get it’s member count to +-15,000, present inaccurate monthly earnings, then sell. And do you think that kind of operation has any interest in giving you a word of support or even caring a spec of dust what happens to your site? Absolutely not!)
2.They go broke or disappear overnight within 2-4 months of opening. (Because owner started or purchased free hosting for sole reason of making tons of money with it. And quickly realizing he’s got competitors and free hosting industry is tough as nails to make money with — he simply lost motivation, enthusiasm and closed the site down. Or because lack of knowledge on how to keep it alive or fight against constant service abuse.)
And all they’re doing in return is making it harder for true established free website hosting companies to be trusted or even taken seriously.
Anyway that’s why you should read below 5 reasons why 110mb isn’t just another 1 man operation heading towards either of above 2 explained scenarios. And why this is a true employee based, own servers held, and established company owned free host.”
This part hits home with the current situation to a tee.I’ve spoken with a source recently that told me that Burdon just wanted to cash in and got in over his head.To be fair my source also accused Vas of doing number 1.I’m not able to confirm or deny this but Vas comes off as a professional person to me and did invest time into the site so I give him credit either way.He had a right to sell and if his Linkedin is correct he had a lot of business stuff going on and may have had to choose which baby to put up for adoption at that point.I can’t really say what did or didn’t happen but the proof is in the putting.It was great.It was sold.It got crappy….case closed.
Vas’ 5 Points:
Reason 1:
110MB is run by 2 companies coming from entirely different fields.
One (eLabs) is based on server administration for other companies or services, hosting, and C#/PHP/MySQL programming.
The other (Speed Success, Inc.) is based on distributing and creating thousands of products a year via mail order and internet marketing, self-help & eBay coaching and worldwide dropshipping.
2 companies joined together mean:
Huge amounts of funds to run 110MB infrastructure. (Impossible to go bankrupt)
110MB hosting has a team of Linux, Solaris and Windows administrators to keep it running during the toughest technical challenges.
My response: Some businesses get in over their head because they are under staffed or improperly staffed.Vas clearly addresses that it takes a village to raise a child and he’s not a one man band and I respect that.It’s smart business and it shows honesty and maturity Burdon could really benefit from copying.Now true it’s not impossible to go bankrupt but the gist of it is he understood money matters and reserched the funds required to make the business model work.As an IT person I also like he throws in the lingo for the servers.He had a system that displayed a carefully planned server model,versatility and most importantly the staff to pull it off.
Now it’s like this…. Burdon is the staff according to my anonymous source.It’s basically him who apparently is supposed to be the business component and some other guy named Craig who I could find nothing on but who’s supposedly the technical half of the brain.Since the proof is in the putting neither of them is holding the bigger half of the brain at this point if you get what I mean.Also truly disturbing is that there is only one person supplying the list of broken record responses they use in the support forums.When backed into a corner to supply a real answer t50 usually finds some way to beat around the bush,ignores you ,or just repeats the same old song.This is not customer support! Burdon needs to stop having someone else deliver bad news and start putting up some real answers.If you can’t man up then don’t claim to be a businessman.
Reason 2:
Your website pages will load at blistering fast speeds. And we also CHALLANGE you to put your page on a downtime tracking service. And by end of the month we guarantee you, you’ll see a uptime of over 99.8% or more.
Why do we have uptime greater then majority or paid hosts and such fast page loading speeds? Simple…
Unlike every other free host out there who offers free MySQL (and this being the servers biggest resource killer, hence greatly slowing down server for everyone), we don’t!
Here’s why…
FACT: Do NOT ever signup to a free host that offers free MySQL. Because we know from first hand experience that sites will be slow as snail with constant downtimes — especially during peak traffic hours (when most people are visiting your site).
Bottom line: Your forum, CMS, or blog script will take ages to show it’s pages and you’ll keep loosing visitors by the truckloads each day! Infact it only takes 3 months on average from the time a free host is created to experience extreme downtimes and slowness. Because by this time they’ll have so many accounts who are all demanding MySQL that it would be like attempting to run a 500 meter relay wearing a pair of 20kg shoes.
