How Veloci Servers Took Me For My Money (with pictures)

[abovegod]

I just wanted to start off by saying this: I have no intention of spreading false claims or speculating on things that I do not have any truths about. What I do intend by this post is to allow everyone who will read this in its entirety to learn from my mistakes and to ultimately help a user from not becoming scammed in such a way as my friend and I have over the past two months. I know this post may be taken in a way that could potentially ruin someones name and business but I really feel that this is the justice that they deserve. I am sure that there will be another side to the story but I will provide in this post references to back up my claims. So to begin I believe the best point would be from the beginning and also to tell a little bit about myself.

I have been an avid Counter-Strike fan since its release shortly after the source was distributed back in 1998 or 1999. Since then, I have played on and off to this present day without being involved much in any clan nor have I been a regular on any particular server. Now that I am on my last semester of college and about to graduate I have found that I am having less and less time on my hands, so the time that I do spend playing Counter-Strike I really want to get as much fun out of it as possible.

In late December of 2008 I had started to play an Office server pretty frequently. It was titled: Veloci Servers CS_Office 24/7*512FPS and it still goes by that name today. Its ip address is 98.116.88.54:27012 and at the time was a 20 slot server. When my friend and I had started to play on that server we were welcomed by the admin, Elixir, who on SRCDS goes by the name Computer Helper. He told us and everyone who played on it that that his server was Colocated in New York City and that it was a Core i7 Extreme 3.2 Ghz based on an ASUS Rampage motherboard. Basically a more than capable server for any application. On his server he frequently announced that he was selling servers and also $5 admin slots. His server prices interested me and would interest anyone else. I asked him if he had a website that I could look at his rates and his agreements and such but it did not exist. This should have been my first warning so I waited on it. After playing on his server for about 2 weeks I thought that I could trust him and I decided to get a server from him. He originally offered to me $1.25 a slot for a 100 tick server and I took it. So on January 4th I sent Jim/Elixir/Computer Helper $25.00 on paypal and expected to have my server up in a few hours as promised by him.

Figure 1
EDITED: Had phone number for other party. The picture did show without a doubt the first payment of twenty five dollars for the server.

Figure 2


From Figure 1 above it shows that payment was sent on January 4th at 5:57 est. I did not have a server up with a ftp client for another 2 days. Figure 2 shows that quake sounds were installed on the server on January 6, 2009. I know it isn't absolute proof as to back up my claim but I assure you, I have no reason to stretch this story any further. This is the same day that I was able to log in and actually name my server and pretty much make it mine. This didn't bother me too much at the time because I figured that I was getting a good deal and this sort of things take a while to get up and running.

Note: This will be in a few parts to break them up. I would appreciate it if you did not post until I am finished

[abovegod]

After January 6th I had a fully functional server and we started to get some people in there. Everything was good except for the fact that when we got more than 10 people in our server it lagged pretty badly and everyones choke went through the roof. On top of that the server tick wasn't 100 like promised but 75. I had let Jim/Elixir/Computer helper know about this situation almost immediately and he told me that he would have a service technician look into it and that although the tick may look like its not 100 it was because of some configuration file on his end. I honestly cannot think how I believed him but I did. Then our server went down on January 7th and wasn't brought back up til the next day for some unknown reason. It was especially weird because all of the other servers that were supposedly on the same machine were still up.




When our server was brought back up problems persisted and they had gone ignored by our host. Through steam and I do not have the logs or I would include them, he stated that he didn't think it was the bandwidth and he was unsure as to what the problem could have been from. He told me he would have a tech look into it and he thought maybe the problem could have been from one of the cores on the cpu. I had looked into this problem myself since Jim was no help so on January 18 I sent another email to him. It was unanswered until January 21.



From that point I was finished dealing with the situation so I just let the server sit there and let it lag to shit with no players populating it. Then one day Jim let me know that he would go ahead and switch the server over to a new host in Columbus, Ohio. I was pretty excited that I may finally get a working server and to my surprise I did. It worked fantastically and I was pumped that I would finally get to play the way I wanted to. The next day I got my invoice.

[abovegod]

I was being billed $35 for a 20 slot server. Seriously WTF. One month I was being billed $25 for a 20 slot and the next I was being billed $35. That's a $.50 increase per slot and at $1.75 I thought it was pretty ridiculous. I asked him why this had happened hoping that it was a mistake on his part but he replied that server prices will go up from time to time. From that point forward I was completely fed up with his shit. On top of that I was never even given the ftp login to the current server. Seriously very unprofessional. I then began to look around the internet and I eventually found this website because I was looking for another host. After reading for about 15 minutes I had noticed that Jim was a member of this website and he seemed pretty active. At the time of writing this he has over 400 posts. I then started to read every single one of his posts and I wanted to jump through the screen and choke the shit out of him when I stumbled on this little gem.

Little Gem




On January 4th at 9:26 pm, 3 hours after I had payed him money for the server he posts this thread. The server he is talking about is mine. He knew from day one that his problem was the bandwidth and he knew very well that he was scamming me out of my money. He even states in the thread what his server specs were and it was completely different than what he had quoted me at. What pisses me off even more is when I found this I got to digging around some. I decided to trace route his server to see where it was located. His server that I was on is fucking hosted from his home. What kind of moron does this? In an earlier post on this forums, he even stated that he wasn't hosting servers from his home and he even joked about it when he was on the verge of humiliation (Picture Below). I had been lied to the whole time and this pisses me off to no end. The server was not colocated, nor was it on the hardware he originally stated it would be on. Nor did I have a working server til the end of January and on top of that he wanted to raise the amount he would bill me.





