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WebRulon.Com / AlienVPS.Com - The Ultimate Scam!
WebRulon.Com / AlienVPS.Com - The Ultimate Scam!
At time of writing this WebRulon is still offering via its shell company AlienVPS VPS packages it has no demonstrated intent on supplying. I have attempted to communicate with them, they have ignore tickets. I have called WebRulon multiple times, and there has been no answer after using their phone menu. The customers whom have been scammed never asked for anymore, any different, or any less than what they were advertised and purchased, merely to be supplied what was advertised at the time of purchase.
On the 28th of December 2011 I signed up for a 1 year package as advertised by WebRulon through their shell company AlienVPS.
The Package: VZ Abduction
192mb Dedicated Ram
220mb VSwap Ram
19GB Disk Space
190gb Transfer
"Kevin," and note the "" as I don't believe there is a "Kevin" there was very quick on sales, questions answered, and I ordered. The signup and order process was quick, my invoice came and VPS details supplied. In terms of success and proficiency that's where it ends with WebRulon and AlienVPS. 31st of December the VPS went offline, no warning, just offline. I waited a few hours, there were no updates made to their Announcements page so I lodged a ticket with WebRulon via AlienVPS's client area.
11 Hours passed, no answer.
17 Hours 30 Minutes later the response is "We are working on this. Standby for Updates."
Still not a single mention on their announcements page.
Ticket: http://i.imgur.com/NQmk3.png
Announcements Page (No Relevant Updates): http://i.imgur.com/h31Si.png
Now, after this the forums here on WHT and on LET start ramping up ( http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1112783 ). People are being told in tickets that it was "Maintenance," this is a lie as there was no updates sent to anybody regarding this. What has happened however, the Node has failed on New Years Eve again (and we get to the "again" part later), their 19 year old tech is unavailable or to stoned off his head to be able to get around to fixing the issue. Nothing is resolved for hours, and the forums are ripe. By this stage I have personally had enough, I took a small box simply to use as a Bind9 Slave DNS, that was it, nothing fancy. H
Having had enough of the situation I request the following:
"A) Provide me with a working VPS
Refund the amount paid and cancel my account."
Ticket: http://i.imgur.com/3gJsw.png
As you can see I received a response that it was being transferred to the relevant department, now this is interesting, as to my understanding after this saga the only two individuals "operating" and I do use that term very loosely is James, their 19 year old Tech, and Russell the owner. Anyone else may be thrown in there on occasion. AlienVPS exists as a shell for WebRulon, and the void is filled as minimally as possible.
After not receiving a response for another day I lodge a ticket, interestingly enough in this timeframe my VPS has been going on and offline repeatedly. It reappears, 192mb Ram, no 220mb VSwap. I query this via ticket, adding to my existing one that appreantly has been "transferred" but if you look at the top it's still sitting under "Support." The response completely ignores my question, and Russell the owner of WebRulon replies with "We had an issue with the ny12 node which has now been fixed." Is he oblivious, no, does he selectively ignore the whole ticket and what you have highlighted, yes. The scam begins!
Ticket where Russell inserts his own reality of "which has now been fixed."
Ticket: http://i.imgur.com/hK7RE.png
I reply to this ticket within 15 minutes, there's no reply in return. Russell has stuck his head in the sand like an ostritch, quite simply I do not want a free month of a service I didn't order. I want what was advertised, and I am not asking for anything beyond that, merely to supply what they advertised and what I bought. You see, on signup I had the option of 192mb Ram, 220mb VSwap in New York, or 192mb Ram, 220mb Burst in Las Vegas. I choose New York for its location and VSwap, if I wanted something else I would have ordered elsewhere or a different plan from them. However I ordered from them based on what they advertised they were offering.
Later that night, their "tech" (another word I use loosely with this individual) James appears in IRC on #OpenVZ trying to get help to resolve their Node's issues. This is now the 3rd of January, the issue begun on the 31st of December! However, Russell the Owner of WebRulon and AlienVPS stated on the 2nd of January that the issue had been fixed. Now, if the issue is fixed why is his tech in an IRC channel scouring for help, and the Node offline again!
It is now the 4th of January, and guess what, still not a single response to my ticket since Russell the owner of WebRulon / AlienVPS decided it ignore everything and bury his head pretending the situation had been resolved.
