My Hosting Nightmare and Google! - haydur.dot.com @ haydur.com

My Hosting Nightmare and Google!

Let me say it once again... Thanks Google! You see during the past week or so I've had the worst experience ever with a webhost. It all started when I was notified by ICDSoft late last month that my hosting account with them was going to expire on July 5th. So I began looking for other hosting providers, since I saw that although ICDSoft was one of the best budget hosts out there, there were still a few features missing.

So I found this "cool" host in Canada called Essene Hosting giving away tons of features for $60 bucks a year. But after 4-5 days of 'just ok' hosting and many unreplied emails to support the site went down like around Sunday July 12th (it's been down since!). Initially I was so pissed, I mean I did pay for it, and now I want my money back because "they" had a 30-Day-Money-Back-Guarantee. But I've figured there never was a "they", it was always a he... to be more precise this asshole named Erik Brisson is most probably the only one running the biz, I mean he was the one who replied to my every single email message... and when I asked him if he's the only one, he gave me two very legit sounding names of people who he claimed were also there. I never got a reply from them.

Anyway, I have emailed him every single day, but no reply. Of course his whole servers down, so even he can't check his email. So I mailed his Shaw.net accout and... his other sites selling the same services under other names, 2for1Host and Essene.ca. My last resort is to either file a complaint with his merchant account provider 2Checkout or contact my credit card company for a chargeback. Meanwhile I've signed up with MySiteSpace, where I am paying more that Essene and I can't host multiple domains, it's still much much much better and faster. And they're based in the USA. Screw Canadians.

If you survived all the bullshit above, you must be thinking how Google fits into all this. Well, when Essene went down I lost two blog entries with it. And since I believe that broadband PCs don't need to cache webpages, I myself didn't have a copy of the webpage. I contacted a few people who might have been here, but no one had the page cached. Damn. I deciced not to post anymore until I get those two entries back (yeah, I'm that stubborn). But today, after setting up a lab of brand new Dell Optiplex Pentium 4s at my school (dragging the cart 12 times up and down the academic buildings) I just wondered if Google's Cache might have those entries saved. Voila! It did... :D and that just made my day...

(The two prior entries u see below were salvaged from Google's Cached Links.)

and yeah, thank God too... :p

[Update 01/19/04] Sorry, to tell you folks this, but MySiteSpace eventually turned out to be no different that Essene. They got hacked, mostly because they were using a version of php that was 8 month old. You can read the full story here. And, if you are interesting in knowing, I'm currently using HostforWeb; an excellent host, 'real' America-based, 24 live-support and toll-free number too. And the price, just right! Try them.

Posted in Tech Stuff on July 17, 2003 1:19 PM

Comments

Dear Haydur,

I don't believe that I've found a kindred spirit!!! What luck!

I, too, had JUST signed on with Essene hosting. I don't know if the whole damned plant blew up with Erik inside, or what.

After my site being totally dead for 3 days, I went with another host. I, too, have been emailing that little Canadian Shit, Erik, with no response.

I've been searching the net every day to see if I can find some info in regards to the missing Essene.

To top it all off, I had just come off another super bad experience with a deranged hosting company (who I won't mention). But compared to Essene, those guys were angels.

Haydur, personally, I don't think that we'll ever see our little George Washington's again - all sixty of them. Erik probably took our loot and shoved off to Havana to smoke some fine Cuban cigars. We should send the Mounties after him, eh?

Posted by: Sky Taylor at July 29, 2003 11:50 PM

PS Just wanted to let you know that I came across this link when I typed in:

'Essene Hosting' in the Google search.

Good luck, Haydur!!!! Looks like we both need it.

Posted by: Sky Taylor at July 29, 2003 11:54 PM

Haydur,

I have located their official address via alexa.com. It is:

617-1313 13th Avenue
Calgary, AB
T3C 3S1

Phone: 1-403-209-8530 (though I am not going to waste my $$ on a call)

The '1313 13th Avenue' is sorta scary, isn't it?

I am going to try to contact them via snail mail, though it probably will not do any good.

As a final note, I feel absolutely terrible because I wrote a very nice page about them. Makes me sick to my tummy now.

It's all very mysterious.

Sky

Posted by: Sky Taylor at July 30, 2003 1:11 PM

Thanks for the info.

The best bet is to ask 2checkout.com for a refund, but since they haven't responded to any of my complaints, I have simply decided to file for a chargeback with my credit card company.

