Terrible experience with Kansas City Host aka The Forum Heroes

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.
Same stories heard on our end, too.
 
Same stories heard on our end, too.

Im sorry to hear that. Hopefully he's not back in the forum hosting business. Well, he never really was. He was in the stealing business and he's really good at that. We paid for two high end servers, had to buy like 8 hard drives on a Saturday (Through him of course) because we had run out of room on the servers. Just so full of it. As a sys admin I should have known better but I kind of figured we could trust this guy as long as we had been doing business with him.

Can't say enough good about Ken Payne tho so if you need someone that will take care of you, Ken is the guy.

Im going to just put this here so people can see what Mike's up to.
 
Im sorry to hear that. Hopefully he's not back in the forum hosting business. Well, he never really was. He was in the stealing business and he's really good at that. We paid for two high end servers, had to buy like 8 hard drives on a Saturday (Through him of course) because we had run out of room on the servers. Just so full of it. As a sys admin I should have known better but I kind of figured we could trust this guy as long as we had been doing business with him.

Can't say enough good about Ken Payne tho so if you need someone that will take care of you, Ken is the guy.
Since having our data wiped out in Jan 2020, we have a wonderful woman running things for us out of the goodness of her heart. And we are using KnownHost as our serving company - for less money!
 
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It amazes me that so much customers loose their data. Never heard of (off-site) backups?

Make regular backups yourself and you have your site up and running at another host in a few hours.

Never completely trust a company with your data. Always make backups yourself.


 
It amazes me that so much customers loose their data. Never heard of (off-site) backups?

Make regular backups yourself and you have your site up and running at another host in a few hours.

Never completely trust a company with your data. Always make backups yourself.



Thats a bit difficult when you're completely locked out of machines you're supposed to own.

Nobody wanted to rely on a liar but when they lock you out of your own box, what other choice do you have?

When you haven't dealt with someone who can lie at the level Mike can, you don't know what its like so I guess its easy for you to sit back and judge.

We literally had to move the board in the middle of the night just to get it away from Mike. I feel sorry for anyone that ever does business with that liar again.

Hey Mike, the guys you hosted with when we had a our "fire" got a huge laugh out of that and said we actually lost our stuff because you didnt pay the hosting bill.
 
Thats a bit difficult when you're completely locked out of machines you're supposed to own.

Nobody wanted to rely on a liar but when they lock you out of your own box, what other choice do you have?

When you haven't dealt with someone who can lie at the level Mike can, you don't know what its like so I guess its easy for you to sit back and judge.

We literally had to move the board in the middle of the night just to get it away from Mike. I feel sorry for anyone that ever does business with that liar again.

Hey Mike, the guys you hosted with when we had a our "fire" got a huge laugh out of that and said we actually lost our stuff because you didnt pay the hosting bill.
That’s what happened to us! We couldn’t do our offsite back ups anymore for over two years because he had locked us out and gave us excuse after excuse. I asked politely and kindly for all that time.
 
Never completely trust a company with your data. Always make backups yourself.
Yep. I even have backups sent to two different cloud hosts, multiple times per day, and keep a "rolling" set of backups vs. having just one set of data. It's not that hard to set up. One of the cloud hosts is also set up to sync with one of my file servers at home. That is one reason I prefer a server I can work directly with via SSH and SFTP--it's all hands-on with none of those GUI front ends to get in the way. Scripts set up through cron handle it all automatically.
 
Yep. I even have backups sent to two different cloud hosts, multiple times per day, and keep a "rolling" set of backups vs. having just one set of data. It's not that hard to set up. One of the cloud hosts is also set up to sync with one of my file servers at home. That is one reason I prefer a server I can work directly with via SSH and SFTP--it's all hands-on with none of those GUI front ends to get in the way. Scripts set up through cron handle it all automatically.
Great advice! We have steps in place to save our data now, too. Thankfully our forum is small enough that we can use knownhost for one thing. And then we have an admin who backs up our data on a regular basis.
 
Since having our data wiped out in Jan 2020, we have a wonderful woman running things for us out of the goodness of her heart. And we are using KnownHost as our serving company - for less money!
I tried Known Host for a month, after about 3 weeks they shut my site down stating that I hit the limit on storage, disc etc. The site was brand new and getting no traffic, so I cancelled as fast as I could. Found another host that is twice as good for twice as less. Hosts like Known Host seems good at first but soon after getting your money the problems and issues start to surface. Least was my experience. The support was fast, but they wasn't willing to make any moves to do anything to help. Again, my experience. May be different for others. I like a host who takes the bull by the horns.
 
I tried Known Host for a month, after about 3 weeks they shut my site down stating that I hit the limit on storage, disc etc. The site was brand new and getting no traffic, so I cancelled as fast as I could. Found another host that is twice as good for twice as less.
Wow! We’re just a little place. Maybe they are better for smaller needs. We’ve been using them since the crash of January 2020 and haven’t had a bit of problem.
 
It amazes me that so much customers loose their data. Never heard of (off-site) backups?

Make regular backups yourself and you have your site up and running at another host in a few hours.

Never completely trust a company with your data. Always make backups yourself.


Yes indeed, I would never have a website that I cared about that wasn't backed up by a third party service.
 
Great advice! We have steps in place to save our data now, too. Thankfully our forum is small enough that we can use knownhost for one thing. And then we have an admin who backs up our data on a regular basis.
I used to use a managed hosting company, but a handful of things I wanted to do required root access, and/or couldn't be done on the smaller accounts which were on shared server. Not that they're a bad company (we still host a very busy XenForo installation on one of their dedicated servers, and has worked very well for 18 years now), but I wanted more control for the smaller sites. It was tough to decide to go out on a limb and configure my own server, mainly due to security issues, but I've configured it properly and have had zero issues so far.
 
Obviously not for everyone, but learning how to become your own sys admin - saves a lot of headaches and provides much peace of mind.

Plus one tends to be available to oneself 24/7 when **** hits the fan.

If nothing else, rolling daily backups are a
single click option on most decent cloud platforms - and you are always in control of that.
 
Obviously not for everyone, but learning how to become your own sys admin - saves a lot of headaches and provides much peace of mind.

Plus one tends to be available to oneself 24/7 when **** hits the fan.

If nothing else, rolling daily backups are a
single click option on most decent cloud platforms - and you are always in control of that.
That’s all well and good if you have access to your own box. I was always our admin until Mike came along. He systematically froze me out and extorted money from my partner.
 
Wow! We’re just a little place. Maybe they are better for smaller needs. We’ve been using them since the crash of January 2020 and haven’t had a bit of problem.
You will do. Take a backup of your site at the earliest opportunity and leave. I find it hard to believe Mike Schlatmann is still at liberty. If you want to know why Google is your friend.
 
I used to use a managed hosting company, but a handful of things I wanted to do required root access, and/or couldn't be done on the smaller accounts which were on shared server. Not that they're a bad company (we still host a very busy XenForo installation on one of their dedicated servers, and has worked very well for 18 years now), but I wanted more control for the smaller sites. It was tough to decide to go out on a limb and configure my own server, mainly due to security issues, but I've configured it properly and have had zero issues so far.
Yes, some hosts also don't allow you to use a third party back up system to backup your website, so if that's something that you want to do always check with the host first. I don't know why some don't allow it while others do but that's how it is.
 
Yes, some hosts also don't allow you to use a third party back up system to backup your website, so if that's something that you want to do always check with the host first. I don't know why some don't allow it while others do but that's how it is.
Probably to sell backup services that are never good.
 
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