The banned post
The article below was posted on Spymac but got deleted and I got banned for it. I can see how Spymac wants to hide its dirty laundry, but I think it's important to let other Spymac customers know what they are getting into. So, it's posted here out of reach of sly Spymac admins.
I am out.
I finally got my domain back from SpaceTrend and I did not pay. Initially, I wrote very friendly emails to David Stonies, who runs SpaceTrend. Unfortunately, I ran into a brick wall - David would not budge and stubbornly demanded payment until mid 2007 even if I wanted to change the provider right now. The whole claim seemed ridiculous to me and I contacted law firm Eisenbeis Rechtsanwälte that was recommended to me and spoke with a Mario Hoffmann from their Dresden office, who specializes in IT, e-commerce and contract law.
In the last minute, however, I got an email from an Andre Schilling at SpaceTrend, who, in a complete u-turn of attitude, offered to transfer my domain. So, here it is: life and free bustspammers.com in all its simplicity.
In all fairness, I have to say that AFAIK Mr. Hoffmann had not contacted SpaceTrend yet, but I had told them I would pursue the matter further and let someone else decide the case. Honestly, I almost wish this had gone to court. I'm just curious how a judge would have decided.
I believe there's a good chance Andre Schilling and David Stonies is actually the same person. Not only came their emails from the same address, but also from the same IP, sent over a cell phone network from the same mobile device. It's also interesting that David Stonies is listed as the owner and operator of Spacetrend everywhere, yet he suddenly gets overruled by a Andre Schilling who is never mentioned anywhere in relation with Spacetrend. Finally their emails showed similar patterns of spelling and grammar mistakes. Perhaps David realized he has no leg to stand on and wanted to save face by using a different name.
I thought I might share a few more things that I learned along the way.
Spymac and Spacetrend are closely related
Spacetrend is not a real company
It's a name for a business, sure. But it's not a company by itself. Spacetrend is run by D. Stonies as sole proprietor. That's why he must use his full personal name and can't use any company indicator, such as Inc., Ltd. or GmbH. But even sole proprietors, if their activities exceed a certain scope and size, are treated as real companies (Kaufmannseigenschaft) and must register in the Ha ndelsregister, a mandatory registry for all companies in Germany. Spacetrend is not registered and takes advantage of an exemption for small businesses, which "in kind and volume do not require a properly established company." (rough translation of §1(2) HGB). This exemption is for instance so that uncle John, who frequently sells selfmade handicrafts on the flea market or a teacher who tutors in her spare time don't have unnecessary red tape. Now you know what league Spacetrend plays in.
For what it's worth, Spacetrend is not even listed in the phone book, neither under Spacetrend nor under Stonies and not in the Yellow Pages either.
And oh, Google Maps is a great thing - wanna see Spacetrend headquarters? What, it looks more like a single-family home surrounded by fields to you? Well, what do you expect from a business that does not require a properly established company? Still surprised he billed some poor chap all the way back to 1970?
Speaking of Google. How many Google hits do you think should a hosting company get that boasts on its homepage "Since 2003, SpaceTrend has been providing targeted, secure and reliable services to corporations, small businesses and B2B." (BTW, what's the difference between serving businesses and B2B??) Hmm, not counting the recent mentionings here at Spymac, how about six? And even of those six only TWO hits actually refer to this "company" - its own homepage and a Wikipedia article about Spymac. The other 4 are listings of expired domains. How's that for an experienced, established company?
Spacetrend has no IT infrastructure
As shown above, Spacetrend has no servers of its own, it uses Clanotopia servers. That's called reselling, a common practice in the hosting industry. If you stay with Spacetrend you need to be aware that you're actually being served by Clanotopia.
Maybe that's a real company? Kind of. It takes advantage of new EU rules and is registered as a Ltd. in the UK although it operates in Germany. That allows Dominic Geisler to circumvent the more stringent requirements for the German equivalent, the GmbH. In particular, a GmbH needs a minimum of €25,000 in capital. Clanotopia IT Ltd.'s capital is all of €10,000. Think for yourself how far you get trying to build a hosting infrastructure with about $12,500!
That means they must be renting resources from yet another company, apparently Interxion. This should give you an idea of how fast *Spacetrend* could solve any hardware-related problems for you, the the buyer from the buyer from the buyer from the real provider.
More interestingly, every email I ever got from them, whether from "Andre Schilling" or from "David Stonies", was sent from the same Windows laptop connected to the E-Plus GPRS cellular network. GPRS speeds are roughly comparable with dial-up modems. I'm wondering: does David Stonies' hosting "company" not even have a decent DSL line?
More about Clanotopia
The fact that Clanotopia runs the Spymac servers and now also the Spacetrend servers should give everyone who ever had reliability issues with Spymac the shudders. But I found a few more tidbits.
Clanotopia also runs YourWebStart, a hosting service. There are tons of threads in other forums complaining about YourWebStart or YWS, for example here where Dominic Geisler is actually threatening the forum master with lawyers demanding to take down the posts. On ciao.de, a review website, YWS got mostly bad reviews. To prop it up a little bit, Dominc Geisler reviewed his own company there, of course with stellar feedback. Too bad for him that he got caught.
Also the fanclub that David Stonies and Dominic Geisler ran together got lots and lots of complaints. They promised their customers services that they had no way of delivering (Spymac hosting customers, sounds familiar?) They posed as an "official" fan club sanctioned by the band's label although they only "talked about it" with them. But it was enough for Clanotopia to try and strong-arm other fan clubs even in other countries to join Clanotopia and pay €20 membership fee. Didn't work, fortunately. It got so bad that the label actually distanced itself from Clanotopia, specifically mentioning Spacetrend's Dave Stonies by name.
