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Saturday, June 18, 2011

W2Servers / W2 Interactive Inc - BBB Usage


Advertising Review

On March 8, 2011 the BBB requested that the company discontinue use of BBB trademarks which represented the company as a BBB accredited business. The company was not a BBB accredited business.
As of March 8, 2011, the company discontinued use of the BBB trademarks.

Ha! If you do not know, the BBB or Better Business Bureau, is an organization that acts as an intermediary between a company you have a dispute with and the company. In a nutshell, being BBB accredited is a good thing and most hosting providers (note "most" and not "all") avoid being BBB accredited.

W2 Servers Website - Now Hosted By Amazon EC2

Wow, with everything going on, Lyron Foster and Kellis Johnson had time to switch two providers this month? According to Low End Box, on 1/12/2011, W2 Servers was hosted on 173.212.214.235 which is HostNOC up in Scranton. The IP address is now provisioned and SWIP'd to another provider.


On June 6th, 2011 - the IP address switched to 173.234.185.151 which is owned by Ubiquity Servers and hosted out in Los Angeles. 


Yesterday, on June 17th, the IP address switched to 50.19.254.29 which is owned by Amazon EC2 for it's cloud platform. I'm glad to see Lyron Foster, Kellis Johnson and the whole W2 Servers crew utilizing the cloud but you had all the time to do that but not time to issue refunds to your clients, send out a new email explaining everything or informing us?


Now you wonder why people are talking on forums, starting up blogs like this, and yet you have the nerve to get into "sparring" matches with them due to your "bad attitude". In my customer service experience of over ten years, people with bad attitudes have them for a reason - as a defense mechanism.


Low End Box says the WHOIS info changed but I'm noticing the phone number on w2servers.com being listed as 214-635-4492 while web2reality.com, the domain they use for Paypal processing, is 469-212-7932. The 214 area code phone number went to Dallas, Texas Better Business Bureau and their listing of W2 Interactive, Inc. which if anyone felt like filing a complaint with the BBB - I would take the time out to file it because they will fight on your behalf for your money. 


The 469 area code number brought up some typical W2 Interactive, Inc. stuff but a few links brought me this precious jewel. This webpage claims that there are 2 employees with W2 Interactive, Inc and their annual revenue is $125,000


It might explain Kellis Johnson and Lyron Foster, plus the outsourced Indian tech support who answers you at 2am Eastern time in the USA.. 

W2Servers and Paypal

If you were a previous customer, you received an email about W2 Servers dropping Paypal as their payment processor and going over to a credit card processor.  On May 11th, 2011 when I purchased my "limited time" offer for a free quad-core upgrade and 1 gigabyte of RAM for $24/year when everything else was 512mb of RAM and an AMD Opteron CPU - once the payment processed, I received this email about 2 hours later.

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Received: by 10.220.201.197 with SMTP id fb5cs55192vcb;
Wed, 11 May 2011 11:48:15 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.224.179.203 with SMTP id br11mr8142413qab.197.1305139695221;
Wed, 11 May 2011 11:48:15 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path:
Received: from virtual1.hnoc.w2servers.net (virtual1.hnoc.w2servers.net [173.212.214.235])
by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id j6si824605qcu.108.2011.05.11.11.48.14
(version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER);
Wed, 11 May 2011 11:48:15 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of nobody@virtual1.hnoc.w2servers.net designates 173.212.214.235 as permitted sender) client-ip=173.212.214.235;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of nobody@virtual1.hnoc.w2servers.net designates 173.212.214.235 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=nobody@virtual1.hnoc.w2servers.net
Received: from nobody by virtual1.hnoc.w2servers.net with local (Exim 4.69)
(envelope-from )
id 1QKER3-0005J9-2G
for (removed); Wed, 11 May 2011 14:47:01 -0400
To: (removed)
Subject: Billing Changes: Paypal
Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 14:47:01 -0400
From: =?utf-8?Q?W2_Interactive=2C_Inc_=E2=84=A2?=
Message-ID:
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: PHPMailer 5.1 (phpmailer.sourceforge.net)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="b1_ce6c3ec3c0f8db49431c90796add64cb"
X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report
X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - virtual1.hnoc.w2servers.net
X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - (removed)
X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [99 99] / [47 12]
X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - virtual1.hnoc.w2servers.net

--b1_ce6c3ec3c0f8db49431c90796add64cb
Content-Type: text/plain; charset = "utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Dear Customer,

As a result of excessive fraud and abuse originating from paypal payments. We have decided to discontinue general use of paypal.

