17 replies to this topic

[CH-Andrew]

Hello,

I wanted to pro-actively make this post to make our customers, other hosting companies, and Internet users on the whole aware of a situation that has arisen.

We have been dealing with an extremely difficult customer for quite some time now. They have violated our TOS on numerous occasions, and while we attempted to work with them to resolve issues and ensure that their services were not interrupted, they have continually accused us of wrong-doing and poor service. When they refused to work with us to resolve issues we asked them to find a new hosting provider. We opted to allow them to keep their sites active until they could migrate to a new provider, and they responded with a demand that is essentially blackmail – threating a class action suit and threatening to post negative reviews on Internet sites if we do not give them a full refund for all fees paid since they started hosting with us.

We have done some research and found that this customer has apparently done the same thing to numerous other hosting companies. Due to the threatening nature of their final email to us, we are making it public so that other hosting companies can be made aware of this and can hopefully avoid a similar situation.

We have extensive logs pertaining to their abuse of resources and violation of our TOS, including logs showing them forwarding massive numbers of emails (approximately 49,000 in a very short period of time) to providers like Hotmail, Gmail, etc. This resulted in our servers getting blacklisted and causing issues for many of our other customers. We gave them ample opportunity to remove the email forwards so that we would not have any further blacklisting issues, but due to their refusal to do so, we were forced to suspend their account until the issue was resolved. We worked with them to give them time to remove the forwards so that their downtime was minimized, yet they still accused us of bad business practices.

They are now apparently claiming that one of their sites was compromised and that this is what caused their resource abuse. They are placing the blame for the compromise on us despite the fact that there were no other reported compromises on that server. Further, the logs pretty clearly show that the resource abuse was the result of the forwarding of massive amounts of mail to external providers.

Based on what has happened here, the manner in which this customer has handled this situation, and the long history this customer has of trying to initiate class action lawsuits against providers, it appears that this may be a very well planned out and strategic attempt to receive free services and possibly even obtain financial gain. The issue is not the money they are asking for as a refund. In fact, from what we can tell, this is just the first step, and if we give in here, the threats and the monetary demands will just increase.

Because this customer is located in another country, we cannot initiate legal action to counter their blackmail attempts. So we have taken the money they are demanding – which is a relatively nominal amount – and donated it to the Support Crimes of Persuasion Foundation (http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com/) since it is not the money that is the concern, it is the intent and malice these people are operating with.

Quote

Business Contact Information Customer Service URL: Image: https://www.paypalob...i/scr/pixel.gif http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com (http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com/) Funding Type: PayPal Funds Funding Source: $244.89 USD - PayPal Account

I am also including a copy of the final email we received from this client. I would like everyone to keep a few things in mind when reading this:

1) We suspended their account because they simply refused to turn off their mail forwards (which were literally mail bombing Hotmail, Gmail, and others) so that we would not become blacklisted.

2) We agreed to re-activate their account based on 2 conditions: 1) they immediately remove all mail forwards and 2) they find a new hosting provider within 96 hours

3) Once they moved all of their accounts off of our servers, they began claiming that one of their sites were exploited and that was the cause of the problem, yet our logs show otherwise

4) We clearly showed them that only the one domain had suspicious files (out of the 100 or so domains they were hosting on one particular server), and that they had poor coding on that site which could potentially allow an injection. We later discovered that it is likely they uploaded that "malicious" code themselves. Regardless, the logs are pretty clear that the email abuse was resulting from external mail being forwarded and not any code injection they may or may not have had.

Here is a copy of the email they sent us:

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To Cartika Inc / Andrew Rouchotas,

We are requesting a full refund for all the payments we have made which is a
total of USD 244.89. We never received the full services we have paid for
and in addition we had paid extra for bandwidth that was caused by an
unauthorized upload into our website folder. Cartikahosting has wrongfully
accused our company of sending a large amount of emails which we believe
was due to a virus and files on your server. You have also suspended our
account which took down all our websites and caused disruptions in our
business which we suffered financial loss. This includes but not limited to
lost sales of 1500 USD per day, lost information and data, and advertising
of 2,042.94 + 450.18 for one period of July. We have had some of your emails
and information reviewed by legal advisors and we believe you are legally
liable for compensation to our company.