As I said, Clanotopia is a Ltd. company. To establish a Ltd. you need at least two entities (persons or other companies). It seems Dominic Geisler didn't have a real partner, so he used the services of a René de la Porte, who made a business out of acting as a straw man for wannabe non-UK Ltd owners. Since they need an address in the UK, he even lends his address to dozens of them, essentially establishing letterbox companies. Interestingly, René de la Porte's name also shows up in various posts connecting him to domain stealing, a practice that takes advantage of a technical glitch where domains are unregistered for seconds during a transfer.
I'm not saying that Clanotopia is involved in the latter, but it's certainly good to know what kind of people the company associates with. It also means that Dominic Geisler uses the facade of a repspectable shared-responsibility Ltd. for a litlle €10,000 one-man show. Legally, there's nothing wrong with this, but potential customers should be aware.
The thin capital base also means that if he needs more cash, it must be debt. Now, what do you think how much of a buffer Clanotopia has to last through bumpy times and unforseen events?
Also, as an UK Ltd. Clanotopia is required to file certain documents with the British Companies House. If it's any indication for its reliability, Clanotopia's accounts are overdue since Oct 2005, the return is overdue since March.
But what do you really expect of a company whose corporate motto is "Fuck the World!" Assuming that every customer and business partner is from this world, how does that make you feel?
1centnethosting vs. SpaceTrend
Spymac claims to have acted in its customers' best interest by choosing Spacetrend. Everyone who read so far probably already has a creepy feeling that this is just a bunch of bollocks. Anyone happy here with their "generous" 30% discount? Have you all seen 1centhosting? Oh, what's that, same name, same address as Spacetrend? Yes, David Stonies runs this one, too. Hosting for 1 cent a day. Do the math, that is €3.65 per YEAR! Sure, there is a €15 setup fee and domains are extra. But still, how does that compare to what Spacetrend demanded from you?
Not that I think 1centhosting would be an excllent choice, but if Spymac absolutely had to hand off their hosting customers to their crony, couldn't they at least have offered us those conditions?
Honestly though, I wonder how sustainable it is to offer unlimited data transfer for €3.65 per year (actually €3.15 before 16% sales tax). But that's not my problem. 1centhosting runs on the same Clanotopia server as Spacetrend (193.25.114.101) and according to their announcement is in the end served by Interxion. Opinions on the web (there are a few more Google hits for 1centhosting) are mostly cautious and point out that David Stonies has not track record as a hoster.
Legal Aspects
I saw a few people here talking about suing Spacetrend. A few things to think about: Spacetrend is German. That means in principal you need a lawyer who can practice in Germany. Mr. Hoffmann would have worked for me but it's obviously more difficult if you're not German.
According to Mr. Hoffmann, US-type class action suits don't exist in Germany, so initially everyone will be on their own. However, the judge can decide to combine individual cases. If anyone else wants to pursue this route, you should get together, find one lawyer who files all your cases and then requests to have them combined. You can ask your lawyer about "Streitgenossenschaft".
German lawyers don't work on contingency. That means you'll have to pony up first, and it won't be cheap. You can recoup your costs though if you win.
On the other side, even Germans can actually bring a class action suit in the US against a German firm if the matter is related to the US. This may be the case if there are US citizens involved and the service was offered in the US. International legal aid agreements might help with enforcing a judgement. Actually, I think this may be worth looking into.
What's the chance of winning this? Not too bad. You could argue that the Spymac TOS, including the 99.5% uptime guarantee are part of the contract you entered into. Breach of contract occured when Spymac violated these terms. This can easily be documented, for example here (safe that thread and quoted posts, Spymac might "lose" them). I also have a log of several outages. The fact that Spymac didn't charge could be seen as a confirmation that the contract was void. In this case, David Stonies would have no contract to base his claims on and his requests for payment with the 30% discount would simply be an offer for a new contract that you may or may not agree to. The fact that he tries to coerce you to enter into this new contract by holding your domain hostage might be held against him, too.
And of course, if you can show that you actually tried to cancel and move away from Spymac, even better.
That's all. I just thought these facts might help others making their decision what to do about this Spacetrend thing. If I had known then what I know now about Clanotopia and its links to Spymac, I would never have paid for Spymac hosting in the first place. Now that my domain has no connection to Spymac anymore and whith what has become of Spymac, I have no reason to come here again. I may reply if there are any more questions, but this will be the last thread I ever post in.
Dude2 aka Dude
I am out.
I finally got my domain back from SpaceTrend and I did not pay. Initially, I wrote very friendly emails to David Stonies, who runs SpaceTrend. Unfortunately, I ran into a brick wall - David would not budge and stubbornly demanded payment until mid 2007 even if I wanted to change the provider right now. The whole claim seemed ridiculous to me and I contacted law firm Eisenbeis Rechtsanwälte that was recommended to me and spoke with a Mario Hoffmann from their Dresden office, who specializes in IT, e-commerce and contract law.
In the last minute, however, I got an email from an Andre Schilling at SpaceTrend, who, in a complete u-turn of attitude, offered to transfer my domain. So, here it is: life and free bustspammers.com in all its simplicity.
In all fairness, I have to say that AFAIK Mr. Hoffmann had not contacted SpaceTrend yet, but I had told them I would pursue the matter further and let someone else decide the case. Honestly, I almost wish this had gone to court. I'm just curious how a judge would have decided.
I believe there's a good chance Andre Schilling and David Stonies is actually the same person. Not only came their emails from the same address, but also from the same IP, sent over a cell phone network from the same mobile device. It's also interesting that David Stonies is listed as the owner and operator of Spacetrend everywhere, yet he suddenly gets overruled by a Andre Schilling who is never mentioned anywhere in relation with Spacetrend. Finally their emails showed similar patterns of spelling and grammar mistakes. Perhaps David realized he has no leg to stand on and wanted to save face by using a different name.
I thought I might share a few more things that I learned along the way.
