I have nearly 20 sites hosted with reseller TNS Group (yourdomainhost.com & nicforce.net) for the last 10 years. Until the last few months, there was rarely an issue.
They’re a hosting reseller for axxs.net and a domain reseller for Tucows.
They are totally unreachable. Their site is up but the only official method of contact is their helpdesk system. The last ticket I opened goes back three weeks without a response.
I have 2 email addresses of the owner James and he does not respond.
I have the URL of their new secret (yet to be advertised) help desk and tickets are not answered here either.
Their tickets are not answered on the official help desk system.
I’ve even sent messages to them via Facebook.
These sporadic communication issues started about 6 months ago so I started moving domain names to GoDaddy so at least I could move hosting in a pinch. Tucows was no help whatsoever… they only provided a disconnected phone number. At least with GoDaddy, I know my domain names can be pointed to any host at any time… and not have to worry about how to contact them for renewal.
Sometimes they ignore a domain name renewal payment and let the domain name expire. Usually, after several emails, they reactivate it but lately rarely an apology or response.
Having so many accounts hosted with them will make it very difficult and expensive to move all these sites and their associated databases to new hosts. If not for the time & expense, I’d dump them today.
I’m just wondering if any of you are hosted with TNS Group as well.
Is it possible to keep all the sites hosted with axxs.net and just get a new reseller? I can’t seem to find a working website for axxs.net.
Sometimes hosting providers will let you deal directly with them rather than their resellers in cases like this, if you explain the situation to them.
Although it would take you a bit of effort to move to a different host this might be a sign that it’s a good time to move on.
I agree. The problem is that 19/20 of these sites aren’t mine. How to convince these customers they need to incur costs of moving especially when many of them paid for a year of hosting in advance.
They might not be paying their provider, and their account is still active but listed as overdue. If that’s the case it’s only a matter of time before the servers are shut down and all sites would be inaccessible.
If you are using Cpanel as a control panel migrating to a new host that also uses Cpanel is super-easy, many will do the migration for you for free.
There should be no problem in migrating the database(s) as well. When you are ready to proceed let your clients know that they shouldn’t modify them during the migration.
I have tried to cancel my service with them
but they continue to charge my paypal account
I have filled out their online cancellation
form, and have e-mailed them, with no reply
I finally cancelled my paypal debit card
They used to be such a great company. It’s a real shame.
James & Jasmine were really nice too. They split up and Jasmine left the company. Sometime last year, James had a family situation and Jasmine went back to TNS to help him temporarily. This is when communication with TNS started getting really bad. Although I managed to get a refund for domain name that they never renewed.
I’m friends with Jasmine on Facebook and most of the stuff I managed to get done by contacting her there. Lately though, even she’s not responding to me.
As posted previously, the wholesale company who provides the actual hosting is called OLM. I found an online discussion forum for OLM and posted a similar thread over there. Within minutes I got a response from an OLM employee who was happy to call me on the phone and discuss this situation.
He explained that he could not provide any details about TNS specifically. However IF any reseller starts having financial trouble, OLM will take down the sites for a few days as they try to work things out. Once all avenues are exhausted, they will contact the end-users to work things out directly with them.
So to alleviate my concerns…
Sites may endure a few days of down-time.
NO sites will be deleted.
OLM will assume responsibility of the hosting and work directly with account holders to keep the sites online.
The OLM representative also said that he would call James at TNS and see if he could find out why they’ve stopped supporting customers for all these weeks.
Fortunately for me, the OLM representative immediately started taking over these accounts… one by one, they’ve been coming back online. The best part is that OLM charges a lot less per month than TNS too and they have an 800 number and customer service department.
The bad part is the domain names are not accessible through TNS Group. TNS Group ran NicForce.net as a Tucows reseller. There is no way to get into these now to unlock/transfer or to change the DNS settings. Tucows are not easy to reach via conventional methods.
Wow! What a surprise - been with James & Jasmine for about 10 years and never had a problem - until starting about July. - Communications STOPPED. I run around 18-23 domains with them most are my clients. I have a neat little PERL script that Jasmine wrote for me. Can’t make it run anywhere else.
To the fellow that said he had Support Tickets not responded to for 3 weeks . . . I’ve got some from the first of November that still haven’t been replied to. Nothing earth-shattering - they still hit my account for monthkly payments and my sites were dtill up - even the one’s I’d tried to cancel.
Here’s my problem now - I had a site, herecomedawebmaster.com. My business email was jim@herecomedawebmaster.com. This email address was also the administrative contact for ALL my domains. It failed to auto renew 2 days ago. So, how do I change DNS info now on these 18+ domains. Most are hosted on the servers at OLM but I don’t know how I’m going to renew (nicforce.net) any of them as it comes time. I try to login to the new nicforce.net and it won’t accept any of my username/password combinations. I wish James had given us a heads up. Of course, 5 month old support tickets not cared for should have indicated something was screwy. I had so much trust in James and Jasmine, though. I still can’t believe they folded.
Sure gonna miss them. Guess it’ll all come out in the wash.
Yes, I know what happened in July and it was a personal, family thing, with James. I think it lead to neglect of the business and that led to whatever took them down… certainly financial… what else would explain it?
You can find Jasmine on Facebook and tell her your thoughts. She hasn’t worked for TNS a couple years since they split up but she’s been very helpful in getting James to take care of some expired stuff for me. Only the last couple months were really bad where nothing was getting done.
NicForce.net is now re-directing to a whole new Nicforce site outside of OLM’s reach…
but the problem is that all the passwords have been changed. Last night, they emailed all the new passwords to the Admin email address on the Domain name record. I still have two customers who have not received their new password. I am contacting Tucows directly about that.
OLM is taking over the hosting for the TNS sites. They were wonderful in getting all the sites back online painlessly. Go to OLM’s discussion forum and you’ll see my thread.
Once you get the sites restored, the email will start working, then you can probably do a password retrieval from NicForce. Good Luck… it’s taken me 2 full days and we’re still not back at 100%.
BTW- hosting costs not nearly as much directly from OLM and if you move your domain names to GoDaddy, you’ll save about 50% there. I never minded paying the extra money to James & Jasmine but when service disappears, so do your loyal customers.
Thanks for the replies and help, guys. I’ll try this new nicforce deal you mentioned. But, if all the passwords have been changed and emailed to the admincontact, I’m sunk. That email on that domain expired 2 days ago.
I’m going to try to contact tucows. You know, I’ve never taken a problem I was having to James or Jasmine that they couldn’t help me with. Sure gonna miss them.
One of you guys said you had some contact with Jasmine & James on Facebook? You know, I always just called them “Jasmine & James” - never knew their last names. Can you tell me how to try to reach them on facebook? Thanks, Jim