You see even top range servers are just not powerful enough to handle (on average) more then 600 MySQL accounts. But a free host giving MySQL free, the server has to serve 5,000-10,000 MySQL accounts. Additionally this quad-driples the chances of a hard-drive failure due to high I/O (writing/reading data to MySQL), hence getting all your hard work lost in a second what you took weeks to build.
Do you really want to risk this much worry & frustration over a measily investment of a meduim size burger and a coke, to get MySQL enabled on 110mb? You deserve better! And we’re here to give you the best in performance and reliability of your data — supported by ultra-fast, non-abused and never-down servers.
As you can see from reading above you’re getting a advantage with 110mb which you won’t ever find on free hosts who giving MySQL free to everyone.
My Response: You’re probably wondering why I like this reason.I like it because he’s doing smart business and thinking of overall quality.The truth is that most sites can live without mySQL and a good majority of scripts can run without it.He’s thinking of the greater good of the server and this shows he cares about the business and the impression it makes on users.He even challenges you to test his theory which is ballsy and awesome in so many ways.
Now it’s like this…. Servers aren’t just slow,they’re flat out dead and they’ve been that way for months.It doesn’t matter what services you paid for because you can’t login and you’re lucky if your site is even live.On top of that they just don’t seem to know what they’re doing and their responses never progress beyond “box xyz is down” They will gladly tell you they are working on it or that it’s on the list but they never update the progress and you never see any changes in service quality.
Reason 3:
You expect your feature enhancement, service improvement or complaint to be heard, right!
And that’s why 110mb’s top priority is to constantly listen to members demands, and make them happen within 5-7 days. (Can take up to 15 depending complexity of programming or integration.)
You and I both know there’s nothing more peeving then writing to a company and getting some total nonsense corporate response like “We can’t do X during this time because Y. We, we, we, we…“. What the hell! 🙂
My Response: It’s almost like Vas reached into the future and pulled sentences from the current staff’s mouth. If I had a dime everytime t50 told me about box 17 being down I could buy the company.I can’t honestly say I know how Vas’ support was…because I NEVER needed it! In the entire time I had my account and Vas was in charge I had no problems.All the services worked.My site was never down.I never recall even one problem or break in the quality in service.But what I really like is he steps up to the plate here.He gives time frames.He confides some problems may need time to fix or custom solutions. No customer should expect support staff to wave a wand but it’s good business practice to give a ballpark figure for things like technical support and not just leave a customer hanging.It creates a sense of trust and confidence and really seals the business/client bond.But more importantly what speaks to me is that I never had to find out because the service just worked.When I paid for upgrades I got them and I was able to contact a person with any issues resolving a monetary transaction and was greeted with a friendly professional response and a willingness to go through what i took to make things work.
Now it’s like this…. Support is horrible.If they answer you at all you get maybe 3 sentences if you’re lucky but usually one and one you’ve heard before or seen posted over and over…never changing.As mentioned before there is really one person answering it all and doing a poor and unprofessional job of it.It gets worse when you realize how poorly the pre 2010 customer base is treated.Burdon only seems interested in people playing the game by his rules and has playfully regarded vas’ customer base as “legacy” users.These “legacy” users who paid money are basically screwed because he doesn’t consider them worthy of support or premium services.The ticket system is even worse.You never get an answer and on more than one occasion they just closed the ticket in a manner that really said “I don’t feel like answering your question”.I can understand if you don’t have an answer or need time to find one but when you just basically close it right away with no consideration it’s basically a middle finger to the customer and a poor reflection on you. Now I will say they did respond to one of my support tickets but bear in mind I had to repond to it over a course of weeks reminding them it was there and when they did respond all they did was copy t50s response from the forum.They didn’t even try to develop their own response or work with me.
Reason 4:
110MB has down-to-earth and one of quickest customer support services (even beating paid hosting) via support tickets and the unusually busy community forum, where you’ll find your answer 95% of the time anyway.