Spymac and Spacetrend are closely related
- Dominic Geisler is a ranking Spymac employee
See www.spymac.com/network.php?p=team. In other sources, he is named in German as Spymac's "Technischer Leiter", which means "Technical Director". He also represented Spymac in meetings with other ISPs.
- Spymac's Dominic Geisler also runs another company "Clanotopia"
www.clanotopia.de
- David Stonies and Dominic Geisler are friends and colleagues at Clanotopia
See Google cache page. This page might expire at some point, but as of now it clearly shows both of their bios side by side as managers of a commercial fan club the two are running with Clanotopia. See also here under "Cheyenne": "Ich bin Dave Stonies und war bis zum 28.2.2005 zuständiger Fanclub-Manager für Vanilla Ninja bei Clanotopia."
- David Stonies runs SpaceTrend
www.spacetrend.de/contact.php
- Spymac is Clanotopia customer
Clanotopia has an IT arm "Clanotopia IT-Service Ltd." It lists Spymac as its top client. It says there "Clanotopia IT-Service has been commissioned to maintain the entire IT infrastructure" (of Spymac).
- SpaceTrend uses Clanotopia servers
The IP for spacetrend.com is 193.25.114.101 Check here.
193.25.114.101 belongs to Clanotopia with Spymac's Dominic Geisler as registered owner. Check here.
Spacetrend is not a real company
It's a name for a business, sure. But it's not a company by itself. Spacetrend is run by D. Stonies as sole proprietor. That's why he must use his full personal name and can't use any company indicator, such as Inc., Ltd. or GmbH. But even sole proprietors, if their activities exceed a certain scope and size, are treated as real companies (Kaufmannseigenschaft) and must register in the Ha ndelsregister, a mandatory registry for all companies in Germany. Spacetrend is not registered and takes advantage of an exemption for small businesses, which "in kind and volume do not require a properly established company." (rough translation of §1(2) HGB). This exemption is for instance so that uncle John, who frequently sells selfmade handicrafts on the flea market or a teacher who tutors in her spare time don't have unnecessary red tape. Now you know what league Spacetrend plays in.
For what it's worth, Spacetrend is not even listed in the phone book, neither under Spacetrend nor under Stonies and not in the Yellow Pages either.
And oh, Google Maps is a great thing - wanna see Spacetrend headquarters? What, it looks more like a single-family home surrounded by fields to you? Well, what do you expect from a business that does not require a properly established company? Still surprised he billed some poor chap all the way back to 1970?
Speaking of Google. How many Google hits do you think should a hosting company get that boasts on its homepage "Since 2003, SpaceTrend has been providing targeted, secure and reliable services to corporations, small businesses and B2B." (BTW, what's the difference between serving businesses and B2B??) Hmm, not counting the recent mentionings here at Spymac, how about six? And even of those six only TWO hits actually refer to this "company" - its own homepage and a Wikipedia article about Spymac. The other 4 are listings of expired domains. How's that for an experienced, established company?
Spacetrend has no IT infrastructure
As shown above, Spacetrend has no servers of its own, it uses Clanotopia servers. That's called reselling, a common practice in the hosting industry. If you stay with Spacetrend you need to be aware that you're actually being served by Clanotopia.
Maybe that's a real company? Kind of. It takes advantage of new EU rules and is registered as a Ltd. in the UK although it operates in Germany. That allows Dominic Geisler to circumvent the more stringent requirements for the German equivalent, the GmbH. In particular, a GmbH needs a minimum of €25,000 in capital. Clanotopia IT Ltd.'s capital is all of €10,000. Think for yourself how far you get trying to build a hosting infrastructure with about $12,500!
That means they must be renting resources from yet another company, apparently Interxion. This should give you an idea of how fast *Spacetrend* could solve any hardware-related problems for you, the the buyer from the buyer from the buyer from the real provider.
More interestingly, every email I ever got from them, whether from "Andre Schilling" or from "David Stonies", was sent from the same Windows laptop connected to the E-Plus GPRS cellular network. GPRS speeds are roughly comparable with dial-up modems. I'm wondering: does David Stonies' hosting "company" not even have a decent DSL line?
More about Clanotopia
The fact that Clanotopia runs the Spymac servers and now also the Spacetrend servers should give everyone who ever had reliability issues with Spymac the shudders. But I found a few more tidbits.
Clanotopia also runs YourWebStart, a hosting service. There are tons of threads in other forums complaining about YourWebStart or YWS, for example here where Dominic Geisler is actually threatening the forum master with lawyers demanding to take down the posts. On ciao.de, a review website, YWS got mostly bad reviews. To prop it up a little bit, Dominc Geisler reviewed his own company there, of course with stellar feedback. Too bad for him that he got caught.
Also the fanclub that David Stonies and Dominic Geisler ran together got lots and lots of complaints. They promised their customers services that they had no way of delivering (Spymac hosting customers, sounds familiar?) They posed as an "official" fan club sanctioned by the band's label although they only "talked about it" with them. But it was enough for Clanotopia to try and strong-arm other fan clubs even in other countries to join Clanotopia and pay €20 membership fee. Didn't work, fortunately. It got so bad that the label actually distanced itself from Clanotopia, specifically mentioning Spacetrend's Dave Stonies by name.
As I said, Clanotopia is a Ltd. company. To establish a Ltd. you need at least two entities (persons or other companies). It seems Dominic Geisler didn't have a real partner, so he used the services of a René de la Porte, who made a business out of acting as a straw man for wannabe non-UK Ltd owners. Since they need an address in the UK, he even lends his address to dozens of them, essentially establishing letterbox companies. Interestingly, René de la Porte's name also shows up in various posts connecting him to domain stealing, a practice that takes advantage of a technical glitch where domains are unregistered for seconds during a transfer.
I'm not saying that Clanotopia is involved in the latter, but it's certainly good to know what kind of people the company associates with. It also means that Dominic Geisler uses the facade of a repspectable shared-responsibility Ltd. for a litlle €10,000 one-man show. Legally, there's nothing wrong with this, but potential customers should be aware.