If you do not agree to the refund, we will continue to fight this by
complaining to the Better Business Bureau, as many online organizations in
regards to fraud, and will post this issue online to let others know this
bad business practice. We will continue to do so until we receive the full
refund. We have had damages in the thousands of dollars due to your
suspension of our account and we have all the documentation. However, if
you refund the full amount by July 17th and come to an agreement with us, we
will consider not proceeding to a legal suit against Cartikahosting.com to
claim the full damages. If not agreed upon, we are now notifying you that
we will post this issue online and let as many people know that we were
harmed by and a victim of Cartikahosting. We will continue to post this
issue on as many web hosting reviews and continue as long as we believe we
have not been compensated for your wrongful accusations and bad business
behaviour and ethics.

Please refund all payments made to you via our paypal account
REMOVED.

The amounts that need to be refunded by July 17:
#1DR6977010866152P USD 60.

#19D18121782024451 USD 60.

#9CA906532L040301L USD 40.

#97J608820P6436320 USD 40

#16582606S2775843X , USD 44.89
-------------------------------------------------
Total = 244.89


Payment is to be made via Paypal to our account REMOVED.

I want to reiterate that the money they are asking for is nominal - what is concerning is their history of this sort of activity and what this could potentially escalate into if we give in. I simply refuse to start a precedent that we can be blackmailed. So, I have donated the funds they are demanding to a relevant charity, and I'm proactively posting this announcement before they follow through with their threats to spam the Internet with accusations of fraud, etc.

I want to thank all of our loyal customers in advance for your continued support and invite any comments. If any customer feels the way this customer does, I urge you to speak up as well and let your feelings be known. We value your feedback and will continue to strive to provide top quality hosting and customer service.

Edited by andrew-admin, 15 July 2009 - 11:30 PM.
formatting

[bnkrazy]

Sorry you guys have to deal with this, but I think you're handling it the right way.

Do what's right for your company and your customers, and in the end, whoever this is will be revealed as the malcontent they truly are.

I will say that Cartika has been by far the BEST host I've ever used, and I'm glad to see you're sticking to your guns.

[CH-Andrew]

bnkrazy said:

Sorry you guys have to deal with this, but I think you're handling it the right way.

Do what's right for your company and your customers, and in the end, whoever this is will be revealed as the malcontent they truly are.

I will say that Cartika has been by far the BEST host I've ever used, and I'm glad to see you're sticking to your guns.

Thank you very very much for your comments and support. This customer has already initiated and re-opened several threads on the very popular wehbostingtalk forum (www.webhostingtalk.com). The moderators there have clearly seen through these tactics and removed the threads. The user has also made complaints on popular hosting review sites like hostjury.com. We are working with these organizations as we come across them to have these false reviews removed. They are obviously quite intent on following through with their blackmail threats. We are quite secure in this as we are confident of the level of service we provide and of the support from our customer base.

Thank you again for your support and best wishes...

[Bluesplinter]

Yeah, that wasn't a pleasant thing to wake up to... since that scrub posted his drivel on a review I started at WHT, I got a copy of it in my email inbox this morning. I made the mistake of reading the email copy before clicking through to WHT, and he succeeded in one thing -- getting my dander up! I like my mornings quiet and peaceful... I was looking forward to catching some of the Open Championship, but nope, this jasper has to come along and rile me up...

and I haven't even had my coffee yet!

I applaud your preemptive gambit, and I applaud WHT for keeping their forum (and my thread!) clean. I'm all calm again. :)

Now I'm off to a nice huge cup o' joe while I watch some golf!

Take care, and thanks for being the best host around!
Steve

[static]

I saw the posting on HostJury and you can see their intent by the misrepresentation of the facts in their post at HostJury and in their demands posted here. I had to post to this as a customer of over 4 years and sending dozens of other businesses and web developers to Cartika.

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I have tried Cartikahosting.com and it was really the worst web hosting company I have experienced. They are very nice before you sign up but then after about two months, after your payment has settled with them, they will begin to keep pushing you to upgrade saying you are using too much resources. I have complained to them many times and they will reply to my complain by claiming the fault is mine.

