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I have been with Cyberconnectics, a dial-up ISP located in Wilsonville, Oregon, for a few years now. They appear to be down with no advance notice. Calls to them result in a busy signal. They did take my money for the month of February though.
Anyone else out there with the same problem?
Discussion is locked
Yes I was having many problems also. I guess they closed their doors with no warning. I called Integra telecom and they were able to get me connected in a hurry. Dave was a lot of help (503) 793-2172
Thanks for the feedback. Fortunately, I only had a dial-up account with them. Others I have talked to had alot more invested, such as business web sites that Cyberconnectics hosted. I guess that the abreviation they used "Cyb con" should have clued me in a long time ago.
Also, I was amazed at the lack of information online about the business apparently shutting down. Thanks to CNET for letting me vent off some steam.
Bruce
~ Feb 7 -- E-mail not working; website not available; phone line busy (quick busy as if out of service). I drove by the Wilsonville location (10 miles each way) after one day offline. I was second in line, and another woman was coming in behind me to ask the same questions. They said the reason the phone wasn't working was that it was voip, and when their server was down, their phone was down as well. They said to call the Salem number and press #4 for tech support, and it would go through.
As I said to the woman before me, "What's wrong with this picture when you can't communicate with your ISP by phone, by e-mail, or via their website, and you have to drive 10 miles to talk to them? This is a PROVIDER in the information age . . . !"
The Salem phone worked for a few more days. On Sat Feb 10 I got through to tech support. They said their server was down; they were moving physically to a new location, and service should be back by Monday. Of course, this would be about 10 days w/o service, with no notices, and no explanations. Along the way, calling the Salem number passed me through from #1 (sales), #2 (customer service), #3 (accounting), and #4 (technical support) -->> all went to voice mail for tech support. Another day or so later this mailbox message said it was unable to take messages because the mailbox was full. Yet another day or so, and this number gave a quick busy signal (apparently out of service).
Neither Verizon or AT&T could find any record of that number, and were unable to check on its viability, or even who the service provider might be in Salem. So now, without physically driving to Salem (35 miles!), it is not even possible to talk to them . . .
I had already obtained FIOS from Verizon, but kept with cybcon as an ISP because of my previous excellent service, and my longstanding e-mail address. So it was easy to activate my verizon mailbox and make the switch.
It sure would be nice if they had provided a voice message with some sort of explanation, wouldn't it? In the meantime, don't hold your breath for a resumption of service . . . ?!
I had postings on craigslist for a while trying to get some communication going, but they were reported by users and removed (thanks, people). Our money is still being taken and I know others' are too. We have been told with an auto debit we have to cancel with the provider - fat chance of that. I am hopeful that if enough people put public pressure on the new (former?) owners they will at least stop taking people's money. Even if they manage to re-open there is no way I'd use them again!
Following are the people who I have emailed in connection with the cybcon problem so far - to try and get the info. to customers who just don't know what to do to find more info.:
consumer.hotline@doj.state.or.us
ckipp@eaglenewspapers.com
hstern@wweek.com
njaquiss@wweek.com
idemsky@wweek.com
toddmurphy@portlandtribune.com
jimredden@portlandtribune.com
jenniferanderson@portlandtribune.com
nickbudnick@portlandtribune.com
peterkorn@portlandtribune.com
jacobsanders@portlandtribune.com
jgianola@koin.com
kday@koin.com
jhogan@koin.com
newstips@kgw.com
koindesk@koin.com
thedesk@katu.com
The more people they hear from the more likely they will be to run a story or investigate.
Other than being told they'll "be back up tomorrow" repeatedly, I have heard nothing new and everything still seems to be shot. The new owner whose cell and home numbers I had is no longer answering the phone and is obviously not returning calls.
I received some input from a few craigslist people that I am posting below.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From what I could determine, their up-stream provider (Electric Lightwave) had cut their connections. All of them, including DSL and telephone. Cybcon told me they were switching to another provider. I was watching their domain registration and did see one nameserver moved to a live connection, but the content didn't change - still pointing to an address block owned by Electric Ligthwave.