The thin capital base also means that if he needs more cash, it must be debt. Now, what do you think how much of a buffer Clanotopia has to last through bumpy times and unforseen events?
Also, as an UK Ltd. Clanotopia is required to file certain documents with the British Companies House. If it's any indication for its reliability, Clanotopia's accounts are overdue since Oct 2005, the return is overdue since March.
But what do you really expect of a company whose corporate motto is "Fuck the World!" Assuming that every customer and business partner is from this world, how does that make you feel?
1centnethosting vs. SpaceTrend
Spymac claims to have acted in its customers' best interest by choosing Spacetrend. Everyone who read so far probably already has a creepy feeling that this is just a bunch of bollocks. Anyone happy here with their "generous" 30% discount? Have you all seen 1centhosting? Oh, what's that, same name, same address as Spacetrend? Yes, David Stonies runs this one, too. Hosting for 1 cent a day. Do the math, that is €3.65 per YEAR! Sure, there is a €15 setup fee and domains are extra. But still, how does that compare to what Spacetrend demanded from you?
Not that I think 1centhosting would be an excllent choice, but if Spymac absolutely had to hand off their hosting customers to their crony, couldn't they at least have offered us those conditions?
Honestly though, I wonder how sustainable it is to offer unlimited data transfer for €3.65 per year (actually €3.15 before 16% sales tax). But that's not my problem. 1centhosting runs on the same Clanotopia server as Spacetrend (193.25.114.101) and according to their announcement is in the end served by Interxion. Opinions on the web (there are a few more Google hits for 1centhosting) are mostly cautious and point out that David Stonies has not track record as a hoster.
Legal Aspects
I saw a few people here talking about suing Spacetrend. A few things to think about: Spacetrend is German. That means in principal you need a lawyer who can practice in Germany. Mr. Hoffmann would have worked for me but it's obviously more difficult if you're not German.
According to Mr. Hoffmann, US-type class action suits don't exist in Germany, so initially everyone will be on their own. However, the judge can decide to combine individual cases. If anyone else wants to pursue this route, you should get together, find one lawyer who files all your cases and then requests to have them combined. You can ask your lawyer about "Streitgenossenschaft".
German lawyers don't work on contingency. That means you'll have to pony up first, and it won't be cheap. You can recoup your costs though if you win.
On the other side, even Germans can actually bring a class action suit in the US against a German firm if the matter is related to the US. This may be the case if there are US citizens involved and the service was offered in the US. International legal aid agreements might help with enforcing a judgement. Actually, I think this may be worth looking into.
What's the chance of winning this? Not too bad. You could argue that the Spymac TOS, including the 99.5% uptime guarantee are part of the contract you entered into. Breach of contract occured when Spymac violated these terms. This can easily be documented, for example here (safe that thread and quoted posts, Spymac might "lose" them). I also have a log of several outages. The fact that Spymac didn't charge could be seen as a confirmation that the contract was void. In this case, David Stonies would have no contract to base his claims on and his requests for payment with the 30% discount would simply be an offer for a new contract that you may or may not agree to. The fact that he tries to coerce you to enter into this new contract by holding your domain hostage might be held against him, too.
And of course, if you can show that you actually tried to cancel and move away from Spymac, even better.
That's all. I just thought these facts might help others making their decision what to do about this Spacetrend thing. If I had known then what I know now about Clanotopia and its links to Spymac, I would never have paid for Spymac hosting in the first place. Now that my domain has no connection to Spymac anymore and whith what has become of Spymac, I have no reason to come here again. I may reply if there are any more questions, but this will be the last thread I ever post in.
Dude2 aka Dude
29 Comments:
Sounds very sketchy. I'm happy I never bought anything from them.
Thanks for putting together such an organised post. I am very glad that I managed to get my domain from them before the shit hit the fan.
Good research. Hopefully it will help the other people who are still fighting.
Janmc
that explains so much
Hi Dude.
I used to be "Fatblagger" - banned for bringing exactly this up. They used the argumentation that it was "slander". Neat job of accusing me of slander when exposing this sort of thing.
Nice job.
Hi...Reinholder here. I was also banned when I started challenging spymac on their ineptitude and lack of customer service. It may be worth noting that club, their new features also run foul. I signed up, thought everything was fine and then when they banned me...indefinitely by the way for pointing out they had one of the worst news reporting teams on the planet, They continued asking for a payment for club for the next year.
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
Dear Dude,
Before you get banned again, let me just say, that aside from feeling that Spymac has screwed everyone, I feel that they are all just contemplating some new way to mess with us.
Recently I found out that, those who signed up now for the club membership, will not be asked if they want to continue using it when their membership expires, but rather they will automatically renew the membership. This to me is a trap. First and foremost, no one can find any damn "CANCEL MY MEMBERSHIP" button in their control center. Meaning all paying members are uncertain how this will continue. With Spymac updating their policies on a daily basis, one has to wonder how legit this place is.
You can even find a case on Spymac on the Better Business Bureau website :
http://www.newyork.bbb.org/reports/businessreports.aspx?pid=44&page=1&id=86842
Now, this case is still open and still active. Their HQ is somewhere in NY, they say. Yet, also, recently I found out that the entire operation is done in Germany and Canada. Spymac is too secretive about its operations and business. At this point, cause I joined up back when they said that for $25 you could get a full years membership etc. in Spymac IV, I did join and now I don't know if they will renew my membership automatically or not. You can never get a clear answer from anyone here... It often times feels like a scam.
Am I happy with this place? Simple answer no... I hate their power hungry moderators and how they ban certain people and others are left alone... Or rather they still keep flying under the radar. I hate how they claim they have ALL these rules and everything is oh so good here, yet, it is ONE BIG MESS, and worst of all, they don't seem to fathom what keeps this community happy.