Mysitespace.com is a really good host, try them. My other choice was imhosted.com, slightly more expensive but an even better host. Still, none of these two can beat my previous host (ICDSoft.com) in customer support. They are the best.

Next time anyone goes out on host hunt, I suggest they look carefully into over the top services for a really really cheap price, because that smells heavily of a scam. Pay a little extra but find a host with listed addresses phone numbers, and call up to make sure they really exist.

Posted by: Haydur at July 30, 2003 7:28 PM

i have bought 2-1 service with $120 account and I am still out in the called i wonder if u could help me.

Posted by: S Hassan at August 21, 2003 2:57 AM

^ I personally did was just call up 2checkout.com after my credit card statement came, and they promptly refunded my whole amount, without much questioning. There should be an 800 number right next to the transaction.

Call and try. Goodluck!

Posted by: Haydur at August 21, 2003 11:12 AM

This is on going. We are a Calgary based business operating in both Canada and the USA. We signed on to Essene in August and have had sporadic service. This November we frequently had the mail server go down and now it is down completely and have switched servers.

We will gladly forward your information to the Calgary Police if you want to stop this character from doing this to other people.

Posted by: T.Jay Morgan at November 24, 2003 11:24 AM

Sure, although I got my money back from 2checkout, it still hurts me to see that the culprit is still operating... and that too under the same name.

I hope I can help.

Posted by: Haydur at November 24, 2003 10:53 PM

Hi,
I am having this problem too. If i can help you guys and have this man arrested, i'll gladly help you. My site is down since yesterday. It's hosted on Essene.ca
I tried to contact Erik through all the emails i had. But no answers. I have also his hotmail contact for MSN: erik_brisson@hotmail.com and guess what? His hotmail profile says he is from Austria!!
I'm from Italy. Payed a year contract last month. It was ok since 2 days ago. Erik was also helpful.. for sometime.. it was kinda funny to chat with him.. but now, his shaw.ca mail is unknown or illegal, and the hotmail address is the only one working... but he doesn't reply.. of course.. i now understand i have been fooled..
Please let me know.. tell me anything you discover...
Best regards,
Rosy

Posted by: Rosy at December 13, 2003 4:07 AM

We have been down since Dec 11th in the afternoon and have not received any communication from this host at all either.

Although Erik was kind enough to comp our hosting as we were close at one time, I *am* running a business and I *so* have many members I am accountable to and have no explanation or an estimated uptime for them.

This is very unfortunate because Erik can be a very good man, however, the lack of correspondence does cause he and his company to appear very unprofessional and I am sure it does cause the company to lose accounts.

We will be moving our community to webserve.ca ( http://webserve.ca ) in the near future as we really require reliability and decent uptime.

I am just hoping that our community has been backed up so that I have something to move.

:( A very unfortunate situation for many.

Posted by: Susan Wilkins-Hubley at December 13, 2003 9:52 AM

You also might want to try: erik_brisson@yahoo.com

He's ignoring email I send to that account but perhaps others will have better luck as you are probably not his recent ex gf!

Good luck :)

Posted by: Susan Wilkins-Hubley at December 13, 2003 10:04 AM

Weird. I just talked to him. He said: "essentially what happened was that we were infiltrated with a back door trojan. not directly through our server, but via a bandwidth provider in the united states. essentially what we had to do is secure all the data on the server so that we minimalized all of the data to ensure nothing was lost. the data is backed up and safe, however we have to scrub your server to make sure any traces of the virus are gone we contacted everyone through the merchant account system. I truly apologize that you didnt receive it..we've been sending out email on the hour concerning this"

bullshits!

and also

"i gave everyone erik_brisson@yahoo.com as an alternative.."

and he doesn't even reply it seems..
Erik can be really kind, sure... but isn't just that the trick?

Posted by: Rosy at December 13, 2003 2:33 PM

My suggestion to you both is to contact 2checkout.com via their phone number (it should be on your credit card statement, or you can call up you credit card company and ask for that number). I advise you to tell them that this particular person is a FRAUD and his account should be CLOSED.

Hopefully, you will get your money back.

Posted by: Haydur at December 13, 2003 10:45 PM

Hey Haydur,
I am from Italy, so calling them on the phone would be a bit too expensive. Don't you have an email address?

Btw.. i have a pic of this Erik.

Posted by: Rosy at December 14, 2003 5:54 AM

I don't really think Erik intends to commit any kind of fraud at all. But, I do agree that communication is poor and does reflect poorly on Essene.ca

Rosy if you want to, contact me @ suewh@hfx.eastlink.ca

I hope we're all back up soon. Maybe we can keep each othr posted?

