Watch out for BoxSrv.com / CubedInternet - Shut down VPS + Attempted Stealing Domain

Hi all,

I wanted to provide a warning regarding a very bad experience I've just had with a hosting company called BoxSrv (a.k.a Cubed Internet).

I had a VPS with them since Jan 2014 and had so many issues and bad experiences; I was migrated a number of times (4-5) to different servers with varying reasons (better performance here, hard-drive is about to fail) and following each migration I suffered major losses of uptime.

The companies website 'about' section is false; claims to be a UK leading host with 10+ years of experience in the industry (ran by a 22 year old) and at first glance they look legit. First experiences with the company were great; they bent over backward to get me onboard and deal with the first few issues; but then it went completely downhill; with unprofessional messages sent to me, including profanity

Rather than detailing all the issues I had here's the last:

My domain was about to expire 20/12/2015; I Paid for both domain and hosting early December. Domain was renewed by them a few days ago so Nominet was showing it as renewed to Dec 2017

A few weeks ago I was sent an email telling me that they wanted to migrate me again; there was no reason, or any timeline just that they wanted to do it ASAP; this email actually ended up in my junk folder as they keep changing their email addresses. I then got an email telling me that since I hadn't replied they would just do it on a particular date; so I left them to it thinking it was done.

A few days ago I found my entire site was down; the reason from them was that my Server had now expired; they have no backups (despite offering a daily backup service) and can put me on a new server IF I provide them with all the backup files myself for the site. Not only was the site down though; but all my emails lost. Absolutely no apology! The attitude was that it was my fault this happened as I didn't reply (despite having an email communication telling me they would specifically migrate my server without requiring my confirmation)

I immediately requested that they terminate my service and I went onto Paypal to open a dispute (the last transaction was a combined payment of hosting fees and domain renewal).

The director (Paul Owens) then immediately started barraging me with emails to tell me that since I have ChargedBack (it wasn't a chargeback) all the money; he was just going to take my domain and sell it on auction!

A few mins later; I logged into Nominet and found that my site had disappeared from my profile. Pauls justification for 'taking my domain' is the domain had expired (which it hadn't since it was paid for + original expiry was at the end of 20/12 not 20/12 21:00).

I felt black mailed so quickly cancelled the Paypal dispute so there is absolutely no way that I can be accused of not paying the renewal (despite the monthly VPS hosting fees having been lost)

I've been on the phone with Nominet today who told me that Paul had actually been into my domain and changed the registered email address and residential address to his own; hence why I lost all access to manage it. Nominet confirmed that this was fraudulent behaviour and a breach of conduct of a registraar. Luckily I was able to pay Nominet (more expense) to reassociate the domain back to me, and we quickly got the domain transferred away (another fee) to a new provider.

I've just reported Paul and BoxSrv/Cubed Internet to the Cyber Crimes department of the Police to investigate; luckily my domain is now back in my hands; although I've had a financial loss, as well as loss of 2 days of my time trying to resolve this

P.S I was also told a few months ago that the reason why all the migrations were taking place was because Paul was not paying the DC's and was just spending peoples money; then moving them on to new infrastructure.

Has anyone else had similar experiences?

 

Am really sorry for bad experience but why dident changed the provider after the second migration? Did you lost your data or not?

 

After my previous migrations I didn't lose data; just had some technical (VPS Config) issues; that needed to be sorted, I hadn't lost my data at that point and the migrations were arranged and agreed. But this time I wasn't even migrated, and my server seems like it was left to die; along with all of my data inc. Email accounts

 

So sorry for that and thanks for the heads up!