They have lost sight a long time ago about what this entire purpose of making Spymac really was for.
People are not allowed to speak their minds, they are treated like dirt and there is no help to be found anywhere from the so called people who run Spymac. Their support mechanism is a few, moderators, and others who are just ordinary people with a little too much power between their hands. I often see, how people write derogatory remarks to other members, and they are left without a warning... You wire ASS ONCE, and you get a warning... Yet Ass can mean the animal as well... Their censorship, is what most people here refer to as the thought police...
They take sides with people they like to talk with even though they might have done something completely wrong. Moderators joining in on discussions and when they feel they no longer reflect, what he otherwise though other saw him as, an intelligent person, he closes the thread or warns you... Better yet, he lets his other friends who happen to be mods warn you.
Now, here is something you might not have known. During spymacs existence, those so called neutral moderators and people who ran Spymac, had made false accounts, to pretend they could join in a discussion and defend Spymac. They harassed members, called them names (before they implemented the no name calling policy, yet condescending remarks are allowed), they made threats and then one day, they got exposed... Did they stop making fake accounts to defend Spymac and some of their employees? No... Though they said they would look into it and fix this problem, they just pretended like so many other companies. But we know, that the mods STILL have two or three accounts and they can make as many as they want.
Which brings me to another point, the Spymac community counter or population. It currently states that the Spymac Population is 1,001.860. Move your cursor over it and it shows you how many active members are online RIGHT NOW. It currently states 2554 (it always hovers around this amount).
BUT, if you look at the tab beneath it called ONLINE, it then states, 981 (42 members).
OK, just the numbers then :
Population : 1,001.860
Members Online : 2554
Online stat : 981
Members : 42
This sounds more like something coming out of the white house than something done by a real computer. Computers can count, and people can lie...
So out of over a million users, we have 2554 people online, yet their indicator shows, that they are only 981 and if you look at the members it is only 42. So... What is going on here?
And it gets better, with over a million users, guess how many staff members are online... ONE, and it is Dan-Ptycia who by the way is Tech-Support. Where are the mods for a million users?
Threads are dead boring, people bitch and moan about threads they have seen 3 years ago, and there is NO LIFE here anymore...
It is the same people over and over again... The same regurgitating negativity as seen before...
In other words, this place is dying... It is a sinking ship, and at some point people will drown and get hurt. Will spymac take money from people who didn't authorize it? Yes, they have done this before, so why would they not pretend this was another computer hickup? A desperate company will do anything to survive or get a little extra cash...
So, what am I still doing here?
I have a few very good people I like to talk to... But I will try to move them away from this place and see if we can find some other place to continue... One that is done... I am gone for good. Spymac promised us all that this place would be awesome, it turned out to be a joke... And when they shut off spymac for about a week without telling anyone about it, it was the lowest point of all... No warnings that the servers will be off, no emails to members or paying members, they just closed it... Yet they had enough time to make a stupid commercial that was on the main page of Spymac announcing Spymac V... We were barely had anything that worked in Spymac IV, so, who can they update it to Spymac V?
Simple, Applications you can give version numbers such as 1, 1.1, 2 etc. On each update they fix something or introduce something new.
SPYMAC IS NOT AN APPLICATION, it is a service, when a service announces from Spymac 3 going to Spymac 4 and then 5, one has to understand that these updates, mean new services and better EVERYTHING! But someone grossly misunderstood the process of this and thought that by doing bug fixes, they can allow to make Spymac change its name to version 5. And boy, oh boy they were proud to announce it... People were still suffering and the wound was still bleeding from the mismanagement of Spymac 4. Do these people even know how to run a business? Clearly not... And it often feels like it is run by children... Cause they act like it.
They have promised so much... And we got so little... All we get is grief...
Is it worth the 25 bucks we spent?
No...
And I would warn anyone one who is thinking of buying a membership here... You can buy an awesome movie for 25 and spend 2 hours of your life enjoying it... Where Spymac can just make you feel like crap for months on end...
PS. Hi Fathblagger, another one who dared to go against Spymac and got the finger instead... Good to see you Reinholder!
- I am another member who has learned to play their games, by flying under the radar... But I have learned that they have me on a black list... so... I won't last long either...
I just realised that Spymac somehow think that you and I are the same person. Claiming that you were the one creating the account "Fatty Bladder".
It's quite nifty that they continue to rewrite history in order to cover their bases.
Oh, and who is the anonymous above? It was a great post (in all senses of the word) :)
Hi from Annette
it's about time.
I left a year ago and opened a "moderator-free-forum" c'om on over,
"it's over here"} http://p2.forumforfree.com/meetingplace.html
P.S. I was never banned and I never bought club.
thank heaven I never gave any {true] information!
The Anonymous long comment would be me...
And thank you for the kind words... I am glad to hear that people out there are as fed up with Spymac as I am...
The entire place just stinks... I cannot stand how they run things... I mean, the amount of info they want from you is quite spooky. First to get verified you need to get an SMS from God knows where, yet they cannot make a fool proof system that doesn't allow 8 year olds to read posts in the RDL section.
They then have a way to show your current iTunes music in the posts you make, yet, no one knows really just how that works... Are we talking about some kind of spyware here? After all it is spymac we are talking about here, so who knows...
Furthermore, they have a little too much control over people who joined up... They read your notes, as one member told me, and had proof of, they pretend they are anonymous users, or new users, under false IDs. They are all a bunch of crooks...
Funny thing, when you said they read people's notes, I wasn't really surprised. It all fits too well into the way spymac/spacetrend/clanotopia is run.
It still bugs me that I don't know what your username is on Spymac. Are you Sandman?
I'm not sandman...
Dude here. I wrote the original article.
Thanks for all the comments! Good to know all the research I did was not in vain.
I'm fine with giving you guys a place to vent a little without fear of censorship, but I'd like to encourage everyone to put your name with your comments. It gives you a lot more credibility, especially when you make claims about Spymac. It also makes it easier to chat back to you.