The only time you have to upgrade is because of resource usage on most H-Sphere hosts and is normally due to overage of disk space and/or traffic/bandwidth. You don't "have" to, it's normally in your best financial interest due to overage costs. Of course a reseller may have to upgrade due to number of accounts needed or to a dedicated environment if the website(s) in question require it. I can see by their billing history they want refunded…it was probably due to disk or bandwidth usage.

The other thing above is I don't believe Cartika has started entering mail forwards for customers forwarding 1000's of emails, so yes the fault would be theirs as they have control over any email forwards. I had a similar experience with a client of mine on my dedicated server. They were forwarding 1000's of spam emails to their Yahoo account, which in turn caused Yahoo to blacklist my server. The client told me yeah…I get 1000's of spam emails a day to myname@mydomain.com and I forward to Yahoo because they filter out a lot of it.

Even after I explained my server was looking like a spam relay and she needed to take off the mail forward and turn on and adjust her Spamassasin settings…she refused. When told Yahoo had blacklisted the server, she actually started complaining she was not getting her email. I suspended her account the same day and told her she had to move. I spent maybe an hour and a couple emails on this issue. Of course I was threatened with legal action too and then threatened they would slander me throughout the online community. Amazing how that works, someone threatens to sue and then commit slandering of a business.

Andrew, you have more patience than I when it comes to suspending, but I guess that is what gives your company the great reputation it has. It sounds like you went above and beyond what could be expected with the amount of time put into such a small account, and also the options you gave them for shutting off the mail forwards etc.

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What kind of unprofessional hosting company is this?! I had to leave this company right away.

Right away? From the billing they are asking to be refunded for it looks like they were at Cartika for 5 months. When I see people out-and-out lying to try to slander a company, they lose all credibility.

Quote

Also, Cartika server often goes down though a short period of time but it is not good for serious websites or people who want their websites to be running at all times. In addition, their control panel often does not work. I have sent numereous emails asking Cartikahosting to fix it and they said they would but after 3-4 months the control panel was still having problems. If you have a website that is small and is not for professional use, then Cartikahosting may be okay. But for professional sites, you better look elsewhere. You cannot develop a serious professional website with a server that keeps crashing and a control panel that doesn't work.

Any one who has ever hosted with Cartika will agree that it is the perfect home for those that are serious about their online presence. I have sent many clients including web developers to Cartika using everything from the smallest Linux plans, to reseller accounts, to dedicated servers and have never had them experience the problems as mentioned above.

Quote

Cartikahosting is NOT professional and I think the company only has two or three people running it. They do not even have their own servers in their location and is outsourced. So if any problems happen, they need to call their server provider and this may take a while to resolve.

As we all know, the above is completely false. Cartika does not outsource their support or any other personnel. They also own all their equipment located in the colo4dallas facility. All of this is available clearly on the Cartika site.

In closing I just want to say that I believe in karma. Those that go around pulling stunts like this will fail eventually.

Edited by static, 16 July 2009 - 06:46 AM.
typos

[matthew2582]

Our company has been friends and customers of Andrew and staff for many years now and we just wanted to throw our support and love towards Cartika - a great company with great performance, great people and a lot of fun to work and hang out with!

From all of us at Zen Cart Consulting

[sgorney]

I have been a reseller hosting partner with Cartika for almost 4 years. I do have hosting accounts for clients with other providers. But 99% of our accounts are with Cartika. It is and will be a pillar of our business model now and in the future. The overall service/featuresand relationships create a package that works for s-go Consulting. Thank you.

[CH-Andrew]

Thank you all for your continued support and positive feedback.. we just received this email from the customer

Quote

We would like to know when we can receive our full refund of 244.89. We did
not get the full services and in addition by Cartikahosting suspending our
account we had experienced financial loss. The least, at this time is to
refund back the hosting price. If not we will believe it is a violation of
your cartikahosting TOS as well as the rights of the client.

