Almost, not quite though... basically if you're paying for a continual service, then the best option is to pay monthly so you can pull the plug at any moment if the service starts to degrade.
With XenForo, its a one off payment for a product.
Terrible experience with Kansas City Host aka The Forum Heroes
- Thread starter WoL
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Almost, not quite though... basically if you're paying for a continual service, then the best option is to pay monthly so you can pull the plug at any moment if the service starts to degrade.
With XenForo, its a one off payment for a product.
BoostN
Well-known member
My post had nothing to do with a particular company, I'm giving general consumer advice. Anyone can be a host these days.. it's just not a good idea to pay that far in advance. Anything could happen... what if you don't want to own a forum anymore, what if your site dies off and you're stuck with service that you have no use for?
I have nothing against the company, or the guy.. whatever his name (or business name) is on here (both change quite frequently.)
Im bringing this back to the top after it being dormant for three years if for no other reason than to make people aware if you are considering getting hosted by Mike Edge or Mike Schlatmann, his legal name, run away as fast as you can. I can promise you that our saga with this guy trumps anything any of you guys went through. If he actually had a legal address, we would pursue legal action. Im not going go into our situation but basically it was the same as the OP except we stuck with him for a lot longer. We completely lost a forum because of a "data center fire" and our other forum is in tatters now because of him. 10k investment down the drain due to a "data center fire". If anyone wants the details, feel free to PM me. This is just a PSA in hopes of saving someone else from a lot of heartache and frustration.
We finally moved our forum under the cover of darkness just to get it away from him because it was constantly going down and he would become "unreachable" and once the Starbucks wifi dried up due to the pandemic, because, you know, living out of your van you cant have Internet, he basically did nothing.
Mike, if you're reading this, Im sorry it had to come to this but people should be aware who theyre getting into bed with.
We finally moved our forum under the cover of darkness just to get it away from him because it was constantly going down and he would become "unreachable" and once the Starbucks wifi dried up due to the pandemic, because, you know, living out of your van you cant have Internet, he basically did nothing.
Mike, if you're reading this, Im sorry it had to come to this but people should be aware who theyre getting into bed with.
Dryline
Active member
I think the community should put this poseur out to pasture just like the Vietnamese guy a few years ago. He jerked us around for awhile until we decided to look elsewhere for reliable service. He’s a huckster and a fraud and I don’t care what anyone else says. There are too many horror stories to not believe that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Data center fire? Please.
eagle eyes
Active member
I am glad i didnt do this. He asked the same from me and apparently wanted to buy a truck he loved so much.
Thats the reason I posted what I did. Ive heard he is about to try to get back into forum hosting and I want to make sure no one else falls victim to this guy.
I have a partner in our forum (used to be forumS, thanks, Mike) who is not tech savvy. Mike did everything he could to freeze me out so as not to call ******** on him. I suspect he duped my partner out of thousands of dollars but I dont have any way to prove it. Basically I handle the technical stuff and he handles everything else except Mike wouldnt talk to me because he knew I knew what was up.
I did the same. The data center we were at was in New York. I couldnt find anything. And even if it did happen, I find it hard to believe the data center would have just left us hanging. Supposedly the backup box he had was in the same rack so thats why "backups" weren't available. Its either the worst lie ever or a prime case for a Darwin award.
Will do. And I have no evidence that has happened but again, just a PSA since I was told he is going to try to get back in the forum hosting business.
Thanks for the response! Good to see youre still around!
MoonRiver
Member
Thank you! He took advantage of our forum community, too. Five years of data GONE because he wouldn't let us do a back up. He kept promising and never delivered. We help families of missing persons - even children - and he knew it! His excuses boiled over on January 2nd when he decided to take off on an adventure and leave us behind in the dust with some far-fetched story. It was horrible.
The good news is that it's behind us now. I only wanted to post my story so others don't get taken in by him.
MoonRiver
Member
BTW, be SURE you do off-site backups! Other than trusting Mike, our second worst mistake was not doing back ups for the first couple of years. By the time we were set up to do them, we were stuck because Mike wouldn't give us the CPanel access that our written agreement required. And since he doesn't appear to have assets, he had nothing to lose.
tajhay
Well-known member
Great news.
Got a really nasty message from Mike on Facebook last night with a link to this thread so I know he's still lurking around here anyways.
Hey Mike, how about returning that copy of our other site's database that you've been sitting on now for 6 weeks and then I can at least post here that you did the right thing.
Hey Mike, how about returning that copy of our other site's database that you've been sitting on now for 6 weeks and then I can at least post here that you did the right thing.