I'd like to thank esp. FatBlagger, who tipped me off with his initial research (that he got banned for). I just took the ball and ran with it. The more I got into it, the more I dug up, it got almost addictive trying to get all pieces of the puzzle.
I personally have no problem with a few things mentioned by "Anonymous". Automatically renewing subscriptions is common practice for a lot of things. Often companies make you sign up for free promo offers (magazines, extra features on your credit card or phone, access to premium websites, ...) and the fine print says "If you're happy do nothing. We will continue your subscription at the regular fee of $xy until you cancel." Of course they hope you just forget to cancel when it's still free. That might be a bit sneaky, but is done so often, people should be aware of it. Not having an easy way to do the canceling is a different story though; if that's true, that's where it gets shady.
iTunes integration with Spymac only works if you install their club software: spymac.com/support/article.php?postid=38
It's this app that pulls the info from iTunes and sends it to Spymac for inclusion in your posts. You could say that this should be turned off by default, but you could also argue that someone who installs this app on his Mac wants those features.
This is much more interesting:
"moderators and people who ran Spymac, had made false accounts, ... they made threats and then one day, they got exposed"
Do you have a link to back this up? As you can see from all the links in my post, I like to make claims only if I have proof. If this is true I'd like to know more about it.
Which brings me to this funny quote by AtariST referring to my blog here:
"That information is not accurate, and we are looking into legal slander chargers."
Good luck looking, Atari!
1.) All my claims here are backed up by links; I'm actually very curious to see how you can back up YOUR "not accurate" claim.
2.) Slander only applies to knowingly spreading FALSE claims, not merely posting uncomfortable truths. Everything here is to my best knowledge and where I can't prove things I stated it as assumption.
3.) Revealing facts, no matter how uncomfortable to anyone, was still covered by freedom of speech last time I checked.
:-)
I don't have the links to the threads in which people talked about the false accounts. However, I do still have the notes I discussed with GadgetDon I think, it was him... And then we have WevieStonder, who is a suspicious character at best. He is a person who plays both sides against each other... I have quite a few notes, with different users, that talks about situations that cannot be tracked back to spymac cause they deleted the message...
There is a good reason why the search function is still not implemented in their systems... People have to google their old discussions... And to be honest that is just BS.
And when I wrote about the fact that Spymac has a sly way of not being honest about their renewals, is this : When a Dot Mac account expires it sends you an email telling you that it will, and that you have x amounts of days to react to the update before it automatically is cancelled. Meaning, if you really like it and you are an active user, then naturally you will make the effort to press the appropriate info in the boxes and hit enter, to continue with the membership.
Spymac on the other hand, does this automatically, or at least they don't quite tell you the exact thing that will happen to all those who signed up on the founding fathers thing. New users, via paypal, need to UNSUBSCRIBE. Founding Fathers, I have no idea how to do that. My membership ends in 2008. I doubt I'll be there to renew or cancel... So it was important for me to know how to cancel... Spymac naturally took it the wrong way and called me a troll... Yeah they can call me a troll cause I want out...
Nice...
As for the application Spymac made, is dubious at best. When it first came out, it was ok, cause it was just a simple way to have your (iDisk wannabe) thing from Spymac to appear on your desktop. Then they implemented a bunch of other apps, the integration with your iTunes, iPhoto... etc... I cannot escape it... When it first was introduced, in order to update the main app, I had no way to deselect those I didn't want. So, it went and installed everything even though at first installation it I could choose. This has since been taken care of... But... Still...
And their policy can change like the weather... Who agrees to these and why don't we have the community decide and vote on the changes is beyond me. Smiles are outdated and boring, do they listen? No...
Do they listen at all?
Not at all...
I'm still Anonymous... for the time being...
But I have spoken to Reinholder and Fablagger and many others here before... So you know who I am...
Just a little heads-up there is a search as a member found it. It's awful, but hey.
it's www.spymac.com/search
Yesterday, I spend a few hours looking around that search, and it turns out it finds things only for the purgatory (when you click it, you cannot read the thread). And it even links to removed messages, from say nostradamus that has been removed, such as the time he called people that hadn't paid for club for leechers and whatnot, and accused someone (I believe it was rheinholder for abusing the free mail with warez and everyone being "free" users where abusing it with warez.
I can't remember what terms I used, but I have made searches with "dupe", "duplicate", "account" and so forth.
Also, when using the search function, it isn't in chronoligical order. when you get around 20 pages, sometimes "3 weeks ago" is on page seven, other times at thirteen and so forth. Also, some of the posts in that search disclose information on some of the bans.
Some even seems to be note-convos, but that is another thing
I propably shouldn't post that here, as they will close the opportunity quickly, as to not get caught at their own game I guess, but nonetheless, here are some examples:
http://www.spymac.com/search/index.php?q=duplicate&forums=on&search=duplicate&curr=60
On this page it seems as it it's a convo on aim!? http://www.spymac.com/search/index.php?q=nostradamus+leechers&forums=on&search=nostradamus%20leechers&curr=30
Also, a few examples of the way Nostradamus talks to people:
http://www.spymac.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=205116&post=3787633#post_3787633
http://www.spymac.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=204724
(the comment was deleted, but found here:
http://www.spymac.com/search/index.php?q=nostradamus+leechers&forums=on&search=nostradamus%20leechers&curr=540
and this is what it says:
Quote: Originally posted by Nostradamus I bet these guys are the ones who **** up our servers with their warez, porn, phishing, fraudulent crap, abusing the services - I start to understand why you do NOT want to give us your identity. And you know what? I don't care if you dont... but I'll make sure you won't get the chance to put a single BYTE of your crap on our servers....
Turns out the searchlink for the aim/notes convo is misbheving, but do a search on Spymacjeff and you will see what I mean.