Susan

Posted by: Susan Wilkins-Hubley at December 14, 2003 10:22 AM

ok! :)

Posted by: Rosy at December 15, 2003 8:04 AM

I got a reply. No refund. cause (they said) my contract ended on december 18th! wrong .. it would have ended on november 18 2004.. the other date was just when i left..

Posted by: rosy at January 22, 2004 5:54 AM

Dude you have some serious issues. Hope you get professional counciling. I've been through your site and it's not just one thing, it's several and you sir need some help.

Praying for you

Posted by: Reality at February 4, 2004 11:17 PM

What do u we have here... the man himself, everyone meet your webhost, Eric as Reality. Or is this his "other" alias? :D

Posted by: Haydur at February 5, 2004 9:43 AM

You do have issues don't you. From your car, to phone service, to hosting you seem to get the rotten apple. Check my ip dumbass and you'll see it's not this Eric fellow.

Posted by: Reality at February 5, 2004 3:29 PM

Yes I do have issues o' citizen of Jacksonville. But you're issues of getting your nose into other peoples issues... but I like up-front-ness. Are you sure you live in Jacksonville, it seems Pleasantville to me.

And by the way, this is my blog aka web log aka online journal, so I can share any all that I want to.

Posted by: Haydur at February 5, 2004 3:36 PM

Getting my nose into other peoples issues is part of my job as I am into Internet security. I see you know have a little bit of knowledge of at least identifying who owns the IP space. Not too hard. I just stumbled across your site looking for a web hosting solution and it just seems like you have this personal vendeta against this Erik guy.

Share away my troubled young man. You are the master of your virtual world. May your future be a feast that and btw -- beware, as what you do to others will in fact turn around some day. Remember that my friend. - Ciao.

Posted by: Reality at February 5, 2004 10:01 PM

Great site, was just reading and doing some work when I found this page

Posted by: Raimi at March 27, 2004 6:18 PM

Ok Haydur, I am officially requesting you remove the references to my hosting companies. As of January this year my Partner Richard and I own all aspects of the two domains essene.ca and 2for1host.net.

Erik is no longer associated with either of these companies and your little google war has to stop. Here is the official quote from our website:
Leadership

Executive Directors

Dan Raneri - draneri@2for1host.net

Richard Throgmorton - richard@2for1host.net

Dan Raneri and Richard Throgmorton combine for over 35 years of Network Administration and Network Security experience in their respective fields. In January of 2004, Dan and Richard went forward and Purchased Essene Hosting Incorporated and its subsidiary, 2for1Host.net with a determination to bring forward a heightened level of management, security and stability to a one time premier web hosting service provider. Their mission is to once again bring the name of 2for1Host synonymous with Value, Fast and Courteous Service, Stability and Reliability.

I trust you will cease this effort or my partner and I will persue next steps. You can keep references about Erik, we don't care, but our domains are important.

Thank you for your understanding and prompt attention to this.

Dan Raneri
Executive Director
Essene, Inc.

Posted by: Dan Raneri at May 30, 2004 6:34 AM

HAHA!!! YEA RIGHT! MR. Raneri (er Erik), YOUR SITE BITES MY EVER-LOVING ASS! Your service is horrible and your so-called support is non-existent.

Admit it! You're scamming people because it's easy to do.

Hey, Throgmorton, if you're so interested in ESSENE.CA 's good name, why don't you post a customer support number that WORKS!?! Huh? Then maybe people could call you and see what wonderful technical support your have!

And just a little post to help Google searchers:
Essene.ca Ripoff
Essene.ca thieves and thievery
2for1host.com Theft unreliable asses!

Cheers y'all.

Posted by: at October 28, 2004 12:15 AM

Hi - thaks for the comments and I hope your MySiteSpace plan is treating you well. One thing though - if you are paying more then I am assuming you are on the Enterprise or Developer plan which actually does support multiple domains. Please email us if you need assistance with that.

Posted by: MySiteSpace at October 28, 2004 12:17 AM

I wish I had seen this site before my boyfriend purchased hosting with this company. The site has been down for about 6 weeks now with absolutely no contact from Essene to either one of us. We can't even get our files because the server won't come back up and we cannot contact anyone in the company. I've had some very bad experiences with webhosts before but this is by far the worst.

