Open Letter To Andrew Boon

An Open Letter To Andrew Boon 17th October 2018

I just don’t know what to do for the best. I’ve barely slept the past few weeks, the worry and stress caused by Zarconia closing and subsequently being ‘saved’ by Boonex has started to take its toll on my health. For weeks we have been left dangling, emails unanswered and sites being lost. I’ve been led up dead end roads, been forced to pay out money for nothing and yet Andrew Boon stays silent.

How does that make you feel Andrew? Knowing your actions or lack there of are affecting the health of your customers? Are you sleeping soundly at night?

On the 7th September Andrew posted on the forum inviting those of us affected by the sudden closure of Zarconia, to contact Boonex support to discuss options. At best this can be viewed as an afterthought in customer service. I’m still waiting. My Dolphin site is my bread and butter, it puts a roof over my head and food in my stomach. Not that I have much appetite at the moment. I find myself constantly flicking back and forth checking my site is still there. There have been many forms of torture throughout history, some would argue that we’ve seen it all now. But no. Andrew Boon has created his own torture. To be Booned is a psychological torture most heinous indeed.

I admit that I’m new to this game, I was lured in by a seductive sales pitch promising the world. In reality all I’ve ended up with is a small suburb on the wrong side of town.  I should have cut my losses last year when after having direct contact with the Captain (one can only assume this self bestowed moniker comes from little man syndrome), I could tell then that I was not dealing with a professional. He displays zero empathy, zero customer service and treats his customers with a level of contempt one rarely sees. This man is not fit to be running a company. Andrew Boon, do you even have the slightest clue that your actions affect your customers? Business 101, if you have no customers you have no business. While I may be new to being a webmaster, I have worked in the IT industry for over 25 years, project managing, account managing, and installing as both a supplier and an end user. In all this time I have never come across such an appalling man or company. By the time I had worked out just how bad Boonex is I was too far down the road though. To make a jump would  have been suicide for my site. Now instead of suicide my site faces the ever real threat of murder.

This has been a major learning experience, one that I’m in no hurry to repeat. Having given Andrew every opportunity to rectify this situation what course of action is left? Legal? Sadly my budget does not run to lawyers as much as I’d love a day in court. So I feel it my duty to warn others of the perils in dealing with Andrew Boon’s companies. Not just here in the forum but to a much wider audience. I have stronger interest from IT magazines and larger blogs specialising in Open Source and community websites around the world as well as BBC Click and the a Sunday Times here in the UK. If there is no engagement from Andrew Boon I will commence giving interviews from 9:00am BST Friday 19th October.  I find it sad that it has come to this but feel it is my duty to warn others.

Steve Erskine

Hi Steve!

I’m currently travelling so I could not reply earlier.  Sorry about the delay. 

As as far as I know Igor L is working with your tickets. If there’s is any confusion or uncertainty persisting, please copy your request to Alex.trofimov@boonex.com as well to get higher level tech involved. 

The situation with zarconia happended completely unexpectedly and it took us a few weeks to obtain all the access details and wade through the zarconia setup - largely because Nathan has health issues and our communicarion was very sparse. 

Hope you understand. 

I hope you will have access to the SQL backup server where you can give me back my SQL databases. 

I had been with Zarconia for over 4 years.

 This is what Nathan wrote you on September 24:

 

Posted on Monday 24th September at 15:29

I'm afraid we don't have any backups this late after termination.

 

I hope you will have access to the SQL backup server where you can give me back my SQL databases. 

I had been with Zarconia for over 4 years.

 This is what Nathan wrote you on September 24:

Nathan Paton

Staff

 

 

Posted on Monday 24th September at 15:29

I'm afraid we don't have any backups this late after termination.

It appears that another one has been shafted by Boonex and Zarconia.