We believe we are a victim in this case and until we receive compensation we
will continue to warn others about what we believe as bad business ethics.
We have many staff and partners who will want to have their voice heard
online and offline and will continue to spread the word indefinitely until
you are willing to work out a compensation. Contact us if you want to work
something out. If not, we can promise that we will cover every single
webhosting review and let people know how we have been victimized. There are
many people who are angered and want their voice heard. In addition, several
formal complaints will be made including the Better Business Bureau. We have
all the email proof of how you had handled our account and abused us as
clients by pressuring us to upgrade and make us pay more while the bandwidth
claimed was due to an upload of some sort of spamming codes which we believe
was performed by you or someone in your company. We have asked you to
provide us the IP of who had uploaded the file but you simply refused to do
so and we have reason to believe the upload was intended by you or someone
in your company.

it is becoming obvious that these peoples true intent is to receive free service and to blackmail companies into providing it. It also seems likely they are intent on generating additional revenue via continued blackmail tactics...

It appears they are suggesting that we uploaded malicious content simply to generate some additional bandwidth revenue. I am not certain how to address this, other then to say that each incident of abuse by a customer (and typically, this is accidentally), costs us $1000s of dollars in admin time to clean up and $1000s in secondary costs associated with customer service, cleaning up blacklist reports, etc.. to suggest that we would willfully bring this upon ourselves for a few dollars in bandwidth overages is simply absurd.. actually it is more then a little insulting, as if we ran our business in this manner, we would not survive for too long -

Anyway, this customer has had several posts removed from www.webhostingtalk.com as the powers that be over there clearly saw through the tactics being employed (in fact, they carried on their typical spamming tactic and spammed the entire forum with their obviously slanderous comments - all the while, hiding in a country in which inherently cannot be prosecuted). Even though the posts and threads were removed, we have kept copies of the interactions, and may post them for your amusement sake at a later time. For now, we clearly see this customer acting in desparation - they are obviously used to bullying providers into giving them free service - after abusing their services and their other customers. Again, we could care less about the nominal amount of money they are whining about - but, this has become a point of principal. As I stated previously, we have donated all of the money they are demanding from us to a worthwhile charity which is designed to protect people from scams like this. Hopefully they can use these funds to protect someone in the future from being exposed to this sort of unsavoury situation.

Thanks again for your support and as always, please let us know if you have any additional questions or comments

Edited by andrew-admin, 16 July 2009 - 10:07 PM.

[Valona]

Since 2003, all of my web hosting needs are served by Cartika Hosting. Over 40+ website, never had any incident.
Cartika has been and continuing to be excellent in support and knowledge.

Thank you to Cartika Hosting staff.

Valona

[darryl]

We have been a hosting reseller of Cartika for the last 5 years and never looked back, their network has always proven to be stable and reliable and we have come to count on it for our customers especially e-commerce websites.

These guys caused so much grief for not only our customers but Cartika customers as well, and caused some of our customers who use their websites for e-commerce to loose a lot of money. Having blacklisted IP's on an e-commerce is a very bad thing.

I am glad Cartika took immediate steps to mitigate the issue and remove this "customer" from their environment. Its unfortunate that there are people in this world that expect something for nothing, then when they don't get it, turn around and publicly bash you and / or blackmail you.

I think the way Andrew handled it, donating the money to charity instead of refunding the customer was not only an excellent idea, but the perfect way to handle a customer who was clearly abusing the service and negatively impacting so many other legitimate users.

Good job Andrew & team keep up the good work, we love the stability of your network, I for one am glad these customers are gone.

[CH-Andrew]

darryl said:

We have been a hosting reseller of Cartika for the last 5 years and never looked back, their network has always proven to be stable and reliable and we have come to count on it for our customers especially e-commerce websites.

These guys caused so much grief for not only our customers but Cartika customers as well, and caused some of our customers who use their websites for e-commerce to loose a lot of money. Having blacklisted IP's on an e-commerce is a very bad thing.

I am glad Cartika took immediate steps to mitigate the issue and remove this "customer" from their environment. Its unfortunate that there are people in this world that expect something for nothing, then when they don't get it, turn around and publicly bash you and / or blackmail you.

I think the way Andrew handled it, donating the money to charity instead of refunding the customer was not only an excellent idea, but the perfect way to handle a customer who was clearly abusing the service and negatively impacting so many other legitimate users.

Good job Andrew & team keep up the good work, we love the stability of your network, I for one am glad these customers are gone.