NOTE: We won’t lie to you. Sure the ticket support can be very late in response sometimes, because hopefully you understand the reason is because free hosts deal with thousands of members a day. So the pressure is on at all times! But forum is always responsive 24/7. 🙂
Hundred dollar tip: Before joining any free host, see how busy their forum (if they even have one) is. If non-busy, then you’re heading towards lots of trouble with no solutions. And it also shows that the host doesn’t have legit and serious members. Because serious members will make a post about even the slightest problem.
My Response:This is where I fall in love with Vas because he shows an initiative to educate the user and not just sell a product.He gives a tip on how to detect a good webhost that could have easily backfired if his own forum had been barren at the time.He also steps up again in addition to going the extra mile for the customer.He talks about support taking time and he gives a sense he’s willing to take that time.That’s the whole point of a ticket system! Unfortunately again i can’t attest to the quality of the support because I never needed to use it…for a year..Which translates to multiple months of smooth sailing.Take the hint Burdon….for everyone’s sake…
Another thing I’d like to point out is that Vas acknowledges the Forum is a booster to the primary support.The current staff wants to basically leave the free members to cry out for answers that will never come on the forum and only give full support to people willing to throw money at them but to be fair this is just one of a plethora of bad business practices for them…
Now it’s like this…. Support is still horrible Ladies and gents….my block from reason 3 should cover this…
Reason 5:
110MB is run on a cluster based network of servers, just like paid hosting companies do and can afford.
This is the most important factor determining whether the free host is a joke or a serious company. Let us briefly explain…
99.9% of free hosts out there run on a single computer. Meaning they try to stuff as many members on it as possible. And when server starts slowing down immensly, they quickly sell the free hosting site (refer to 2 points above).
Furthermore, the more accounts per server, the more data throughput strain on the hard drive. Therefore increasing it’s chance of hard drive crash. And bang! Your site lost forever.
110MB doesn’t have this due to facts as mentioned in reason 1. It can afford new high-end servers (mostly Dual-Xeons/Opterons) on demand. Or whenever admins recommend it.
My response: Vas does something great here and goes for gold instead of settling for bronze.He invested in premium quality hardware for a free based service. This is exactly what I meant when I said in the tips for choosing a webhost article about a reputable company putting it’s best foot forward at all times and for all clients. He put across that he was willing to do 100% with or without the encouragement of your hard earned money and that says something about the business as a whole.He puts forth facts that demonstrate to me as an IT person that he understands the structure of a web server and the base concept of how it works.This adds a great sense of credibility to his business model. Also he’s not afraid to show you what’s under the hood.It’s the difference of buying a car from a dealer trying to divert you from the corpse in the trunk and the dealer willing to show you what the vehicle is capable of really doing.I can’t say for sure he really did buy the best hardware as he says but they worked then and now they don’t which is pretty self-explanatory in my book.The big difference is he had a system with sound financing or at least presumably so because data centers need money and technology costs money. Now the parentheses stuff might look like french to a non IT person but trust me when I say he did his homework on that.Good hardware is the bread and butter of a webhosting company and he shows he’s aware of that.He also indicated he planned for the future and wasn’t just walking around blinded by dollar signs.The idea of putting money back into the business is a sign of true CEO and not someone looking to run off to Hawaii after he collects your money.
Now it’s like this…. Server quality is awful.Almost all their original servers are mostly or completely malfunctioning and they’re constantly in a state of migrating things.They claim to be dealing with the datacenter but that’s not really how datacenters work.The way a datacenter works is that you pay them and they maintain your servers.It’s a very simple exchange I could teach to a chimp and that chimp might run 110mb better than Burdon.In fact I’d give that chimp my money before him.I’ve suspected for some time now that “dealing with the datacenter” means ” we’re in over our heads financially and can’t pay the datacenter” because I highly doubt there’d be any other reason for the datacenter to not “cooperate” with you as they’ve been putting it.Most services won’t “cooperate” because they want their money and that’s how the world works.That’s sort of like expecting the electric or water company to “cooperate” and not turn off the utilities when you don’t pay your bill.I’d respect the situation more if they’d just be honest and quit using broken record and pass the buck but it’s way past ridiculous at this point and just blending into the cluster of problems that is the new 110mb.