Ticket: http://i.imgur.com/DGQhQ.png
"The Ultimate Scam!"
Now I have clearly established why they called the plan "Abduction," they simply abduct your money and disappear!
During this whole process I have discovered many things, confirmed by many different sources, both within the industry and other current customers conversing. AlienVPS itself does not have any full time staff, it is merely a "shell" and a budget front for WebRulon, hence all emails that come from AlienVPS are actually signed by WebRulon. The whois data also points directly to Russell and WebRulon. Last month, part downtime on their network was not due to a network fault, but rather their carrier ISP suspended their connection for non-payment. They announced this as a "BGP problem" in New York. Repeatedly their WHMCS goes offline, along with SolusVM, along with their Nodes, you do the math 
How is it that every time a "different" node has downtime SolusVM is offline as well as WHMCS? Since when does 1 node take out the whole of Solus repeatedly?
GET YOUR MONEY, ISSUE A CHARGEBACK, RING PAYPAL AND RUN!
Everything points to this company disappearing VERY quickly, and hence get a refund and run. AlienVPS is nothing more than a front so if it all goes belly up WebRulon with its same business practices of ignoring customers can close AlienVPS whilst continuing to exist as WebRulon. It is nothing more than a quick, easy way to deflect negative attention, brand separation. This, what we are seeing is the ultimate scam. Signup customers, issue them plans they did not order of significantly lesser value, and if it does all get to hard cut the shell company loose, by keeping both brands separate attempting to mitigate backwash on WebRulon.
Downtime: http://i.imgur.com/f6HgI.jpg
You can view WHT outage thread, 6 pages of people now being scammed: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1112783
You can view the LET thread, 2 pages of unfortunate unsuspecting customers: http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/1004/happy-new-year-from-alienvps
Visit AboutUs.org for more information about alienvps.com Domain name: alienvps.com Administrative Contact: webRulon.com Web Services Russell Winslow ([email protected]) +1.2125000361 Fax: +1.2125000362 300 Glenhill Ave. 2nd Floor Yonkers, NY 10701 US Technical Contact: webRulon.com Web Services Russell Winslow ([email protected]) +1.2125000361 Fax: +1.2125000362 300 Glenhill Ave. 2nd Floor Yonkers, NY 10701 US Registrant Contact: webRulon.com Web Services Russell Winslow () Fax: 300 Glenhill Ave. 2nd Floor Yonkers, NY 10701 US Status: Active Name Servers: NS1.WEBRULON.COM NS2.WEBRULON.COM Creation date: 12 Jul 2010 04:38:00 Expiration date: 12 Jul 2012 04:38:00
Comments
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=861055900095&set=a.861053425055.2386527.18402830&type=3&theater
He needs another monitor for downtime monitoring.
Sorry to hear this. They looked like a really nice company, at least their webdesign is.
Ringing PayPal is useless for 'virtual' goods. You won't get your money back.
And as a sidenote: Teens are not always stoned. Just FYI.
@net Hehehe or signup for pingdom. It's free for 1 website/ip even with 1 minute intervals.
Jeesh, is he trying to get RSI on purpose or what?
Technically correct (as in what's written), historically incorrect (as in what has happend).
I'll just requote:
I know of a number of people, and you don't have to search far, to find they have been issued refunds on virtual goods. In my case I push a considerable amount of money through Paypal, as in counter services at events we use their VirtualPos for payments from everything for accommodation, to merchandise, to items at events. Virtual goods are not as black and white as many think, also in some countries (hint hint) the transaction bearer actually holds part liability
Regards,
.Joel
Their offer was attractive for a DNS server LEB, and I thought a company that put that much effort in to its appearance and branding must be legitimate. Obviously their glory days are past and this is a last ditch effort to scam a few extra dollars now.
This made my day :P
This statement was made from personal knowledge of the kid in question. Don't be so quick to defend someone you don't know
Oh I have no issue if you're stoned off your head, smashed off your face (@jtodd
apparently 5 years ago), or you accidentally snorted the stock pile instead of the line (common noobie mistake). Its when it affects your ability to actually carry out responsibilities that it becomes an issue 
3 years ago.. Barely touch the stuff now.. gulp
I have an 'abduction plan' in NY and have experienced some lengthy outages as well as what appears to be node reboots. I really wish they would get these 'kernel panics' and stuff under control.