For TraceRoute:








To duplicate this google traceroute and click on the princeton.edu link and paste in the ip address from his tag.





Now I can understand that you could delete this post because it would possibly bring a lot of drama onto the forums so I apologize in advance. I believe that I have not attacked Jim/Elixir/Computer Helper individually but only explained what has happened to me and strongly urge any user not to deal with him in any way. He has lied to me and pretty much scammed me out of my money. From a business perspective he lacks the knowledge to properly conduct business/GSP and I would avoid him like the plague.

After looking through his posts more in depth I really do not see why he hasn't been banned. He has had numerous posts deleted. He belittles people on the forums seeking help and also give misinformation frequently. He even tried to pull a fast one on a guy he wanted a website from.

I am not asking for my money back from Jim/Elixir/Computer Helper nor do I want anything in return for being treated the way that I was. What I do expect to happen is have my server taken down from the moment that he reads this because of his lack of professionalism and poor ethics. I expect to be serverless by the end of tonight so if any game server provider out there that would like to rent out a server please let me know. I am an honest person and am a great customer if treated properly.

Good Threads for further reading:
http://forums.srcds.com/viewtopic/9323
http://forums.srcds.com/viewtopic/8525
http://forums.srcds.com/viewtopic/9284
http://forums.srcds.com/viewtopic/9074
http://forums.srcds.com/viewtopic/9025
http://forums.srcds.com/viewtopic/6681

[abovegod]

Ok, Finished.

[assmunk]

You could of came to me for help I'm assuming he didn't tell you about me...

[abovegod]

He mentioned a second person but he also mentioned having people for him in marketing, technicians and also investors. So I really was not sure what to believe after this whole ordeal.

[assmunk]

And the main reason why the prices went was because we were not pulling in
Money for new hardware and colocation/dedicated severs. Also didn't you revive an email explaining this? One was suppose to be sent to every one, also if you look at other gsps you would find simalar prices or higher compared to our raised pricem

Edit

Not even zona told you about me?

[abovegod]

Never received an email. I was only told about the prices after receiving the email. I understand that there are other companies offering different prices but price was not the only reason to choose a company.

[Mooga]

I've read through the whole thread.

I would highly recommend you take this on with the company rather then taking this out in the public. Posting this publicly only upsets more people.

You mentioned banning Computer Helper. We at SRCDS.com generally do NOT ban people. The only users who have been banned are spamming accounts. Banning such accounts can only be done by the head admin. While Computer Helper has been questionable at times, his bad actions have always been manageable. Trust me when I say that not too many flaming comments are staying around.

We've had public threads about where Veloci Servers host their servers. In all recent threads they have said that their servers are hosted in data centers. In fact, the last thread I remember reading about this, Computer Helper said that the public server is hosted out of his home and the other servers will be hosted in a data center.

As long as this thread stays CLEAN, I will let this thread live unless it is requested to closed by the Poster or a rep from Veloci Servers.

The mods will also discuss this further and make another choice on if the thread should be locked.

All hail US Mod Mooga

[Beaverbeliever]

I'm not trying to make this worse, but I've seen a number of posts by "Computer Helper" and quite frankly, he has a bit of an attitude. He likes posting about things that make people upset or discouraged. I never knew that his business was run from his house, and I would highly not recommend this business strategy of actually selling servers from his house, but rather, selling them to friends at a highly abbreviated rate.

I will be sure NOT to go through with him, and warn my friends about this, but I don't think that's enough to "ban" him from these forums. I mean seriously, how hard is it to come back with a sock puppet account

I also think that if this thread reaches a bad point, put it in the dumpster rather than delete it all from history. It is a good reference point in the future.

SRCDS should really keep a close eye on this, even if it is none of their business, just because he does represent YOUR group, YOUR forums, and especially, YOUR reputation among the game server administrator community.

Like I said, this is not meant to flame or harm, just my 2 cents of this issue.

[St1flus]

:O I thought it was some uberass server warehouse...
But now that I think about it.. Verizon 20/20 speed.. 60$ a month.. + a server.. don't cost much to run from home... I see he's making an easy profit...

Give's me ideas, cept Ima be nicer to customers

[pengy]

Verizon buisness 50/50 5ips 20$ month more, 150$ month, no ports blocked.

[stronius]

All in all, I agree regarding not removing this post. I believe it could be very helpful to future buyer's in the game server industry. I regret to inform you I've also had my fair share of dreadful encounters with "wanna-be" GSP's. I wish you the best in future ventures.

[assmunk]

probably should of sated this whit the reason why the prices went up, but the server being hosted at home is only temporary, why else did you think we moved you to colombus ohio, a west-coast server will be next but after we are sure we have enough money to colo the server on a home for a good amount of time (at least 1 year). i have no problem leaving this up but once again this is not permanent

[Beaverbeliever]

St1flus Wrote:Give's me ideas, cept Ima be nicer to customers

I hope you don't run a game server business from your home with those speeds! Those are not nearly enough for a game server company.