Thank you Darryl and everyone else for your comments and continued support. Enough of our customers have applauded us for our actions here and demanded we hold fast with our resolve. We apologize for the inconvenience some customers have experienced. We are still dealing with issues related to this customer on one of our mail servers. Hopefully soon, we will be clear of this.

Unfortunately, our own privacy policies do not allow us to reveal additional information on this customer (though, it would be of the utmost benefit to other providers and internet users on the whole to be made aware of who these people are - we are actually working with our attourneys to receive a court mandated exception, in the interest of public safety - to release their identities and their business details). However, considering their extensive legal threats, we encourage this customer to establish a business presence in ANY G7 nation and follow through on their threats of litigation and damages. Believe me when I tell you, we would LOVE our day in court with these characters.. Something tells me though, that they are content on hiding where they are and will not show themselves in a country where they can be litigated...

[indideco]

Don't let this client situation get you down. They took their baby issues too far, and things will happen, you'll see.

Edited by indideco, 10 August 2009 - 01:59 PM.
rework

[islandman113]

Just a quick note to say a HUGE Thank you to Cartika for the excellent service I've had with them for the past 4 years. Uptime seems to be 100% although I'm sure it might have been down sometime, but I never knew about it and it never impacted my website(s).

In fact one of my websites' www.TotallyBarbados.com has won 4 awards in the last 3 years for the "Leading Caribbean Travel Information Website" for 2007, 2008 and the "World's Leading Travel Destination Website for 2008".

I'm sure if 168,000 travel agents and professionals from around the world viewed and voted for my website, that it was up and they could get to view the site from around the world!

My previous web host wasn't so successful, with too many intermittent downtimes; causing the change to Cartika.

I've even met Andrew and he's a class act all the way!

If you want a seemingless web hosting providers - go with Cartika. I've had to speak to them on the phone twice in the past 4 years and one time it was my fault!

5 out of 5 stars!

Brett Callaghan
www.TotallyBarbados.com

[CH-Andrew]

Hello,

I wanted to post an update to this situation and keep everyone appraised of how things are developing and what has been happening.

This entire situation has been quite unsavoury - from the very beginning and still continuing through today. There is an end in sight however, and for that, I am quite encouraged.

This entire experience does have a silver lining however. I have learned that people on the whole are good. The extent others, including our customers, associates, vendors and even competitors and total strangers have gone to assist us here has been simply amazing. It is an absolute example of how even the fiercest of competitors will put aside their differences and work towards a common goal when bound together by a good cause with the explicit intent of ridding the internet and society on the whole from malicious people and illegal and harmful activities. I simply cannot express my gratitude to all who have participated and are continuing to participate in the process of bringing these people and their activities to light and ultimately delivering justice. I have learned that it does not matter where culprits like this try to hide or how they operate - the world will co-operate and justice will ultimately be served.

First off, I would like to thank the following groups of people, individuals or organizations who have stepped forward and assisted us in the capacities they are able to:

• our Customers - I have been absolutely overwhelmed with the extent many of our customers have gone to help us identify sources of this smear campaign and to the extent they have gone through to dilute the smear with their own honest comments and feedback all over the internet. Simply outstanding, and from all of us at Cartika, we profusely thank you for your support
  
• www.crimes-of-persuasion.com - who have been absolutely outstanding in helping us track down what is going on here and why. Also, for playing a crucial role in our plan of action moving forward
  
• The Chinese Government for their willingness to work with us in identifying who these people are and agreeing to open an investigation on their end. I really would like to avoid the natural politics that are involved when discussing countries like US and Canada as compared to China, etc - however, I can tell you that their Government does care. They are certainly taking steps to ensure that their country is involved in the ever evolving global economy. The notion (which I myself once had), that users in China could do whatever they wanted without fear of repercussions, is dead wrong. Their Government very much cares about such matters and I imagine their brand of justice will be just as severe as what one could accomplish in other countries.
  
