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I've been scammed, what to do?

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sandrock

Member
Joined
Jul 9, 2003
Location
Green Bay, WI
Here's my story.

February 11th, I sign up for web hosting with WebHostingBoy.com - I purchased their special package for $45/year. Payed with PayPal.

First month was ok, service seemed pretty good. Then it got rocky. Frequent downtime, bad tech support, the IP of the server even changed, making my domain innoperative for a couple days.

Beginning of April, my webspace isn't working. Upon checking their website, I find this message:

Dear Valued Clients, WebHostingBoy.com has gone out of business. The reason for this was because we were not able to get our settlement on time from 2checkout.com to pay for servers from ev1servers.net and ev1servers.net refused to give us an extension for 1 week to allow us to make the payment. You will automatically receive a refund within the next two weeks. The domain name ownership has already been transferred for domain names that were registered by us. If you have not received the email to accept ownership of your domain name, please contact me by instant messenger immediately(Yahoo IM: Adeel_Shaikh2001; AIM: AdeelShaik4; MSN IM: [email protected]). Upon the request of ev1servers.net, I would like to ask that you please do not contact ev1servers.net. Thank you and I apologize for the inconvenience. With Best Regards, Adeel Shaikh WebHostingBoy.com

My PayPal subscription was immediately cancelled, and the domain transferred to me quickly as well. So now I just needed to wait for the refund. I waited, and waited and waited some more. It's been over a month now, and still no refund.

I have sent 3 emails to this company using various email addresses I have found. One email bounced back, it didn't exist. The other two went through, but never received a reply. I also sent a help ticket through their parent website, webdesignboy.com - It hasn't even been read, let alone replied to.

I then called their 888 phone number. Their phone system is one big loop. When you call, you can choose 1, 2 or 3 for different departments. In my case, I choose 3 (billing). When you choose 3, it just loops back to the start and plays that same "choose 1, 2 or 3" message over and over again. So I finally just left a message on their voicemail system. I haven't received a reply.

I also called this Adeel Shaikh's personal desk and left a message there, no reply either.

Two of my friends that I lan with also ordered hosting through them, and neither of them have received their refunds either.

So, to summarize it all, I was supposed to receive my refund in 2 weeks. Its been a month. I've sent 3 emails, made 2 phone calls, and nothing. This guy has disappeared.

I'm at a loss. I'm very glad I didn't lose any more money, but damnit, it my $45!!! :mad:

Does anyone have any ideas what to do now? I'm really upset about this.
 
Chances are your money is long gone and retrieving it will prove to be difficult.
You could perform a title search on the company to find out who the registered owner is and go after him personally for your money.
You would probably have to sue to him as well to collect any funds. Chances are if they are out of business they have also filed for bankruptcy which would protect them from their creditors in which case you are S.O.L.
Sorry to hear about your loss.
I hate the feeling of being ripped off.
 
check out the forums here: www.webhostingtalk.com

And you could try to IM him but your complaints will probably fall on deaf ears. Just make sure you learn from the situation and research what companies you go to for hosting and it is usually not a good idea to get the yearly plan. Good luck:D
 
Contac PayPal - PayPal can take money from the person's account - that is if it is not empty - contact paypal with all your information and they may be able to get your a credit back - since PayPal can take the money right out of that companies account - also PayPal may not know that they went under and if they do they would likely suspend their account anyways.
 
I've already contacted PayPal. They would not help me because this service is considered intangible, i.e. no physical goods were transferred.
 
Stupid paypal - i am glad they got out of online gaming and we not longer had to use them - they them selves were a bunch of scammers!
 
I don't classify this as a scam. Its just called going out of business, plain and simple. Theres really nothing you can do but suck it up. For example a long time ago I bought a computer from Quantec(x?) can't remember for sure but anyways I had about 6 months left on my warranty and the company goes out of business but I needed a replacement part. What was I to do? Nothing, suck it up and go buy the piece myself. Just be lucky it was only $45.00 and not more.

This is also a perfect example of why I use an American Express card any chance I get. Especially one where I might be taking a chance.
 
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