27 Comments Yutter Offline… Possibly Dead Forever

1. Avatar

   August 3rd, 2006 at 6:53 pm

   1

   so damn sad situation. completely frustrating.

   I hope David can rebuild it fast.

2. Phil Hollows

   August 4th, 2006 at 9:46 am

   2

   Please have David call me; the contact info I have is all bad and I have some ideas.

3. Nick

   August 4th, 2006 at 12:49 pm

   3

   I am personally going to get a job at steadfast, and at the console of their database server, rm -rf * and see if they like it. Poopy heads.

4. Karl

   August 16th, 2006 at 8:06 pm

   4

   I would like to note that the data removal was definitally not done on purpose and we took reasonable actions, which included offering them a complete refund for the month of service as well as an additional month of service at no charge.

   Mistakes happen, and that is what happened here. We did what we could, and honestly, had he kept a backup of his data we could have assisted him with getting everything back up just minutes after te issue.

5. Justin

   August 17th, 2006 at 7:38 am

   5

   There are many variables that if set up differently would result in a different scenario. I’m suprised Steadfast, as a hosting provider in this decade, does not have some backup solution implemented into their servers.

   Personally, as a hosting provider myself, I backup everyones data on my server nightly and keep ten days worth of data retention for the just in cases.

   Not sure, but maybe you guys will integrate a solution yourselves. If David removed the data on accident, I could see him responsible for his backup, fact is, your company or the company you are representing by the URI in your post is responsible for the data loss.

   Therefore, ethics tell me you should be responsible for the data recovery, not the victim.

   “I’m sorry sir, your car was stolen, but we are going to have to ask you to do the investigation process.. we’ll do our best to assist you in the recovery once found,” said Inspector Foo.

   Just doesn’t seem right Karl.. just doesn’t.

6. Karl

   August 17th, 2006 at 10:47 am

   6

   We do have full backup services implemented on our shared hosting platforms, where we note on our site that we offer backup solutions. For our VPS and dedicated servers, which this customer falls into, we state upfront that they are responsible for their data and we give them access to ample backup space and assist them with setup, etc. for only $9.95 a month. If your data is not worth $9.95 a month to backup, it must not be very valuable.

   There was nothing to be done for recovery, the data was deleted and had been for many hours before we were asked to attempt to recover any data. Had there been any reasonable way to rcover it we would have done so. For our shared hosting customers, and those who pay for backups, we assist them with the recovery of their data at no additional charge, no matter how their data was lost.

   To me, it also doesn’t seem right for all the blame to be placed on us either. I have admitted there was a mistake made, I offered refunds and free months of service, etc. to make up for it. In the end thoug, it comes down to the data not being worth it to the client to have backed up, and that is not our responsibility on dedicated servers and VPSes.

   An analogy I would like to use would be that if you left your house unlocked and it got robbed, you would still hold responsibility for being negligent. People need to be responsible for their own data, especially when we publicly state we do not backup VPS and dedicated server accounts.

   As a note, many emails had been sent to the ccount operator stating billing issues, status changes, etc. with the account to which we did not receive any response. Accounts are not deleted until they are one month past due, which should be more than ample time to work out any issues. If we are not contacted about these issues, it makes it difficult to work them out.

7. Justin

   August 17th, 2006 at 1:31 pm

   7

   Personally speaking, from an individual on both sides of the fence, looking at every angle.

   The client should have backed up his data, this is true, for reasons obvious to David now. However, his data shouldn’t have ever been in risk in the first place.

   Your statement, “if you left your house unlocked and it got robbed, you would still hold responsibility for being negligent,” is incorrect. If I decided to leave my house, automobile or office unlocked, anyone stepping foot into or attempting to enter is breaking the law.

   I would not be at fault for my neglegence. If your position on the matter is as such, you’re basically stating in the same sense you believe, if an individual walks around town butt-ass naked and gets molested or assaulted, it is their own fault for neglecting clothing?

   I disagree with your comments. This is simply my opinion, you agreeing is unexpected, however, I feel that compensation for your companies mistake is worth far more than a free month of service.

   Hypothetically speaking, let us assume — 9Rules decided to host with Steadfast and your company, “accidentially” removed their website from the server they trust so well, despite the fact if they have a backup or not, you think a free month of server is deserving compensation? Heck no!

   The risk of data loss is always associated with hosting whether it be shared, virtual private, dedicated, colocation or a floppy in the damn mail. However, the risk of a technician accidentally “rm -rf” a virtual hosts folder is entirely NOT THE CLIENTS FAULT. That is 100% Steadfast to blame my friend.

   You have your opinion, the rest of the community has theirs. However, I personally hope this is more than a ‘mistake’ in your eyes and the individual ultimately responsible should have repricussions.