Now just briefly I’d like to compare this to Burdon’s tiny about page and business model.It’s sort of like comparing a gold brick and a dog turd but I’m trying to be a good sport and present both sides anyways.
“Brief History:
Since 2006 110mb.com has been providing users with the best free web hosting service on the web! In under four year we have been able create a professional web hosting service that supports over 900,000 sites! In July of 2010 we decided to launch a new premium hosting service that would be offered along side of our free hosting. Our premium plan has been a great success and offers users: unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, unlimited MYSQL, FTP support, premium support, and much more! We are excited about our premium service because it will constantly be improving as we add new features.”
Sentence one is a problem.He’s riding off of Vas’ success and not representing himself as a new phase in the company.In addition you didn’t launch squat.You bought a company that was successful,implemented new crap that didn’t work and ran it into the ground in less than 2 years.
About:
110mb.com is a privately owned company by the RocketForce Media Group who acquired the site in 2010. 110mb.com support is handled in house, very quickly, by one of our talented support staff members. 110mb.com is headquartered in the United States of America, sites are currently stored in data centers across the world in areas such as: the Netherlands, United States, and Canada.As you can see, we only store our servers at top-notch facilities in order to ensure maximum up-time for our users. We are also in the process in creating a new user panel for our members.. The panel will be feature- rich and will give current members and new members alike access to tools that will help give your website a cutting edge in today’s online market.
All of this is pretty much bull squirt.Support is slow and horrible,uptime is awful or just plain non-existent and the user panel was never updated significantly.In addition to all this la-di-dah mentioned they’ve been horrific toward “current” members and dubbed them “legacy” users so they can rationalize shunning them and aren’t even confident enough to divulge names or addresses like Vas did.
Plans:
Currently we offer free and premium plans. If you are looking for the very basics our free plan will suffice; however, many of our members soon realize the benefit of upgrading to our new premium service. The added features that you will receive with our premium accounts will give you an edge, and will allow you to create an amazing website!
So obviously this too is a load of you-know-what.What would be really great is getting to be able to log in and use your account so you can actually build this supposed amazing website.Notice that Burdon’s name is never mentioned and no contact information of any kind is offered.They can’t go into any detail on support,servers or anything else.They either don’t know,don’t care or maybe a little of both.Also the only reason members realize those premium accounts give them an “edge” is because free users have skimpy and horrible plans and get treated badly by staff and pressured into buying in hopes of getting better service.I’ve scoured the net and found multiple reviews saying that forum staff is rude to free users and just tries to get them to pay for service they rightfully deserve already.
In conclusion I can’t really say 100% Vas was the lesser evil.My anonymous source did say he was out to make a buck then sell the baby but even if that was the case he created a service that worked and 3/4 years is a long time to hold a baby if you’re really eager to get rid of it. In addition he put a good case out there and showed a professional element the current owners are seriously lacking.It took me over 5 paragraphs to review his business model and a little over two to look at Burdon’s so as I said before the proof is in the putting and here it is.The new owners are always in sell mode and intensely so without the willingness to provide the service well in return.
Now lastly I’d like to post the full testimony from my anonymous source.I’m choosing not to reveal who they are but I know they are familiar with 110mb as a former user and also as a partial monitor to their servers.Please remember this is not me.It’s someone else who I can’t say for certain is bias or unbias and I can’t attest to their complete accuracy but I will say I was able to find Burdon after this when I was scouring with no results before and a lot of the sources information has matched up in other places like the whois page as well.
“Jonathan Burdon, 25 years old, Marion, Kentucky, USA.
http://www.jonathanburdon.com/
The person who doesn’t have good opinion in the internet. In his previous project, alreadyhosting.com “reviews” (quotes needed) he was using some tricky cheat techniques to gain more incommings from various affiliate programs. When being caught and the facts were publicly described, instead of humbly own up or at least silently wait, he did attack the people who wrote about him, trying to scare them with legal consequences for public usage of informations from private emails from him etc.