I suspect that moving to a new provider is beyond their competence. Moving from one address block to another is a big task - even if you have time to plan it all out. Doing it on the fly must be a real nightmare, even if you know what you are doing!
...the prospects of it coming back - very low to nil...referred me to a provider (Infinity)...they called and are setting up my DSL to them right now.
...For those people hosting stuff ...I just hope they all have good backups of the content on those Cybcon servers, because I doubt that they will ever get access to them again.
...expects them to go bankrupt -- that was why I decided to move. It really is a shame ...Cybcon was a VERY good ISP, and the customer base was stable ... it has all been destroyed in less than a week ...
So, I suggest that you loom around for another provider. Cybcon is never going to be the same again, even if it ever does come back.
...Domains can be moved without servers being available, that is a different operation, and is hosted by much more reliable international organizations. Cybcon not responding should not be a problem, even if the domains are locked ... a lot depends on how they were set up - since 99.99% will have been set up by Eldon, they will have been done right.
...For those who have paid in advance, quite honestly I think their money is gone...but it may be worth finding a lawyer willing to represent all of these people and initiate legal action. Even if it went live again tomorrow, I would write off my money and move anyway!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I just got a response from the Better Business Bureau and they have
opened a case for my complaint and forwarded it to the Seattle division for investigation.
I would suggest that as many people affected by Cyberconnectics actions file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. It is relatively easy to do. http://www.bbb.org
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was suggested to me to contact Tucows about this. They may take a long time responding (days) because they don't like to deal with end users, just resellers. But it's something, and they have authority to do something once you have identified yourself as the owner of your site(s) and can verify who you are.
Email: compliance@opensrs.org . Also, go to: http://tucows.com/contact and call the toll free #. I called "Customer Service" on Friday 2/9/07 and was on-hold for 105 minutes before they answered and gave me the email for Compliance. If you call, and select "compliance" you'll just get a voicemail giving the above email address. They're in Toronto. In your email you must explain the details of the situation, i.e.: your website, emails, etc.
Here is a sample of what I sent to Tucows:
" I have some domains hosted by: CYBERCONNECTICS aka: CYBCON (www.cybcon.com) that I want to transfer. The domains are: __________________________. Their President is Scott Lee. They're located at: 30240 SW Parkway #10 Wilsonville, OR 97070. They're down and I can't reach them by email, phone or fax. Normally I would use your website but I can't send from my Cyberconnectics email address(s) Please tell me how to proceed with this.
I thank you in advance for your attention to this matter."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My brief two cents about the BBB idea is that if the new owners are closing-down shop, they won't care what their rating is and that's about the extent of the BBB's authority. I am hoping for a mass appeal to the Attorney General before they disappear for good...
I'm sorry for your troubles. Unfortunately, I cannot help you with the technical stuff but I do have a suggestion for ON-GOING CHARGES TO YOUR CREDIT CARD.
1) You can call the credit card company and tell them it's an illegal charge or a disputed charge and you want them to send you the "disputed charge" form. It's something you must fill out and return to the credit card company in order for them to follow up. AND the charge must already appear on your credit card. Know the relevant numbers on your credit card statement, you will need them for reference.
2) If that doesn't work, tell the credit card company that you have lost your credit card and you need a new one.
a) you will not be able to make any new charges until you receive your new card.
b) any on-going charges (such as your ISP) will not have access to the new number -- and their on-going charges will not be able to go through, even though they have your name and address they will not have access to your new card.
3) You may not want to do this until you see whether they are going to charge your March account?? (more money down the drain since they charged you for February and you lost service before February ended.)
I hope this helps.
I spoke to the Owner and Scott Lee is not the President he is their VP. I learned everything was coming up and he I could see my Web Site was backup.
Could you please tell us who to contact at Cyberconnectics and a phone
number. We don't live locally and 411 has been unsuccessful. We desperately need to get ahold of somebody. Thanks!