Paypal is still available as a payment option for well established customers. It will not be available in the sign-up forms, so if you wish to use paypal you must open a ticket to billing to request approval.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation.



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Seriously? Fraud and abuse payments? 


W2Servers will keep around a client who had 12 piracy violations, 74 spamming violations and 7 upstream null routings. The only "fraud" I can think of is you are playing the game of blaming someone to keep this "scam" going.


With Paypal's dispute policy, you can only dispute transactions of up to 45 days if you paid via your Paypal account as the primary source of funding. Maybe this was the idea to cut and run? However, with credit card processors, fees and other charges come up if you dispute a payment. It wouldn't be very wise to fight a $24 payment for a year's worth of VPS service when the fees charged by the bank could be $15 - 25, depending on your financial institution.


I talked to Paypal and my March VPS was paid for by Paypal funding but my May VPS was a debit card transaction processed by Paypal, which would give me an advantage to dispute the payment with my bank and I plan on doing it at 9am on Monday morning. I hope to get more information from the bank about Lyin' Lyron Foster and W2Servers / W2Interactive from the bank to put it online for others to follow through.


This is why Lyron switched to a traditional credit card processor because of the "fees" his company likes to tack on like a VPS transfer from one data center to another for $10 and "improperly" filed support tickets for another $10 per incident.


With Paypal, you would have to submit a request for $10 for the improper ticket filing and hope the client pays it. The client could simply refuse, ignore the request and would W2 Servers terminate the customer's VPS knowing full well that what would result is a Paypal / credit card dispute which would ultimately end up with Lyron Foster and his companies losing? 


With the credit card processor, you have to trust W2 Servers / W2 Interactive with having your financial information. I wouldn't even trust them beyond that, because all they would do is tack on ridiculous fees just because you filed a ticket in the wrong area where there are 10 available ticket departments so it's easy to get confused. Also, since they would have your credit card information on file, they could charge you whenever they felt like it. 


I will keep all of you updated with what happens on Monday with my bank and the challenge of disputing a payment. Hopefully, through my experience, I can show you how to dispute a payment with them while you still can and hopefully get your money back. I do not think all hope is lost, just temporarily. 


Need further proof about W2 Servers and Paypal?



Business Name:
W2 INTERACTIVE INC (The recipient of this payment is Verified)
Email: accounting@web2reality.com
Payment Sent to: billing@w2interactive.net

Why would you have two separate email accounts for this? 

Domain Name: WEB2REALITY.COM
   Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
   Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
   Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
   Name Server: NS1.W2INTERACTIVE.NET
   Name Server: NS2.W2INTERACTIVE.NET
   Status: clientDeleteProhibited
   Status: clientRenewProhibited
   Status: clientTransferProhibited
   Status: clientUpdateProhibited
   Updated Date: 09-jan-2011
   Creation Date: 25-dec-2008
   Expiration Date: 25-dec-2011

Domain is about to expire.. how convenient! 

Like all W2 Servers / W2 Interactive domains, it's registered to "Kelis Johnson" of W2 Interactive, Inc. with the address of 3767 Forest Lane, Suite 124 #1297. Dallas, Texas. 75244. I put the address into Google Maps and it appears to be a strip mall with a Starbucks nearby and a FedEx office. I'm not saying that's indicative of being a scam, it's just where the domains point to and you need to cover all the grounds when doing an investigation like this. 



Chicago / FDC: The Real Story

So "Lyin" Lyron Foster claims a hard disk failure was the cause for the server being lost in Chicago at the FDC data center... really?

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for (info removed); Wed, 25 May 2011 00:32:17 -0400
To: (info removed)
Subject: Chicago VPS Node: cr210
Date: Wed, 25 May 2011 00:32:16 -0400
From: =?utf-8?Q?W2_Interactive=2C_Inc_=E2=84=A2?=

Message-ID: <7348f0014d25c4cdf64ad71f57d41eee@securecustomercenter.com>
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: PHPMailer 5.1 (phpmailer.sourceforge.net)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="b1_7348f0014d25c4cdf64ad71f57d41eee"
X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report
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--b1_7348f0014d25c4cdf64ad71f57d41eee
Content-Type: text/plain; charset = "utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

The Chicago node: cr210 is down due to a disk failure. We are working on recovery of this server and we hope it is online soon. This server has been experiencing degraded disk performance for a while. If you need immediate access to a vps we can set your service up on another Chicago node while this one is being worked on and migrate the data over to the new node if possible once it's online again.

If you have been wanting to test out another location, we are waiving the $10 transfer fee if you wanted to transfer your service to one of our other 11 locations.

Thank you for your patience.