I'm not going to go as far as calling them scammers though. The VPS always comes back up and sometimes it has a good month or two without issue.
Probably just CentOS 6 issues. We had the same on one of our nodes on CentOS 6, it doesn't cause extended downtime though, just a reboot.
I have a VPS on the NY12 node and my VPS was down for 2 days...I've lost VSwap and now I've submitted a ticket asking at least the burstable RAM...
They won't give it to you. I asked for burst, they ignored the request.
Yup, in fact their are ignoring the ticket.
Wow, thats really pathetic that they don't give any notice. Lol, to think that the Control panel downtime was more worthy of an announcement than all the other downtime.
How do you know the "tech" is just 19?
The no refund policy is just pathetic and is actually a thing that might mean that they are going to be runners in the future. Just a thought. But they do have nice interfaces. :P
It seems to me that AlienVPS is a dumping ground for webrulon's old crap hardware.
Buying hosting doesn't automatically entitle you to a refund if you're not happy. A lot of companies are wise to people jumping to from host to host to get free hosting, or leaving upon the first small incident, or eating up their time for a month then leaving,...
Well it is their budget brand, so that's not really that unusual or immoral.
He used to work for us. I'll vouch for the age. He's a smart kid when he puts his mind to it, just a very sloppy work ethic.
I agree with almost everything you wrote about them, but calling them a scam is a bit hard. You actually now the meaning of scam, right?
They re-enabled VSwap for my VPS now.
It looks like they put all the budget VPS's on the same node as each other and don't give a crap if it goes down or not.
people fall down with some cheap just because of webdesign, but in reality they are even are even worst than others who got great support but worst web outlook.
By having customers on there, they have some motivation to maintain the server. By having higher paying customers on their other servers, they have more motivation to maintain those.
Trouble is when you don't know much about a provider you're more inclined to judge them by their look, and they did have a smashing website.
Christian if you actually knew the meaning, you wouldn't be asking such a ridiculous question. To take someones money then halve the offering is quite literally a scam.
Scam is by definition is an informal version of fraud/fraudulence, so in this case the word scam is perfectly fitting. And just wait until they do a runner with everyone's money, then it will be even more fitting after all the recent signups they have taken.
Have you looked at the announcements page? They were taking signups and still dumping customers on faulty nodes from back early december.
Thank god!! I stayed in their Las Vegas node.. while it does get really slow most of the time, at least for now it works...
I'm really not liking these yearly offers.. I think next time I will only sign up to a CO. if they offer a money back guarantee.. at least then there is motivation to keep their customers happy..
@Joel Calling them a scam in this kind of sensitive market like webhosting is really not okay. In this market things can break, it can be do to new technology(like vswap) or hardware. It's not like alienvps is doing a runner, they are a legit company and having some issues with some of their nodes but they are trying to fix the problems and even offered a compensation. I know it is bad that you just signed up when issues were raising but it's unfair to call them a scam.
@Christian and get to know the definition of which you argue against would be a good start.
The nodes they have been having issues with have been experiencing on going problems since long prior to my signup as I discovered, in fact they have been having kernal panic issues on the nodes since early December. These plans should of been removed from sales, they were knowingly unfit for sale, ala scam.
To continue for a month to accept signups, with no means to provide what you have sold indicates you have no intent to provide that of which you sold. To sell something with no intent of provisioning is a scam. Black and white sunshine.
So do not advertise this new technology for sale when it is knowingly unfit for market in uncapable hands. Once again, providing a different product to that of which is advertised, and knowingly providing a product which is not fit for sale whilst not disclosing this is a scam, in every sense of the word.
Not Yet... but "doing a runner" is only one adjectival phrase to describe a scam. There is nowhere by definition that a company must fold, go bankrupt, collapse or otherwise disappear for it to constitute a scam. In fact some of the biggest money grabs in history were pulled by prevalent individuals and companies pulling some of the most intricate scams possible. This one however is bluntly obvious.
Just because you have a perverse definition of the word "scam" does not mean that everyone uses it the same way you do.
Indeed, they offered me an additional month of a product I did not order. Why have specs in the first place then? Lets just put all plans from all hosts in a lucky dip, stand around and sing kumbaya and hope for the best ?
This is the whole point, I didn't signup when issues were arising, they were already there from 3 weeks prior to my signup. Unfortunately I didn't have the knowledge I have now at my disposal then. If I did, I wouldn't have signed up!