   Let me know if I’m wrong, however, despite the fact that its easier to prevent than repair. Your companies neglected to pay attention and accidentally, as you state, removed an entire web folder.. sigh..

8. David

   August 17th, 2006 at 1:37 pm

   8

   I think hosts should always take every measure they possibly can to make sure that no matter how idiotic their paying customers are, that they are saved from even themselves.

   Now I am not saying David was dumb, but he should have backed up his data, but at the same time, so should the host.

   As a web host, you want to make the best impression possible with your clients, this could have been one of those times. Imagine how David would have shouted from the rooftops how great Steadfast was if they had rescued him?

   That kind of press is better than any host can hope for, and really…what kind of time and energy does it take to make sure everyone is backed up?

   If I had a blame-o-meter, I would say David takes 40%, the host takes 60%.

   One final note: when all your work is GONE, no amount of free would make someone feel better.

9. Mavier

   August 17th, 2006 at 1:51 pm

   9

   Karl’s burglary analogy is flawed. It was not David’s “house” that was unlocked. Sticking with the house theme, if I asked you to hold on to something of mine and you put it in your unlocked house and thus it was stolen, the responsibility lies on you. Granted, it was my foolish mistake to trust you would take proper measures to keep it secure, but it is still lost on account of your negligence. Actual verses Proximate Cause.

10. Justin

    August 17th, 2006 at 1:53 pm

    10

    Mavier makes the best point of this thread thus far, point taken.

    Mavier +1
    Steadfast 0

11. jimmy

    August 17th, 2006 at 2:21 pm

    11

    Mavier made the exact point i was going to make.

    I also fail to see how you offer free backup service (or maybe its not free) and data recovery for your shared hosting accounts and not your VPS accounts. It would seem smart for your company (and probably easier for those ‘accidental deletions’) to do backups regardless of whether the account subscribes to the service or not. Disk space is cheap, it would cost you next to nothing (compared to losing clients) to perform a backup on any account.

    And I’ll quote Lob-Sogular from his Digg comment:

    Two Rules of Software Development:
    1) Unless you are 100% sure that your software is 100% correct, do not automate deletion without backing up the data.
    2) You are never 100% sure that your software is 100% correct.

12. Justin

    August 17th, 2006 at 4:16 pm

    12

    I think its safe to say, “owned?”

13. Justin

    August 17th, 2006 at 4:22 pm

    13

    Karl Zimmerman, your opinion of this situation, attempting to some how even the blame game to equal portions of finger pointing is asinine.

    Your company screwed up, make it right. Whatever it takes, make it right! I have an example situation such as this with Myriad Networks, I remember something about a piece of software called OnTrack that was capable of recovering the data…

    Hell I’ll even loan you my cd!

14. Justin

    August 17th, 2006 at 4:30 pm

    14

    This topic just irritates the heck out of me, let us read your TOS/AUS policies, etc that you say is so freaking clear…

    Backups

    No guarantees are made of any kind, either expressed or implied, as to the integrity of our backups, which are made on a regular basis for all shared hosting and shared reseller accounts. It is the clients’ responsibility to maintain local copies of their content and other stored information. If loss of data occurs due to a failure on Steadfast Networks’ part, we take reasonable action to recover the data at no charge to the client. If data loss occurs due to negligence of client in securing their account, by an action of the client, or any actions not under the direct control of Steadfast Networks, Steadfast Networks will have no liability.

    Steadfast Networks :: Acceptable Use Policy

    Technically and legally Mr. Zimmerman, your policy is not in your favor at the current moment. You reference, all shared hosting accounts and reseller shared hosting accounts. However in your policy you never define what a “reseller shared” or “shared hosting” account is.

    Technically, a VPS (virtual private server) is a shared hosting account. Therefore, your company should create a backup. However, you did cover your butt on that topic because the statement prior says that in no-way do you guarentee the integrity of these backups, you create daily.

    Then again, the ending statement closing your policy on the topic of Backups clearly states that it will take ALL REASONABLE steps to recovery data lost due to your companies error.

    David’s data loss is your companies error, not an error on his behalf. You never state that the customers backup is for the purpose of restoring data. You simply state its their responsiblity to create one.

    Your policy is not helping your situation my friend.

    I anticpate you making adjustments to your word usage and legal jargon in order to cover yourself from this matter.

    If this went to court, I’m afraid, from my experiences, hell not even afraid, I’m positive you would be found at fault.

    Too bad if you adjust your terms it won’t matter to Yutter because they are no longer in place for his account.

    Well… good luck playing that ball game my friend — I suggest you ditch the $49.00 google search form special and actually have a bar-licensed attorney write something for you.