Perhaps everyone shafted by Boonex and Zarconia should post over at UNA.io LOL

It is important to understand that any hosting service that is not paid for in time is likely to be terminated. Backups service is also part of paid service to backups of unpaid accounts should not be expected generally.  In many cases we don’t even have the authority to create such backups because non-payment often happens as a de-facto shutdown order and we do not have ownership over the client site data to make a long-term backup Decision. 

Another observation - Nathan has been extremely geberous in allowing some servers to run unpaid for months and plenty ofnusers took advatage of it. That, ultimately contributed  making his operations unsustainable. 

All failed payements trigger email alerts and subsequent billing attempts. If those fail to alert the webmaster theres really very little we can do to prevent data-loss. 

Finally some real information to let your customers know what is actually going on. For someone with a degree in business management and administration your communication skill leave alot to be desired.

I still look forward to you actually answering my letter above.

Moving forward can you please confirm the following points for those of us that still have site11s with Zarconia.

1. Backups

    Haveyou now got access to backups? 

    Igor had said last week that this was still outstanding. 

    If this is still the case another solutions must be implemented. If you have now got access a disaster recovery excercise should be arranged ASAP.

2.   Support for Zarconia hosted customers.

      Zarconia customers enjoyed a fully managed service. Can you please confirm that Boonex will continue to offer a fully managed service.

3.   Support Tickets

      Over the past few weeks we have been told to open tickets by emailing support@boonex.com and support@una.io whilst some tickets have been updated via the Zarconia ticketing system. Please clarify how tickets should be raised moving forward. 

4.   Contract and SLA

      Updated hosting contracts and SLA's must be distributed to all Zarconia customers as a matter of urgency. 

Steve

If I understand luclonely's position, it was termination of the auto payment system that resulted in payments not going through,  If that is the case, then luclonely probably does have legal standing to sue.  I saw the letter from Nathan and it was very confusing to say the least.  I understand that Nathan had health issues but that is no excuse as Nathan could have contacted others for help, including me.   Since Boonex as acquired Zarconia, they also have acquired any liability.

The idea that support can only be handled though email is not acceptable.  Emails can easily be ignored.  My customers can email me, text me and call me on the phone if they need support.

Zarconia was an amazing host, they were able to handle issues and work with me on anything I needed. Since the acquisition, my site lost the amazing support that they provided. I've been trying to go back and forth, I assume with Igor for a while now (few weeks), just for a demo of UNA to be installed on one of my servers. 

My chat+ server on one of my networks needs to be restarted, it's been over 3 weeks for a 2 minute restart. My patrons are upset but I do not have the info needed to do this myself.

My auto payments failed last month, so I had to do this manually and I pay every month, but now I feel as if I'm paying more than I should be for bad service from BoonEx. Nothing against Igor, but it might be too much for just one person to handle.. maybe add a few more people to handle the tickets? Or discounts would be nice if you aren't going to provide the same level of support. 

 Hello. I have replied to your tickets at Zarconia.

Sorry for the delay.

I disagree; you screwed up just like you screwed up the guy's hosting at UNA and he lost everything.  People had their auto pay terminated by Nathan and then you took over and did not reinstate them.  What are you going to do about all the people that lost their sites because of YOUR failure here?

And he still has not answered.

Are you suprised??  He's on holiday.  Alright for some!  Ive still not had any meaningful answers to my posts.  He doesnt care. Simple as that. Selfish t***

First, let me say how sorry I am to hear that Nathan has been having health problems. He is a scholar and a gentleman, possibly the best sys admin on the planet, and I hope he will recover soon and be able to bring Zarconia back from the mess it is in.

Igor may be a perfectly good garden-variety sort of tech, but the difference with Nathan gone is shocking. I run 6 sites, only one of them Dolphin, and as someone not knowledgeable in system administration, I need and very much appreciated the patience and willingness to help that Nathan gave. He epitomized superior customer service, and my life depended on him.