Lastly I would say stop blaming the "technology" for being "new." It is not "technology" that borks systems, it's those who implement it. Technology does not all of a sudden grow and attach itself to your nodes, and believe it or not, it's not self-aware either... it actually takes a human to decide "hey we're going to roll this tech out on our nodes." To do so, screw it up, then for more than 3 weeks continue selling plans on borked servers is shameful. Taking peoples' money when you know damn well these nodes aren't fit for production is a complete and utter scam in every possible sense of the word.
Must agree here. Some times technology which may be industry new or maybe just new to a consumer comes with a "promise" from the vendor. Sometimes these promises don’t match up in the real world (or more importantly the consumers world). It is one thing for this to happen on an internal business environment but to continue to sell a hosted platform where the technology promise doesn’t match the product offered is a bit low.
Technology changes, industry new or new to the customer should be beta tested before being put into production and depending on the technology the introduction should be phased.
Ultimate scam huh? Undoubtedly there were significant issues with their vswap in the beginning. I purchased 4 VPSes with them at a total of $46. I was displeased with that as anyone obviously would be, but the owner Russell is a good guy. Scam? No. Why? He refunded all $46 of my USD and he didn't even have to, nor did I ask him to. He offered it privately, something he was able to do as an owner. He isn't entitled to do everyone else the same favor.
Are his yearly plans worth it? Seems so. I didn't get one, but the network is nice. I haven't been using the services for a few weeks so I'm not sure if it's been resolved or not. You have to keep in mind he probably gives his primary attention to his webRulon service over his AlienVPS one. The support on AlienVPS is by no means quick, but it's professional. They do reply eventually and when they do it counts.
That's my honest review for Russell's budget service and probably the last I'll say about them.
Cool, you know this because you got a refund? That should be on the "rehab" list for criminals on release, "give a refund it makes you a good guy."
No? But he is entitled to take money for a product/service that doesn't work? So what you are saying is that he is entitled to take your money, but he's not entitled to refund your money? How does that work? If he's not entitled to issue a refund, who is then? ** **Please Explain ?
Hold on a second there, first you said he was a good guy as you were displeased with the services then got a refund. That displays you were not happy with the services, and alas you left. Now, 1 paragraph later his "plans are worth it" shortly followed by "i didn't get one" and "I haven't been using the services for a few weeks." Please Explain ?
HAHAHA! That's the funniest post so far today. Servers go down on New Years, they're screwed for a week and the standard line being garbled to customers was "maintenance." Then the owner Russell states "it's all resolved" and everything is dead at the time of his reply. This apparently constitutes "professional" and "it counts" type replies... that's right up with with "is a good guy" because he issued a refund. Forget the fact that a "good guy" wouldn't sell a non-functioning service to begin with.
Neither I nor anyone else has to "keep in mind" that load of rubbish you just spewed.
Nowhere on signup did it say "hey, this isn't our primary business, we just use this to screw money for nothing out of people, if you want us to give a crap signup at WebRulon." To start making excuses because it isn't his primary business, or that it doesn't get primary attention is furthering to just making it acceptable to sell a non-fit product.
This however must all contribute to what you think makes him a "good" guy.
If that's your "honest" review, where you contradict yourself multiple times in 1 post then base the greatness of a person on their action to issue you a refund whilst ripping everyone else off and providing a sub-par service, well maybe saying nothing would of achieved more.
@Joel - His TOS says no refunds, duh. His VPSes do work, they just had some node issues that I personally didn't want to put up with. How come you get so mad so easy at everything? You paid chump change and got some bad service out of it. I paid $46 and eventually was offered a refund. He is a "good" guy if he refunds money when he doesn't have to. His TOS said he didn't have to, and he offered to. I didn't even have to ask. Basically I got free service during my time with them. You need to see where everyone else comes from when they voice their opinions.
Not everyone will quote every statement you make and be all mad about it, throwing insinuations and insults as a form of personal backup to their own statements. The only one I've seen that does this is you. You're an angry person, but I'm not sure why. Life isn't so bad, Joel. I'd hate to be the guy at McDonald's that ever screws up your burgers. Maybe that's where you get it. Maybe others did this to you. Have you ever worked at McDonald's?
My point is: AlienVPS is by no means a scam, they gave me a refund, and you're a meanie.