Dryline
Active member
What goes around comes around. I’m glad he’s ticked off because it sounds like he’s caused a great deal of harm and consternation to many forum owners. Once a deadbeat, always a deadbeat.
We lost 20 years of attachments, avatars, etc, a lot of stuff from people who are deceased that had been longtime members. One of our biggest contributors and most active members committed suicide a couple of years ago so we'd like to preserve his contributions if at all possible. We lost a couple of months of posts when Mike happened to find a backup of the database he had made and put it back up. This was after the "data center fire" that we called the hoster to verify and the guy literally laughed at us.
The site is still in a pretty broken state as we move hosters but Im hoping most of it can be patched back together. I happened to have a partial file backup I made several months ago when my FTP credentials were working. I know I dont have it all but I do have some of it.
We also completely lost a smaller board that we had for about 10 years. Mike said he had a database backup of that but he didnt know how old it was but now that seems to not be the case.
Anyway, buyer beware. That was my whole point of bumping this back to the top. Many other have exactly the same story dealing with Mike, like eerily similar. I dont want others to be in the boat we're in.
The site is still in a pretty broken state as we move hosters but Im hoping most of it can be patched back together. I happened to have a partial file backup I made several months ago when my FTP credentials were working. I know I dont have it all but I do have some of it.
We also completely lost a smaller board that we had for about 10 years. Mike said he had a database backup of that but he didnt know how old it was but now that seems to not be the case.
Anyway, buyer beware. That was my whole point of bumping this back to the top. Many other have exactly the same story dealing with Mike, like eerily similar. I dont want others to be in the boat we're in.
Hey Mike, I know you're reading this and since you want us to cancel the chargeback from Paypal, why don't you go ahead and give us the database for the site we paid you to redo that was up like 2 weeks before "the fire." You've always gotten paid so I don't know why you're worried now. Send us the database, once I verify its a legit copy of the missing site, you can have the money back and we can part ways.
If you think for a second we're dropping the chargeback before we get the database, you are sadly mistaken. At this point we're resigned to lose that site so its all on you.
Do the right things for once, Mike.
If you think for a second we're dropping the chargeback before we get the database, you are sadly mistaken. At this point we're resigned to lose that site so its all on you.
Do the right things for once, Mike.
eagle eyes
Active member
What is his latest hosting name?
Give him the back up Mike. Wait, you probably wont have one. Inept.
Tall City IT. His Facebook page is linked above.
I dont think he has one either. He demanded we drop the dispute then he would give it back to us. We said no and haven't heard from him since. Hate to lose that site but we had already kind of written it off so we'll just take the money back. My partner in all this helped him financially when no one else would and this is the thanks we get. He said he had been in the hospital but had made a Facebook post 3 days earlier and then deleted it according to my partner. Im not friends with Mike on Facebook and he's on like his 4th account that Im aware of.
I tried to stay out of all the dealings with Mike. He was very frustrating to deal with. He wouldn't answer of of my texts or Facebook messages, wouldn't do anything I asked him to do. We asked him to set up an offsite backup last year at our cost. Never happened. He would give me FTP credentials that didn't work, get me locked out of the box, say the credentials work, unblock me from the box, change the credentials and they magically work for a week or two and then stop working again. Wouldn't give me access to log into the box via SSH. It was just one thing after another. I wish I had more details of some of the stuff he did but I don't have enough to post anything. I can only give partial sides of the story.
Still waiting for that database backup, Mike. Tick tock. That Paypal dispute wont stay open forever.
I dont think he has one either. He demanded we drop the dispute then he would give it back to us. We said no and haven't heard from him since. Hate to lose that site but we had already kind of written it off so we'll just take the money back. My partner in all this helped him financially when no one else would and this is the thanks we get. He said he had been in the hospital but had made a Facebook post 3 days earlier and then deleted it according to my partner. Im not friends with Mike on Facebook and he's on like his 4th account that Im aware of.
I tried to stay out of all the dealings with Mike. He was very frustrating to deal with. He wouldn't answer of of my texts or Facebook messages, wouldn't do anything I asked him to do. We asked him to set up an offsite backup last year at our cost. Never happened. He would give me FTP credentials that didn't work, get me locked out of the box, say the credentials work, unblock me from the box, change the credentials and they magically work for a week or two and then stop working again. Wouldn't give me access to log into the box via SSH. It was just one thing after another. I wish I had more details of some of the stuff he did but I don't have enough to post anything. I can only give partial sides of the story.
Still waiting for that database backup, Mike. Tick tock. That Paypal dispute wont stay open forever.
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