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FeaturePrice: The Fall of a Web Host
Znews.com -- September 2, 2003
The FeaturePrice saga continues. What started out as a good quality, low-cost hosting solution has turned into a nightmare for thousands of webmasters in the past few months as internal struggles, lawsuits, and credit problems have plagued this ailing web hosting provider. The latest news? Unbelievable but true, Featureprice is back with the same claims that made it infamous. Read on for details and news updates.
Latest News
- August 28, 2003: FeaturePrice Back in Business
Atlantic.Net and Feature Price have reportedly reached a settlement agreement.
- Both parties agree that they were unable to reach a resolution that would allow them to continue with the acquisition as originally planned.
- Atlantic.Net will continue to serve and support all former Feature Price customers who have already switched to Atlantic.Net.
- Feature Price is responsible for serving customers who remain on Feature Price¹s network.
- The original Asset Purchase Agreement is null and void. No equipment will change hands. This means that customers should contact Feature Price if they have questions about Web site files that remain on Feature Price¹s equipment.
- If you are a Feature Price customer who registered your domains through Feature Price/DotRegistrar AND have signed up for an Atlantic.Net account, then you will need to go through Atlantic.Net to administer your domain using the online tool on Atlantic.net. All other customers who have inquiries regarding their domains should contact Feature Price, even if you have previously used Atlantic.Net¹s Domain Name Manager. This includes current Feature Price customers, those who have already switched to another Web hosting company (other than Atlantic.Net), and those who plan to switch to another Web hosting provider.
- All other terms of the agreement are strictly confidential. Please do not contact Atlantic.Net or Feature Price for more information, as our employees are under a confidentiality clause.
July 18, 2003: FeaturePrices Servers Still Down: Parties Continue to Attempt Resolution
Atlantic.Net and Feature Price continue attempts to resolve the server outage and access situation. Legal proceedings are continuing while these discussions occur. Former FeaturePrice customers can expect another update Wednesday, July 23, 2003.
July 14, 2003: FeaturePrice to Be Evicted from Hosting Facility
Atlantic.net announces their continued efforts to gain access to the servers located at the FeaturePrice facility. Former FeaturePrice staff have continued to bar server access to Atlantic.net staff. As of July 14,2003, FeaturePrice has been served an evicition notice and has until July 17,2003 to vacate the premises.
Atlantic.net is hiring additional staff to accomodate the requests of FeaturePrice's 40,000+ customer base.
July 1, 2003: FeaturePrice Bars Atlantic.net from Access to Servers -- Sites Down
FeaturePrice was sold to Atlantic.net in May. However, for those ex-FeaturePrice customers who did not purchase a new Atlantic.net hosting account, hosting remained on FeaturePrice servers. Those websites have been up and running under Atlantic.net management since the end of May. On July 1, however, the former FeaturePrice.com owners barred Atlantic.net from accessing these servers, and the websites have now been down for several days. Atlantic.net reports that they have no idea of when these websites will be back online, and there are rumors that all the data on these FeaturePrice servers has been lost. Stay tuned for more updates. Read the Atlantic.net webpage posting for more information about this issue.
May 22, 2003: FeaturePrice Sold to Atlantic.net
FeaturePrice has been sold to Atlantic.net. The new owner is working diligently to transfer accounts to Atlantic.net. Premium packages, however are more costly than the multiple-domain hosting packages that had been offered by FeaturePrice. See our Budget Web Hosting Reviews for additional hosting options.
FeaturePrice Background
FeaturePrice was once a succesful hosting provider, with some 60,000 customers and over twenty full-time employees, with profits of over $1.5 million. The company is now under investigation by the Florida Attorney General due to customer complaints. See more information about the Attorney General's investigation.
The problems at FeaturePrice seem to have started when one of the partners, Fathi Said and founder Travis Johnson had a falling out in late 2002. According to a a posted message, the problems allegedly stem from a sideline hosting business that Said was running for his own profit using FeaturePrice resources. These charges have not been confirmed by Said, who is forbidden from commenting on the case, and has since moved back to Austria. At one point late last year, a Customer Support representative indicated that "there are big problems here right now, which I can't talk about."
The subsequent break up of the partnership resulted in various major problems for customers. For example, customers who had registered their initial domain name through FeaturePrice were unable to administer the domain names or switch registrars because the domains were hosted in the name of FeaturePrice, but Said was the only one in conrol of the contact info email address (bedns@bedns.com). Attempting to contact customer service to resolve such issues proved to be virtually impossible. FeaturePrice has now made these records accessible through the FeaturePrice helpdesk at helpdesk.featureprice.com.
The domains were originally registered with DotRegistrar, an ICANN-accredited registrar. DotRegistrar has posted the following message in regards to the FeaturePrice issues: "iHoldings.com, Inc d/b/a Dotregistrar.com is not at this time nor was in the past affiliated with FeaturePrice or Hosting Networks and have no other relationship than that of Reseller, Registrant and Registrar.
We are aware of the problems regarding their hosting services and we are in contact with their legal counsel working to help them solve the issue of unpaid expiring registrations."
Once a domain contains your contact information, you may be able transfer the domain from DotRegistrar. Though DotRegistrar originally told us the transfer would not go through without unlocking the domain name first, we later received a message that the domain can't be transferred without first creating a new account. However, DotRegistrar also has not been very helpful in assisting stranded FeaturePrice customers. If you have complaints about DotRegistrar, you may file registrar complaints with InterNIC here.
The growing demand from dissatisfied FeaturePrice customers proved to be too much for the low-cost hosting provider to handle, and phone calls, helpdesk tickets, and email messages soon went completely unanswered.