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network:Auth-Area:67.159.0.0/18
network:Class-Name:network
network:OrgName:FDCservers.net LLC
network:OrgID;I:DONATE-BLEACH7COM
network:Address:141 West Jackson Blvd, Suite 1135
network:City:Chicago
network:StateProv:N/A
network:PostalCode:60604
network:Country:US



Why did you lose your Chicago / FDC IP addresses to Bleach7 when all of this was allegedly a hard disk failure according to your email but going on 25 days later, FDC reassigned all your IP addresses to another customer? "Lyin" Lyron, we're not stupid. The more I dig, the more information I find.

Give everyone their money back, stop wasting everybody's time and go drink your South African wine that you love so much. 

My Personal Horror Story With W2Servers

I purchased a "promo" virtual private server from W2 Servers, in their Atlanta / Ubiquity Servers datacenter, in mid-May 2011 because I had previously purchased a server in Chicago / FDC and was offered a free quad core CPU upgrade and 1 gigabyte RAM for "a limited time" only which I purchased and had it placed in Atlanta / Ubiquity Servers.

The server provisioning was fast, the server was up and all was good.

That's about when the bottom started to fall out of W2 Servers. People were getting mad, disks were "failing" in other servers at different data centers and all the sudden, the support staff at W2 Servers had virtually disappeared. I sent in a support ticket about enabling TUN / TAP (filed 5/15/2011) and when running some tests, I was noticing the disk performance was terrible.

The performance was so bad that it was interfering with me running an ecommerce web application (OpenCart) that required the use of nginx, PHP and MySQL. 

About that week is when an email was released by W2Servers that said the disk had failed in the Chicago / FDC server and that affected customers could file a transfer request ticket to have their servers moved to another location that W2 Servers provides, plus the $10 transfer fee was waived, and that would temporarily resolve the problem.

On 5/24/2011 and 5/25/2011, I sent tickets explaining that all they needed to do was create me a new virtual private server in Atlanta and I did not need the data from Chicago / FDC since I backed up all that data so to make me a satisfied customer, just create me an Atlanta VPS so I can get back to my project.

"Sanath S" replied on 5/31/2011 that my "patience would be required", my server is in the provisioning queue, and I would receive something within 48 hours. About 60 hours later, on June 2nd, I filed another reply asking what was going on. 8 hours later, "Sanath S" responded that the administrator was creating another node, data was being transferred and they need 24 - 48 hours almost 16 days ago.

After that, I filed 2 more replies 4 days apart with no reply whatsoever.

I filed a ticket to request a transfer from Chicago / FDC to Atlanta / Ubiquity Servers to ask "customer service" what the issue was, on 6/9/2011, so that I could get my VPN installed and start using it for my own personal use. On 6/13/2011, I filed an additional reply with this same ticket asking if I qualified for a 6 month credit since that was emailed saying that affected virtual private server and dedicated server customers would receive a 6 month credit for all their downtime.

No response.

I think this is what happened...

I believe W2 Servers and "Lyin" Lyron Foster were kicked out of Chicago / FDC, which explains other customers complaining they were kicked out of other FDC locations also. I'll let you speculate as why, but I do believe it's from lack of response to abuse complaints because Lyron Foster claimed on his blog that a customer "bad mouthing him" was abusive with 12 piracy violations, 74 spamming violations and 7 upstream null routings. Why wasn't this customer terminated, Lyron? 

In that same post, Lyron says "If you're curious about this particular customer. This is a customer that was warned (repeatedly) for TOS violations and eventually terminated for just flat out refusing to listen. What terms were violated? In normal situations, I would never release any information about a specific client situation.. and even in response to this frivilous POS website full of lies i wont release his personal details"


How many CEO's, including one who promotes "how to be a perfect CEO", threatens to release client information on the Internet when W2Servers allowed this customer to be abusive by allowing support staff to keep reenabling his account after it was suspended for the above abuses - 12 piracy violations, 74 spamming violations and 7 upstream nullroutes is pretty serious. With a provider who had Cogent bandwidth, I got 2 DMCA takedown requests from MediaSentry about running a misconfigured Tor node and the provider resolved the issue with me locking down the Tor configuration with 2 accepts (80/tcp and 443/tcp) and a default reject for everything else.

Lyron, the truth is people can see past your shell game and I'm just getting started exposing you and how W2 Servers operates. You may scare this guy into not publishing anymore information, but I dare you and your "Cajun temper" which is your claim and not mine, to "publicly spar with me". You wouldn't last a minute with me and if my public information shows up on the Internet, you would be hit with a lawsuit faster than you can publish another email lie to your customers who are being left in the dark.