Ah, I can't edit - turns out that the comment is indexed here:
http://www.spymac.com/search/index.php?q=nostradamus+leechers&forums=on&search=nostradamus%20leechers&curr=540
(with "540" after "current")
I would Like to thank all who picked up where I left off. I still have not been given back my domain "www.sistudio.net" The domain registration expires in Jan. 2007 perhaps I will get it back then. I don't have the, time, energy or cash to persue this but if there is any way to add my name to a list I will join. As I said on Spymac let me pull the lever on the electric chair!
Dave Wilson
Is it just me or is Spymac really dying? Look at the level of activity!
It really has become a hell of a boring place... And my only concern at this point is to make sure they don't mess with my credit card, since they have so many peoples info on file, who knows who might just take a little bit here and a little bit there...
In one word, I don't trust or believe a word that comes out of Spymac. They are all crooks and liars. They promise simple things they cannot deliver and lie when they don't want to tell the truth behind their incompetence...
Should we really sit and wait till it all drags us down? Or start to build a case now so we can be ready to do what needs to be done when the time comes...
And yes I'm still Anonymous...
Whoa! Nice research.
I'm so glad I got away from the whole Spymac/SpaceTrent diaster. I'm now perfectly happy at dreamhost.
In case my last post on Spymac gets removed here it is,
Well 7 days after AtariST acknowledged the receipt of my mail I finally have my domain back.
Lost for 33 days to this mess called Spymac/spacetrend.
Thank you AtariST for pushing this through.
I will be very shortly deleting my bookmark for Spymac, anybody want to buy a Spymac shirt or hat very cheap?
I would not be caught dead in them.
And not even an apology, Go Figure.
Dave
ps: Isn't it polite for someone to buy you dinner before you get ******
Dude,
I haven't been on Spymac in quite some time (it just isn't the same anymore) so missed you note.
Thank you so much for the heads up, this is what Spymac used to be like, lots of enthusiasts helping each other out.
Anyways, I still haven't given them any money, and don't plan on doing so. I don't need the site anymore so I am just letting it slip.
Thanks again
Joe (dubass)
www.joe.hensonmusic.com
Spymac members love to criticize everything that is new and better than what they use.
For example:
They totally bombed the new Mac GUI site because it "stole the TOS"
OMG, who the f*** cares? And most weren't even staff members, just grouches wanting to bash it.
The Mac GUI people have done a good job in starting what most members over there say is the best Spymac alternative yet.
www.macgui.com
you should build a bridge and get over it
-
this has got to be the most biased site i've read lately
i see accusations but no proof of anything
-
some of those complaining about being banned werent banned just for commenting/critisising spymac.
but for consistantly breaking any (and all)forum rules.
if your gonna tell a story ppl you should tell the full story :| not just the bits that make you look good
Hmm, "no proof"??
I was looking for a video of the morgan aero 8, and one of the links was the following.
Funnily enough, it is exactly what we have all been saying:
http://spy1u1100.spyweb1.spymac.com/iguide.php?go=264%7E387909%7Erx-8+-+topgear.wmv%7E%7E%7E
This may be a bit late from everyone else's post, however, I too am having a horrific time trying to move my hosting elsewhere. It took me over two weeks to have my domain moved, I finally had to go to the Registrar that SpaceTrend uses and file a complaint with them. They acted promptly and unlocked my domain. Oddly enough, the next day I got a response from SpaceTrend stating that my domain was unlocked... Yeah, thanks for the info SpaceTart!
Now that My account has been moved elsewhere, and I've moved on with my life or so I thought, I get a bill from Pay-Pal stating that SpaceTrend has charged me for another year of hosting on an account that doesn't exist. Yeah, this one's going to court. I've had it with the SpaceBalls company.
Just wanted to let others know that Dude is not alone with this crap. Oh and one more thing... I've sent countless emails to Spycrack, er Spymac along the way with not one single response from anyone. Lovely place I'd say.
I was once hosted by spymac.com (two domains: domesticatedpartners.com and ravenrosefarm.com). After many problems for more than a year, including the inability to accept payment from customers or keep track of email addresses of their customers, spymac.com, without notice or approval of it's customers, 'gave' their hosting accounts to an individual, Mr. David Stonies (a close associate of spymac.com), who operates under the name spacetrend.com. When this happened, my hosting and email was immediately stopped. When I finally tracked down what had happened, I found that my data and email was being held under threat of deletion unless I paid through Dec. 3rd, 2006. I was not given the choice of bringing it current - I had to pay into the future. Upon payment of the fees in August 2006, I cancelled my "subscription" to this ISP (spacetrend.com) as instructed on the spacetrend.com website - via an email- , and notified them that I would be transferring my domains before the current subscription ran out Dec 3.
(exerpted below)
******
From: Keith Mears
Date: August 2, 2006 5:39:06 PM PDT
To: support@spacetrend.com
...This is my notice of intent to cancel before the first renewal date (4 months from now, I believe it said on the website). DO NOT recharge my credit card or paypal account upon that date. I will be transferring my domains and accounts elsewhere some time before the renewal is due.
Thank you
Keith Mears
*******
Attempting to do the first of two transfers, I discovered that my whois contact email address of record was incorrect at spacetrend.com. I contacted Mr. Stonies/spacetrend.com 5 times over the course of 30 days to get him to change the address (so I could receive my transfer authorization forms). Finally I received a response, 36 days after my first attempt.
On the first day (the day I first initiated transfer of domesticatedpartners.com), a whois search showed my domain as "active". I initiated transfer and discovered I needed an authorization code to transfer a .com domain. Again, it required multiple attempts to get Mr. Stonies/spacetrend.com to provide my authorization code (Mr. Stonies first claimed I did NOT need an authorization code). Finally, he did provide the code.