• www.webhostingtalk.com who identified the spam tactics being deployed on their site by utilizing advanced IP tracking intelligence and removing the obvious spam and smear campaign from their site
  
• www.hostjury.com for continuing to work with us and remove the obvious fake reviews from their system and continuing to work with us in this regard. No matter how many usernames are used or how many fake URLs, etc - they have been able to identify this as the same person(s) via IP tracking and various other utilities - and have clearly spoken and demonstrated that they are committed to providing a quality review service
  
• www.webhostingstuff.com - another dedicated review site who go the extra mile to ensure reviews are legitimate
  
• www.cartikahostingreviews.com/.org - this company runs a network of review sites for most of the major hosting providers on the internet and have been simply outstanding in this matter. Though, I believe they have seen this tactic enough with their other review sites and were fully aware of the situation already.
  
• www.whreviews.com - another dedicated review site
  
• www.yaahosting.com - who removed a site that was put up in an attempt to libel/slander Cartika as well as myself personally and attempt to initiate a class action lawsuit (see below for additional details)

The most frustrating part of this entire process has been having our hands tied by our very own Terms protecting our customers privacy. We simply are not legally able to release information that would help illustrate who we are dealing with and what sorts of actions they are involved in. Personally, I feel this is of utmost importance as I simply cannot see any other way to defend ourselves, while also help illuminate what is going on here and hopefully help to protect others from similar situations.

Fortunately for us, these people have followed through with their typical and established pattern - which although a very painful process to go through, makes certain information publicly available, thereby allowing us to publish it as well.

They utilize hosting companies to perform massive spamming activities and do it in such a way as to make themselves look like a victim, hiding behind the veil of "we are trying to run a business here" (which acts as a mechanism to allow them to continue spamming, rather then getting immediately suspended). Until a provider does some serious investigation, and honestly, until they get a little lucky - they would have no real way of knowing that the customer themselves are the culprits who's real intentions are to spread viruses and other malware. Once they are discovered and ultimately terminated, they begin blackmailing the provider. Ultimately (and I believe whether the provider pays them or not), they begin a smear campaign utilizing various spamming tactics on the internet and attempt to launch a class action lawsuit against the provider.

They posted such a site (since removed) at www.cartika.yaahosting.info. I will post some of the material they published below, however, what they did, and what we were waiting for, was them to link themselves to us via a channel they have used on many other hosting providers. They are affiliated with a pretty shady domestic law firm and utilize a common email address for all such scenarios.

elawcase@gmail.com

a quick google search, will yield the following results

http://www.google.ca....com&fp=1&cad=b

Obviously a long list of victims here and the exact same scam.

Thankfully, in our case - we mostly have quite satisfied customers. We work hard towards this goal and I simply cannot imagine, nor do I fear, a class action suit being initiated. I am so confident in this regards, that I am openly publishing this on our site for all to see.

What this did accomplish though is allow us to show you what we are dealing with. It also has allowed us to track down a domestic affiliation. Based on the obvious libel/slander and misinformation they are publishing (see below), it is only a matter of time before they will be addressed domestically and, with the continued co-operation of the Chinese Government, in China as well.

I wanted to provide everyone some additional information and an explanation for the pages and pages of negativity still out there on the internet that we either have not had the time to address yet, or the owners of those particular sites have, at least to date, been unresponsive to our efforts to communicate the severity of what is going on here and how they are facilitating this activity. We will eventually make up a list of companies and sites who are unwillingly participating in this - and eventually, I am certain they will come around here and do the right thing. This is a pretty serious libel/slander campaign initiated here, and at some point, the owners of these sites need to be responsible for what they are allowing to be published.

Now, onto the juicy parts of this smear campaign - I will add excerpts and my comments below. I am not including everything being written, but, it is not hard to find on internet for those that are interested. I am simply addressing certain points - and mostly because of the obviousness of their absurdity while also demonstrating their actual intent..

Quote

Cartikahosting misleading clients of their location of business
and server and not disclosing the true business address. Cartikahosting is operating in Canada using co-location hosting in the USA.

Worth mentioning that we publish this data right on our website here:

http://www.cartikaho...-Configuration/

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Cartikahosting avoiding proper Canada and USA taxes.
Cartikahosting has charged clients and have not reported all
appropriate taxes.

As our customers are probably aware, we only charge taxes to Canadian entities. We are a registered corporation in Canada and are obligated to charge GST for our services to Canadian entities and report such to the Government. No other customer has ever been charged taxes and again, only those customers in Canada will be charged

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Cartikahosting not properly claiming employee salary and falsely
reporting expenses.* Cartikahosting is run by the owner Andrew
Rouchotas located in Toronto, Canada and is not paying the proper
taxes for employees.