He is not a tech savvy person, he don’t know much about the computers. As he describe himself – he is a “visionary”. Though – as he is a young person – his enthusiasm and estimation of his own possibilities is bigger than the real possibilities. It was enough to see his website back in 2010 when there was headline “Jonathan Burdon, Future Candidate for President of the United States” and the counter displaying number of days, hours, minutes, seconds until the election day in 2029, to assume that most likely he is arrogant and presuming. And my conversations with him did convinced me that he really is.
However he knows a little bit about various marketing techniques and stuff like that. He thought that buying 110mb.com is a great opportunity for being quite quickly rich. He had overestimated own possibilities, overestimated potential incommings, and underestimated the number of problems with 110mb servers and amount of funds that had to be invested to keep it running enough smoothly. He did ignore most of the warnings about it from me and other “old” 110mb users. He did realize the situation after several months or even after a year, but that was already too late. Without enough amount of money – I assume that he spent most of his funds to just buy 110mb – it’s not possible to save 110mb. By reading his blog one can assume that he gave up on 110mb and do focus on some other new ideas for being rich quickly.
Craig Clayton, ~33 or so years old, Kuttawa, Kentucky, USA.
http://craigclayton.net/
He is the co-owner and the only one technical admin of 110mb. At the moment his website is empty, but in the past there was more informations about himself. My assumption after reading that and knowing him from 110mb forum and some non-public conversations is that he is in general a “good guy”, well, at least better than Jonathan.
Though while having such webhosting company like 110mb.com with so many problems on almost every server it’s practically impossible to handle all of this by just a one tech savvy person, who do not even treat it as a main job, but works on it in a spare time only after his other regular job. At the very beginning after buying 110mb he did quite a lot of things, though even at that time that was enough that he had some personal problems for a week, two or three and literally nothing has been technically done with the servers. They – Jonathan and Craig – have no money to hire any additinal enough skilled admin or to pay for the job done by staff in the datacenters, they have no money for any big investments, so if anything is and will be done with 110mb then only or mainly just in a spare time of Craig.
The only “winner” in here is the former owner of 110mb – Andre Vas. He had a great idea and he knew how to achieve his goal. At the beginning in 2006/2007 with the help of jsluiter they did a great job. Unfortunatelly – what was kept in secret for a long time and even lied that it’s not true in a case of 110mb – from the very beginning that was just a scheme to build a big enough company and sell it for the profit after some time without thinking what will be the future of it. Andre Vas is much better in marketing techniques than Jonathan Burdon, so one fox outwitted the other fox. Jonathan believed that this is his great opportunity, but it is not… The idea of selling life-time service for a one-time fee was just the way to gain short term money and customer base, Andre knew that. But for a long term it’s impossible to keep it that way. So after sell it was obvious that without further large investments it have to crash. When he realized what the reality is – he started to ignore the so called by them “legacy” users.
In short – I see no chance for 110mb being again so good as it was back in 2006-2008. Not under the ownership of Jonathan Burdon. One can only hope that in a ridiculous time (months/years) Craig Clayton will slowly handle in his spare time the main problems and servers will be again enough functional at least temporarily so users will be able to handle all the files/redirections/etc. on their accounts and finally move out.”
Now again that is another person and not me so I can’t confirm anything,especially the parts concerning Vas’ intentions because based on how he ran the business I am inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.I will say though I’m inclined to believe a lot of the claim based on recent experiences and the general performance of the company.After looking at Burdon’s site he does appear to be a type of person who just takes on projects that look like they’ll line his pockets without really thinking about the process or the funds.110mb didn’t look to be the only dying animal in the forest to be honest. Also the source supplied the “legacy” user term without me saying it to them first so they’ve obviously been told a lot of the same gibberish I have. If I get a chance I will try to look further into Burdon’s portfolio and verify some of the statement but I really think in my heart and mind the source might be right on the money.I’d be very surprised if this was just a long eloquently written lie as they contacted me independently and put so much thought into the testimony.
My suggestion to any disgruntled 110mb users is to turn to the BBB.They’ve handled claims for this comapny in the past and the more complaints that build up the less Burdon can ignore the problems and the more people can be aware beforeheand that 110mb is a waste of time and money.