Now things seem to have come to a logical, if tragic finale. My Dolphin site was the first major site I had built, and not knowing anything, I accepted the recommendation of the first developer I worked with to use the Dolphin platform. As the site grew, and I worked my way through several developers, the realization gradually dawned on me that I was working with a very flawed platform. The more money I sunk into it, the more my horror grew, but every step made it harder to turn back. Once I had finally sunk over $40,000 into a highly customized site, I was fully aware it was a tottering pile of junk. Today, 5 years later, we still have not been able to get all the bugs out, and now the Google map module has failed, apparently irretrievably.

So now I face the inevitable, precipitated by the loss of the one element that held it all together, kept me sane, and gave me some hope. I am going to have to abandon both Zarconia and Dolphin, find a new hosting provider and (probably free-lance) sys admin, and eventually re-build my site from scratch.

I have no idea who Andrew Boon is, but speaking for myself, I would be humiliated to have such an accumulation of amateur output associated with my name.

I have to disagree with the part about Nathan.  I read the letter he presented to his clients and it was very confusing; did they have a week to get their sites over or a month?  Was he shutting down autopayments that resulted in servers being shut?  Nathan was a reseller, he purchased the servers and then sold them to clients, clients paid him for the servers and then he paid the server providers.  He got discounts based on being a reseller.  Nathan handled it all very poorly and as a result many lost their sites.  Then Boonex steps in and just makes it worst.

Nathan may have been a great sys admin but he screwed up business wise in the end that cost people their sites.

It's probably true that Nathan was a bad businessman, and probably true that was one reason that contributed to the failure of his operation. But as a 5-year client (and always paid on time) I got superior service, and when the announcement came, the abruptness and poor planing evident were so uncaharacteristic, that I got the impression that some major calamity had befallen him, which he just was not coping with.

I had asked him about three years ago about security, one element of which would be an alternate if anything should happen to him, as it was clear he WAS the whole operation. He assurd me if he got hit by a bus, there was a mechanism in place to keep the operation running smoothly. That may have been true at the time (though I did not feel fully reassured) but it could have changed.

There was a partner, who never was visible, and it may be that in the interim the partner was lost, not only removing the back-up plan, but removing the financial viability of the operation.

I have such regard for Nathan's character and competence after dealing with him for these years, that I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, and assume that the sudden mess was the result of "force majeur" which he could not overcome.

Tge closure that Nathan announced was sudden and unexpected. I believe that he also didn’t plan or believe it would have to happen until the very end. Also, our decision to take over was quick and we had to learn a lot about the way Zarconia operated in a very short time. Now, Alex, Alexey, Leonid and Igor are all insome part involved with supporting sites transitions and servers handling. The financial part of the operation was quite complicated eithe, with many accounts sitting unpaid for a long time, and we had to address that quickly as well. Warning emails are scheduled and there’s always an opportunity to make local backups. We don’t hold sites ransom if there’s a long unpaid period, but the inpaid accounts that went beyond grace period have to be closed without any additional grace services. That is also the policy of the upstream provider. 

Anyhow, we are already getting to better shape in controlling the situation, and in the next few weeks it should be largely back to Normal. 

As for the “open letter” by the OP - I’m not sure what I am supposed to answer to. The request ticket is being handled by support and from what I see the team is being cooperatlive and patient in dealing with it. I already posted multiple times about what is going on, what we know and what we are doing. There is no conspiracy or alterior motives — we are trying to help all zarconia clients to maintain operation while exploring options, including options that we offer.  

As for DolphinPro - we are going to update it after UNA full release, and more details on it will be available once we spend more time preparing for the update cycle. 

I am am locking this topic and suggest that any personal support requests addressed to us should be handled via the support tickets. It‘s not OK to maintain part of the conversation in private and only bring out some details to public forum - it gives wrong picture of the context and doesn’t help in resolving the issue in any way. This is a support forum for DolphinPro and it would help if discussions focus on how to operate the platform. 

Thank you.