I can only say that all staff are setup as legal relationships in their respective countries. Since we have staff spread out over multiple countries, the relationships and the manner in which they are setup does vary from country to country - but, it can be easily and safely assumed that everything with our employees is above board.

Quote

Andrew Rouchotas is falsely creating names for his technical support, billing and sales which is all written and taken care of by himself and Jonathan M. Slivko and Erin Latime

Beyound the obvious that we have just been accused of not paying proper taxes for employees, the very next statement is that we do not have any employees and are creating aliases for all of our staff. I cannot express how absurd both of these claims are, however, any of our customers that have called in and spoken with our staff - 24x7 - can likely attest to the fact that I myself do not run the company 24x7, do not manage all servers myself, do not answer the 1000s of phone calls, support tickets, live chats, etc we process per day, etc... As with any owner of a medium sized business, I am certainly very active, in all facets of the company, on a day by day basis. I obviously cannot, and would not dispute this. It is something I am quite proud of. Cartika is not a massive company by any standards. We do not employ 100s or 1000s of people. We are however a very solid mid-sized company. We employ between 25-30 people in total. Own and operate all of our own equipment including routers, switches, servers, firewalls, load balancers, SANs, etc, etc, etc...

Quote

Cartikahosting and Andrew Rouchotas owns and controls many sites like www.webhostingtalk.com and all negative reviews will be removed by Andrew Rouchotas

I am very hopeful no one believes this sort of statement. I mean webhostingtalk.com is the largest online forum in our industry. To be honest, I wish I owned this site :). Anyway, some quick whois searches, etc should be able to verify the truth here.

I profusely apologize for the very long winded post. I figured most will not get through all of it. However, I wanted a complete and honest update released for anyone who is actually interested enough to read it all.

We are continuing to fight this and are making great headway - both in China and domestically. We eagerly look forward to a complete resolution to this matter - and hopefully, we can prevent others from ever experiencing this very unsavoury situation.

Thank you all for your continued support...

Andrew Rouchotas
Cartika Founder and CEO

Edited by andrew-admin, 02 January 2010 - 03:24 PM.

[inspire]

Dear Gents at Cartika Team,

You are the best company i have ever seen, your prices are higher than most others but your services are the best..

Very few companies have good servers, unique NETWORK..

I tried more than 5 hosting companies last 12 years.. you are my perfect choice..

i lost 70% of my customers when i was with vortechhosting.com i will not mention other bad companies simply cus vortech is the worst company i ever saw

also i read about you on the internet.. you have very good name and services..

[CH-Dave S.]

inspire, on 25 June 2010 - 03:06 PM, said:

Dear Gents at Cartika Team,

You are the best company i have ever seen, your prices are higher than most others but your services are the best..

Very few companies have good servers, unique NETWORK..

I tried more than 5 hosting companies last 12 years.. you are my perfect choice..

i lost 70% of my customers when i was with vortechhosting.com i will not mention other bad companies simply cus vortech is the worst company i ever saw

also i read about you on the internet.. you have very good name and services..

Thank you for the kind words inspire and we work hard to earn and retain your business. It is always nice to hear comments like these.

[Peter Drinnan]

CH-Dave S., on 08 July 2010 - 06:46 AM, said:

Thank you for the kind words inspire and we work hard to earn and retain your business. It is always nice to hear comments like these.

Too bad we web guys can't have some sort of sanity test as part of your signup process. That would make an awesome Google API (Google Crazy API).

I ran a hosting company for about 3 years so had to deal with a few oddball clients and also terminated accounts on occasion. It seems like some of those people see web services as a god given "right" and therefore behave any way they like without expecting recourse. Good job on dealing with this one.

[CH-John]

Reading the comments you are all leaving just shows how strong our communications are with our customers really makes me feel good about this situation. Also Andrew, being new on board and reading through this I love and support how it is being dealt with. Thank you Gents for all the kind comments, definitely helps inspire me to work harder myself, and it is great reading them from time to time

John
CH Support Team