I attempted transfer again and the process failed. I attempted this several times, until my new ISP (hostmysite.com) showed me that a whois search revealed that my domain had been placed on registrar lock (sometime AFTER I had initiated transfer). By this time, I have spent the last 6 weeks attempting to transfer a domain that had been paid up through December 3rd, and I still had another domain to move! After several emails were sent to Mr. Stonies/spacetrend.com with explicit instructions to remove the lock he had applied after I initiated transfer, Mr. Stonies finally complied. I reinitiated transfer, and it was successful - after 6+ weeks of Mr. Stonies/spacetrend.com's obstruction, at least 8 emails and 5 transfer attempts.
This left me a short time to get the site up and tested and to move my second domain. I again contacted Mr. Stonies, asking for a confirmation that my remaining domain (ravenrosefarm.com) was ready for transfer, unlocked, and that my authorization code was correct. In essence, I wanted assurance that I would not be entering another month long wrestling match with him. I sent a courtesy copy to Mr. Werner of PSI - the registrar of spymac.com & spacetrend.com. After my latest contact with Mr. Stonies went completely unanswered, Mr. Werner of PSI stepped in and confirmed the information I requested and adviced me to begin my transfer. I did so on December 1 (a Friday).
On Monday (December 4), it was discovered that Mr. Stonies had slapped the domain into registrar lock that day - more than 48 hours AFTER I had initiated transfer. He had ALSO charged $102.00 on my paypal account for the NEXT SIX MONTHS of a "subscription" I had already cancelled, and was in the process of transferring to another host!
[note - this "payment" is for the NEXT six months - not the PAST six months. In other words, he is extorting 6 months service fees IN ADVANCE, for service he does not intend to provide]
I have contacted Alexander Werner of PSI, who is looking into the situation
********************
On 2006, Dec 6, , at 04:23, PSI-USA Inc. DNS Service Center wrote:
Hello Mr. Mears,
I'm sort of getting the feeling that something is wrong here. I've sent a mail
to your provider a few minutes ago asking them to tell me the exact reason of
denial / reason for your domain being set to the status "HOLD" yesterday
afternoon.
There is a strict ICANN Policy dealing with this called the
Inter-Registrar-Transfer-Policy (IRTP) and in this document there is a list of
9 reasons why a domain can be set to this status. I want to know exactly why
this took place because looking at the log files it comes across like "first
everything is okay and it looks like the provider wants to help the customer
and then suddenly it's a 180 degree turn".
As soon as I get a reply from them, I can take the next step. My only concern
is the ravenrosefarm.com domain name and its proper handling.
Of the 9 reasons listed in the IRTP, the most common one given by providers is
"non-payment of services" (>99%). Do me a favor and send me the actual receipt
for the domain registration so that I can already exclude the above-mentioned
denial reason. You can fax it to: +49 941 595 79 050 or send it as a .pdf
file.
Greetings,
Alexander Werner
- - - - -
PSI-USA, Inc.
ICANN Accredited Registrar
Alexander Werner
Maximilianstr. 6
93047 Regensburg
Germany
Tel. +49 941 595 590
Fax. +49 941 595 79050
E-mail: contact@psi-usa.info
*****************************
I also alerted Paypal to the situation. It turns out if you look through your paypal account history to find the initial charge spacetrend made, there is a place to identify it as a subscription and cancel it. It is NOT under the "preapproved payments" area. I recommend everyone take pains to go through their aypal accounts and get rid of any "subscription payments". If you cannot find them, call the service number and wait on hold for an agent - it is better than losing money, as I have.
*******************
from David Stonies/spacetrend.com:
> Hello Keith,
> we can't refund the money because you not cancelled your subscription before the end of the subscription. At the moment you can't transfer your domain > because you disput the payment. Please accept the payment and cancel the disput. after this you can transfer your domain.
[note - the "payment" MR. Stonies has claimed is for the NEXT six months - not the PAST six months. In other words, he is extorting 6 months service fees IN ADVANCE, for service he does not intend to provide]
> Please let me know if you have any further questions.
> best regards
> David Stonies
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> SpaceTrend
> Burghaldeweg 7
> 89269 Vöhringen
> Germany
*******************
Obviously, I will not cancel the dispute.
I have forwarded a version of this email/tale to ICANN at transfer-questions@icann.org, ending it with the following
********************
Mr. Stonies/spacetrend.com is in the business of extortion. And, judging by the web links I attached in the email to Mr. Werner (below), it appears he (and his associates) have been in that business for quite some time. What Mr. Stonies has done and is continuing to do would be a criminal offense in most countries - but seems to be "okay" in the context of the internet. Mr. Stonies/spacetrend.com and his associates (spymac.com, et al) are the kind of operators that scare decent business away from the world wide web, and confirm the impression that WWW means scam, spam and porn. There must be some authority to prevent these kinds of scams - but it is apparently not being used. If you know of any way to fight such abuse, I would sincerely appreciate some guidance.
Thank you
********************
Anyway, I thought I'd lend my voice to the crowd out here. I think if enough folks contact PSI and icann, it may be possible to make things uncomfortable for Mr. Stonies and friends.
Thank you for posting the blog in the first place - I have found the associated links and data helpful in filling out the story. I have sent links to this blog and several of the included links to PSI and ICANN.
Thanks again
keith
Hey Dude,
I have written to Spacetrend over 15 times. the first 5 times were to ask them for info on my domain. after receiving no reply at all, I wrote 5 more times asking them to cancel my hosting service. After receiving no reply, I canceled the credit card that I used to set up the account and I wrote 5 more times and got no reply at all. Now after they tried to renew my hosting services and were denied because my card is canceled, they froze my account and I still can't get them to reply to my emails. I have sent emails from several different accounts. I was just wondering if you have any new info that might help me resolve my issues with Spacetrend.
Thanks
Okenter
crashl66@hotmail.com
Similar situation here, had 3 domains.
PSI very diligently gave me the transfer codes... seems they alredy know the story.
I am now in Y!
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