Posted by: Foodbunny at November 9, 2004 12:01 AM

Just to make it clear. I have removed myself from all association from Essene Hosting and 2for1Hosting due to several reasons I will not go into.

I personally thought Richard and I could change things, but obviously this was not the case.

So, with that said, I am no longer associated with that company. And hey anonymous... be a real person -- don't hide behind anonymous??

Posted by: Dan Raneri at November 9, 2004 11:04 PM

Dan Raneri is no longer associated in any way with Essene or 2for1 hosting.

Posted by: anonymous at November 9, 2004 11:13 PM

If you have taken over why has the customer service and reliability gone down hill? Most recently my site has been down for at least two days, my email has been screwy for a lot longer then that no response from any support type people before and since MY site has gone down, but that's not surprising since essene.ca and 2for1host.net are not working either.

I am switching to MySiteSpace this week. It's a good deal even converting from Canadian $ to American $

And if you (Dan Raneri) don't like what this guy is saying and what other people are writing ... FIX THE SERVICE :rolleyes:

Yes I am remaining anon. only because I need a chance to get in and get my stuff off Essene, don't want someone deleting it before I get a chance to move, that's IF the servers ever start functioning again. :evil: :evil: :evil:

Posted by: at November 17, 2004 1:20 AM

If any essene.ca clients are looking for their stuff you can write to rackforce, who closed them down for non payment. They might still have your files etc. We got ours.

Essene and it's people are pathetic. and they are *NOT* Canadian. Erik is an American (FLA) apparently living on an imaginary ranch in Alberta, and RichardHead is also American residing somewhere is southern USA - pick a state...

Posted by: Susan at November 20, 2004 11:02 AM

I have been friends w/ Dan, Richard and (unfortunately) Erik for quite some time now. I can, w/ first-hand experience, say that Dan and Richard were NOT aware of the troubles cause by Erik Brisson until it was too late. Dan has been out for over 3 months. Richard - over 2 months. Erik Brisson is a con-artist. When this first started up it was not Richard's or Dan's intent to scam ANYONE. Apperently (from what I found out later) it seemed to be Erik's intent. Erik not only scammed you - He scammed me, Dan and Richard too. I should send him to jail but I really dont want to deal w/ him anymore.

And Susan - Richard does NOT reside in a southern US state. And Erik is not Canadian but he IS in Canada. Get your facts strait. I have his address and know exactly where he lives. I know his screen name on aol & msn. And I know quite a bit about his personal life.

As fas as Essene goes - I have no idea if Erik is trying to keep using it as a scam. As far as I'm concerned I think he should go to jail (or maybe the mounties can come get him) :D

Posted by: good friend at December 9, 2004 1:54 PM

URGENT INFORMATION REQUIRED...
I need information on ERIK BRISSON urgently...
you can email me on justforyou_1970@hotmail.com
Your information is paramount to the safety and security of someone very dear to me...Thankyou so very much...

Posted by: mouser at February 5, 2005 9:13 PM

Ladies ladies ladies...I know you may have googled your knight in shining armor Erik Brisson..but trust me the man is a sociopath...do NOT believe anything he has to say.

He will lie to you...tell you he loves you...get you hooked and the whole time he has a few other ladies on the rope...trust me I know what I'm talking about. I am one of the 5 ladies he was just screwing over.

This man is a SOCIOPATH..he is also insane...if you respect yourself you will turn and run from him. He will be dealt with I'm sure as satan can't have that many minions.

Good luck to you all...he's a mess! I hope you all trust what you have read...this isnt' the only thread dedicated to "outing" this man...there are several...and believe me...if more than one person tells you he's scum...it must be true.

Posted by: trust me at December 12, 2005 10:19 AM

I wanted to collaborate with the post above, as I too experienced the deception of Mr. Erik Brisson. This guy is a virtual chamelon, and has no qualms saying exactly what he thinks you need to hear only for his gain.

I cannot believe the level he has stooped to, to prey upon women as he does, and a quantity at a time. This indicates a grave sickness.

Please take this very seriously and beware....... all is presented well, and he'd have done well as an actor, but all is NOT well! BEWARE!!!! :exclaim:

Posted by: True&Honest at December 14, 2005 11:09 PM

I cannot believe the level he has stooped to, to prey upon women as he does, and a quantity at a time. This indicates a grave sickness.

Please take this very seriously and beware....... all is presented well, and he'd have done well as an actor, but all is NOT well! BEWARE!!!! :exclaim:

Posted by: True&Honest at December 14, 2005 11:11 PM