I don't think it would be proper protocol to post e-mail addresses or phone numbers here in the forum, but the local company that bought out Cyberconnectics is Technicall and you can find their address and contact info on this page (at least as of tonight): http://www.technicallnetworks.com/corporate_info.html. These are the people I wound up contacting when my DSL went down in December.
Good luck,
Ric
I don't want to appear ungrateful for the suggestion, but why on earth would you think your contact information from December 2006 would be at all useful in late Feb 2007? The whole point here is that this information has become useless!!
I will admit that I was surprised to find a viable (?) web site at the URL provided. However the phone numbers DON'T WORK! (Surprise, surprise.) The 503- number provides a rapid busy signal (out of service?), and the 800- number provides a recorded message saying the number is not available . . . I haven't tried the fax number or the e-mails yet, but I'm not holding my breath . .
It is particularly disturbing that the VoIP offering through e-Bay and Pay Pal still seems to be operational!! Click on the 'Sign Up' link and see for yourself. I certainly did not follow through and order this service, but the links all appear to be current and dated today, Feb 27, 2007.
Something seems to be terribly wrong with this picture . . .
FYI I use the VoIP service and thats how I was able to contact them... I agree with a lot of what your saying. Interesting you mention December.. I still had my email so I curious what was your experience in Dec?
I can tell Tucows will do nothing as I learned that one of the wonderful thing that happened is the Cyber Servers where attacked by Hackers and even changed the Cyber.com domains and transfered theres to someone else. Even the former Owner had to get involved to try and resolve domain ownership. Did you get your domains back?
A correction for you as to the url we are talking about. www.cyberconnectics.com or www. cybcon.com not www.cyber.com
I am sure that the original owner and current owner of cyberconnectics have hard copies of their former customers address and phone numbers. There is a phone number on the check they cashed for instance. I have not received a phone call. Or any form of contact from them.
When we acquired CyberConnectics all of the accounting system was already in place by the previous owners. There were no hard copies of any contact information kept. The only information kept was the user ID and the amount paid and on what date that payment was made. This applied to both payments made by check and credit card.
Scott Lee
Vice President, Marketing
CyberWorld, Inc
Dba CyberConnectics
Even if you think your lost email, website, $19.99, whatever isn't "that much" of a loss - consider the future consumers who could be taken advantage of and decide whether it might be worth your time to file a complaint with the Attorney General online. If you get your refund, you can always let the AG know and drop your own complaint. No harm done then. The larger harm is in not doing anything to help fellow consumers avoid future loss by holding this guy accountable for his actions now.
Thanks to everyone who got Channel 2 moving on the story!!!
CyberConnectics is up and running again!!! Lets see for how long before another individual hacks in and destroys all the work that has been done again. We have implemented monitoring systems that log all logins to gain more information for the criminal investigation underway regarding the destruction of certain pieces of critical software.
For information regarding CyberConnectics, check the following link
http://www.cyberconnectics.com
Phone numbers will be posted shortly, however if requesting a refund please follow the procedure listed at this link.
Sincerely,
Scott M Lee
Vice President, Marketing
CyberWorld, Inc
Dba CyberConnectics
Scott -
I am more than willing to give you an opportunity to remedy (and/or explain) the current Cyberconnectics problems. However, your assertion that 'Cyberconnectics is back on line' is a little bit of an overstatement.
I logged on to the Cybcon site, and I did appreciate your initial explanations. However, it would be useful to time-stamp any such messages to avoid ongoing confusion about what is happening.
Several obvious problems remain:
1. The Cybcon home page is on-line, but none of the links are working, so it could hardly be called functional just yet.
2. Clicking on the links provided, I sent you two e-mails (Wed 3/28/07; 6:05 PM and 6:11 PM. As of 7:30 PM, I am receiving messages that indicate these attempts have bounced back!
So what happens next . . ?