    Just my $0.05. I’ll expect my change.

15. Karl

    August 17th, 2006 at 7:35 pm

    15

    We give our customers all the tools necessary to make backing up their systems simple. it is the customers’ choice as to whether they decide to use this service or not.

    I stated many times that it was our error, and that we attempted to compensate the user as much as possible, what more are we supposed to do? I would have loved to restore the data, but that was not possible.

    Yes, it would be great if we could offer full backups of all of our VPS and dedicated server customers data, but that would be cost prohibative at the pricing we are offering, which is why we offer the backup options we offer. It is much easier to backup the 750GB of data needed to backup the shared hosting accounts than it is to backup the 250TB+ of VPS and dedicated server data on our network. Requesting that we do that would also put us at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to price, as no other dedicated server/VPS provider in our market segment, that I am aware of, takes pro-active backups of customer servers.

    If we did not make it clear that we did not make backups of VPS servers I can see your point, but we make it clear right on the ordering page, and we will tell people upfront if they were to ask.

    Going back to the burglary analogy, if we want to bring everything into account, then it would be like this:

    The customer gave us something of value to take care of. We tell them that we can hold onto it for them, but we can’t make any guarantee, but if they want, they can pay a small fee and we can put the item in a lockbox to assure that nothing happens to it. They refuse to pay the extra fee and something happens to the item. True, it is our fault that something happened to the item, but if something truly holds value to you you shouldn’t penny pinch, or feel that for some reason you do not need to back things up.

    In the end, I am not trying to pass the blame, I have accepted blame and have done my best to make up for it. I am trying to make sure people know that if they have important data they need to keep a backup ESPECIALLY if the provider specifically says they do not take backups, so things such as this do not happen again.

    Also, just to add, there is no person who clicked a button or ran a command to delete the account, we were utilizing HSPComplete by SWSoft, which is supposedly enterprise grade software, which we paid many thousands for, that deleted the account. The account was to be suspended for one month, and then deleted after that one mont of suspension. For some reason, it seems that software skipped the suspension stage, though many emails regarding account status changes were sent to the customer, this is the first time this has happened on any of our hundreds of VPS accounts, we were definitely caught by surprise and have since changed our policies. Other than apologizing, changing our policy, issuing refunds and free months of service what more can we be expected to do in this case?

16. Karl

    August 17th, 2006 at 7:59 pm

    16

    I just thought I would add that HSPComplete does show in it’s logs that the account was suspended on July 1 and deleted August 2. An email would have been sent to the account holder stating their account was shutdown, etc.

    Just again stating that it is our policy to suspend a site/account for an entire month before deleting it and that we have never had an issue of this nature previously with the HSPComplete software and policy has been put in place to prevent this from happening again.

17. Justin

    August 21st, 2006 at 10:49 am

    17

    Karl,

    Appreciate your interaction on this subject my friend. As a SWSoft user as well, I recommend to you to always backup everything, their software is so buggy and it never works right off, especially on upgrades..

    Plesk 8.0.1 from 8.0.0 is screwed, 8.0.0 from 7.5.4 is screwed, Virtuoza HSP etc are no different, I’ve had problems with them all, but its what we have to deal with because customers want it.

    Thanks for the opinions, I would throw a spare drive in all VPS machines and back up, or at least do as Theplanet does and provide some Netaccessible backup storage,

    Just thoughts–

18. David

    August 22nd, 2006 at 1:17 pm

    18

    I’ve stayed out of the many comment debates that have taken place.

    But I would just like to say to Karl that I never received an email from his company during that time period. I have received emails in the past to let me know that the bill was ready and I should log in to pay it. But I never received an email to let me know that a bill was ready or that my account was suspended.

    I logged into my account and it stated that I was up to date on my payments and it did not ask me to take any further action.

    Money is not an issue.

19. Giz

    November 23rd, 2006 at 12:54 am

    19

    Steadfast are tools.

    Yup, they killed our site. Same story… a vps that they don’t back up. They have a nice story about that that makes no sense. Their software is buggy. Mails backed up, no notice, kablam…. they rm -rf our site, a 3 year old free movie review site. I have the screen shots of our account showing that it indicated no payment problem. Yes, the dumb kid who handled the finance side of the site, didn’t monitor the payment status (we were paying quarterly by paypal) and we owed a payment, but Steadfasts email engine was clearly backed up, because we got 4 emails all in one shot, and this was on a Friday night, whenever their billing cron job runs.