Long down-times, an untrained support staff through an Indian outsource company, and constant busy signals at the company's telephone numbers made matters worse for customers who had already suffered through a complete data-loss in the fall of 2002, and now found themselves stuck with a web hosting provider that had hijacked their domain names and was unresponsive to their pleas for suppport.
Is FeaturePrice Going Out of Business?
The following message was posted in late April, purportedly from FeaturePrice's founder, Travis Johnson. The message is a strange rant about former employees, disgruntled customers and vendors. Johnson reportedly posted the message in despair when FeaturePrice's credit card processor, Nova Information Systems suspended payment to FeaturePrice due to the alarming number of chargebacks, refunds to FeaturePrice customers. We were unable to reach Mr. Johnson or anyone at FeaturePrice for comment or to verify the validity of this letter, as the FeaturePrice contact phone numbers return a busy signal, and Johnson's personal email is no longer functioning. Below is the text of the letter that appeared on FeaturePrice.com:
"Featureprice's Closing is NOT BY ITS DECISION. It is due to Nova Information Systems (merchantconnect.com) "holding" the revenues from featureprice. Featureprice has not seen a penny since the "hold" and FP must shutdown since it has no money, no realized revenues. FP cannot pay employees or anything due to Nova's position.
FP tried to work with many companies, none of which where willing to "assume liabilities" and that placed all the deals in the trash can. FP tried to work with many creative ideas. So this is NOT FP's wishes to shutdown, the decision is not ours to make.
All clients are recommended to move within the next 14days.
All sites and servers will be left online while we are closing down. All clients are requested to download all files and here is a list of Companies that have been to visit Featureprice and have not been able to reach any deal that would allow a smooth migration to their services...
Ecommerce.com is under control by Fathi Said (stolen), SiteandSites and a host of other domain names are owned exclusively by Fathi Said. Stay away from any site or business that has Austrian Ownership or Fathi Said or any other affiliation with Fathi Said. The problem with this is that Fathi will setup anywhere at anytime, you may or may not know who is actually behind that company, Fathi will use other names, and etc to fool you, be warned and becareful. Fathi while in office ran several businesses "on the side" and sold services that looked like the respective names but were indeed FP services, no one at FP approved this but Fathi, Fathi also registered Dotregister domains for the clients and did not title them in the right names or addresses but with 100% owned by featureprice client, these domains were held hostage, with numerous other domains like Featureprice.com unless the officers of FP were to give him over a half million dollars, the officers called the FBI for Ext
ortion. The officers of the company were faced with a decision to make, sign a release of ecommerce to fathi or face the domains of all our clients to be misdirected. Fathi got his release and then we got the passwords to the account, all of this was done with communications with the FBI and corporate counsel. Fathi also worked with many companies that we will not release the names of and received payments for the placement of their domains in the list of directories. More to come?
Perfect Example of MISUSE of information is bulletin boards that release information that is private and confidential, family, children, mothers and fathers and innocent contract employees have been hurt by a lot of clients and former employees (any employee dismissed from FP was for cause, drugs, etc.) that misuse their sources of information, they signed agreements with Equifax and Online Record Searches to not MISUSE this information, they have violated the agreements and have resulted in hurt and anguish for these people. Bulletin Boards, Hate Sites, Etc. have been formed and state very wrong things and distort the truth of FP and don't state that Officers and Supervisors and Staff worked 12-16hrs a day 7 days a week to keep services stable as much as humanly possible and as much as can be done with shared hosting servers and those whom abuse them, spam from them.
This site will be updated ongoing and will tell the story of FP and all that has led to this, you will know about everything, you will know even to the potential deals that did not work with companies and why FP was not purchased (and NO! it is not because of anything bad) but the dealings in corporate business. And finally but not least, FP was never about just money, FP was about the dream and goals of a few people that made it happen and gave their all, not of the false and untrue statements of upset people. We will write parts and publish in parts, visit back often and don't miss a line.
Thank you for those clients that have called FP home for years and thank you to all those whom have supported FP since they came to know the truth and spirit of the company."
FeaturePrice currently does not have any technical support response for its basic services. A message on FeaturePrice's website reads: "Featureprice Technical Support Helpdesk will resume shortly, this was interrupted for migration and for implementation of our new phone systems. The helpdesk will resume shortly as well. Featureprice had also experienced "defacing" of our website by entities that wished to make an impression, similar to those defacing other very popular web sites.
Clients of Featureprice will greatly be impressed by and encouraged by our new call center efficiency and technical support employee's. Featureprice is not and has not "gone out of business," we're simply getting better and more comfortable for the years to come in offering the Featureprice value of hosting to-date."
We have not been able to confirm whether the above letter is the same "defacing" that is referred to in the FeaturePrice website. However, FeaturePrice has not yet resumed the quality service for which it has been known in past years.
Contact Information
Feature Price is owned by Hosting Network Inc which also owns Edison Telephone Company, both of Ft. Myers Florida.
You can contact Travis and Kimberly Faye Johnson, the owners of FeaturePrice, at their Edison Telephone company numbers (239) 622-4444, or (239) 622-3333.
You can contact the Florida Attorney General's office about its FeaturePrice investigation. Refer to
Case Number: L03-3-1071 (started Feb. 2003):
Andrea Chilton
Economic Crimes Division
3507 frontage road Suite 325
Tampa, FL 33607
Tel: 813-287-7950, Fax 813-281-5515
Alternative Hosting Solutions
If you are a dissatisfied FeaturePrice customer, you can find alternative hosting providers in the Budget Web Host Reviews
or click directly to these top web hosting providers:
Please send us your comments and experiences with FeaturePrice.
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