    Clearly Steadfast is such a moronic fly by night crap works, that reclaiming the same amount of diskspace Google gmail gives away free is more important to them than a customer’s site. It’s not a case of not having a backup, it’s a case of someone you are paying for a service, who, the hour their system shows you owe them a dollar, automatically goes and wipes the disk clean. That’s just bad business practice designed by someone who’s clueless and should get out of the hosting business.

    Did we have a backup? Yes.. of course our site was free as well, so we weren’t as current as we should have been and lost several weeks of reviews, and forum contents. It was enough of a loss for us that it killed the site.

    Steadfast’s attitude during the entire thing was completely assinine. Not only did they tell us it was our fault, they never offered one bit of help, or a dollar credit.

20. karl malone

    March 11th, 2007 at 6:21 am

    20

    fcuk you carl and steadfast for putting a company with great service offline!

    geez, now i know why for so many years that steadfast has been on the market those losers can never beat other companies.

    everyone subscribed at steadfast, your site could be next!

21. Antonis GR

    March 16th, 2007 at 9:25 pm

    21

    Sorry guys, that I disagree with you, but keeping backups is the ultimate responsibillity of the customer. As Karl explained, the account got deleted by the automated software and SF has offered various goodies to satisfy the customer.

    But again, you will still insist that is the host’s fault…

    What if a catastrophy took place in Chicago? Earthquake, floods, storms, hurricanes, terrorist attacks (hope none of these happen) and the datacenter collapses and all equipment is destroyed??

    Now, who’s responsible? Will you blame the nature or the terrorists and demand to take your data back???

    Come on guys, if something is precious for you make sure it is safe!

    back back back up your data… your data is your business!

22. David

    March 20th, 2007 at 6:42 pm

    22

    Antonis,

    Not sure how I came back to this blog entry, but I just did and I was shocked that there was a new comment.

    Anyways, I’m the founder of Yutter, and a day or two before SF removed our server we lost all our local backups on a hard drive that we still have but can’t seem to recover.

    Not sensing the urgency of resuming immediate backups, I decided we would wait until we had another hard drive which we were scheduled to get purely for backups in the next couple of days.

    The timing of the server removal from SF was impeccable. And I don’t remember being offered any “goodies” that I hear people throwing around the net, not that I would have accepted any, I just wanted them to try and restore their local backups.

23. Daniel

    June 13th, 2007 at 5:40 pm

    23

    Yeah I know it’s a bitch when old posts get opened up but just as a warning since when you google steadfast you get this website. We hosted with Steadfast, had 2 servers, and over a hardware issue they refused to give us a refund (what goods a server that doesn’t work) then when we told them we were going to dispute the charge, they completely removed another server we had hosted with them and was paid for losing all the data on both servers, about 120GB of copywritten information. Watch our for posts by Karl or Karl Zimmerman, he owns the criminal outfit. A complaint was filed by our office to the United States Federal Trade Commissiion and was accepted as a legitimate compliaint. In this day in age of webhosting, isn’t it better to work with a customer rather then when shit hits the fan say “we aren’t obligated, or we don’t have to”. You should want to help your clients every way possible, not screw them with bullshit.

24. Karl Zimmerman

    June 21st, 2007 at 6:58 pm

    24

    Daniel, your dedicated server had a hard drive failure, which can happen to anyone at any time. I am sorry, but we simply cannot make drives which never fail. We, of course, offered to replace the drive and were working with you on a RAID solution when you decided to simply cancel the account instead. Your service was delivered as promised and then you processed a chargeback against us, were you expecting us to continue giving you service when your account is past due?

    Again, I don’t see how we can be faulted for a customer not having a backup of their data. If the data is that valuable, back it up.

    I don’t expect to respond again, but I just needed to make a public statement against those comments.

25. Brian

    June 27th, 2007 at 2:38 pm

    25

    Steadfast made a big mistake in how they handled this situation.

    Just because it is in your policy doesn’t mean a thing. You can “technically” be right, but that won’t stop people from being pissed at you. You’ve won the battle and lost the war.

    Take 100% responsibility and apologize, thats it. No excuses about what the customer should have done.

26. chumpsucker

    January 17th, 2008 at 12:28 am

    26

    I’ve just found myself as another casualty to this organization.. No lost data, but the service didn’t arrive as advertised, similar customer relations, and some withheld funds (which I doubt I’ll ever see). I kept detailed records of my experience and wrote a few blog posts about it. If only I had found this site first (I did do some googling around to try to get more info on them before I ordered, but clearly not enough due diligence).

    http://www.chumpsucker.com/index.php/gripe/pooled-networks-sucks-and-by-proxy-steadfast-networks-sucks/

27. Yutter.com RM -RF’d by Steadfast Networks!! at Chump Sucker

    January 28th, 2008 at 3:59 pm

    27

    […] read more | digg story Uncategorized | […]

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