TIA
Ed Gallaher
Ed,
Yes the index page is all that is online at this point in time as we are still trying to regain the cybcon.com domain that was illegally transferred. We have been in contact with the company who controls the DNS where the domain is pointed. They have no record of the individual who apparently transferred the domain to their Name Servers. It appears that everything in the whois information is made up. The name, email address, even the zip code does not exist. We have been informed that this matter might actual become an investigation on a federal level because it involves the internet and identity.
We will have the rest of the information needed within the next week to move ahead with the acquiring of cybcon.com.
Scott Lee
Scott -
You are obviously a member of, and a browser of this forum.
Since the cyberconnectics links do not work, and we have no viable phone numbers available, this forum provides the only possible means of communicating with you.
Can you tell us why the contact links on the Cyberconnectics.com home page are bouncing?
-->> e-mail bounces back -->> refund@cyberconnectics.com
*************************
Your message cannot be delivered to the following recipients:
Recipient address: refund@cyberconnectics.com
Reason: Remote SMTP server has rejected address
Diagnostic code: smtp;550 5.7.1 <refund@cyberconnectics.com>... Relaying denied
Remote system: dns;cyberconnectics.com (TCP|206.46.252.40|51269|205.238.47.19|25) (booboo.cybcon.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.13.8/8.13.8; Sun, 1 Apr 2007 12:22:45 -0700)
**********************
QUOTE from cyberconnectics.com:
"If you would like any additional information regarding any other issue please contact support@cyberconnectics.com"
-->> e-mail bounces back -->> support@cyberconnectics.com
I thank you in advance for any further information, phone numbers, etc.
SUGGESTION: Since none of the cybcon technology seems to be working, why not simply register for a FREE YAHOO E-MAIL ACCOUNT? Or a free MSN E-MAIL ACCOUNT. You can accomplish this in 5-10 minutes from any browser. Then we would at least be able to communicate with each other.
Since you are able to access this forum, would it be reasonable for us to assume that you have SOME sort of e-mail account????
Also, since you are using 'tcallnet' as your user name, you are still obviously involved in Technicall itself. Assuming this is correct, is there any way to contact you via that route? If not, what do your Technicall customers do for customer support? And while we're at it (correct me if I am mistaken), it seems that the Technicall site is still soliciting new users, including a link to an e-Bay site where you are selling VoIP hardware for $69?
Inquiring minds want to know . . .
iggy07
If you check domain registration for the company you will find that Scott does have a Yahoo account. Seems sort of shaky for both contacts to be using Yahoo for the company registration info.
The email addresses listed on the temporary index page at www.cyberconnectics.com are now functional. There was a temporary relay issue from some other service providers. This has now been resolved.
Scott Lee
Vice President, Marketing
Cyber World, Inc
Dba CyberConnectics
I tried the email link as well for refund and also for support.
They just came back as undeliverable and that is 3 days after your post.
Maybe in a year one of the links might work but I doubt it.
Below the line is a copy of a recent attempt to contact Scott Lee via the 'Contact Us' link at www.technicallnetworks.com.
**********************************
This report relates to a message you sent with the following header fields:
Message-id: <C23821B3.C6BA%ejgallaher@verizon.net>
Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2007 15:22:26 -0800
From: Edward Gallaher <ejgallaher@verizon.net>
To: <slee@technicallnetworks.com>
Subject: Technicall e-mail working?
Your message cannot be delivered to the following recipients:
Recipient address: slee@technicallnetworks.com
Reason: Remote SMTP server has rejected address
Diagnostic code: smtp;550 5.7.1 <slee@technicallnetworks.com>... Relaying denied
Remote system: dns;technicallnetworks.com (TCP|206.46.252.40|47722|205.238.47.19|25) (booboo.cybcon.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.13.8/8.13.8; Tue, 3 Apr 2007 13:21:50 -0700)

Reporting-MTA: dns;vms040.mailsrvcs.net (tcp-daemon)
Original-recipient: rfc822;slee@technicallnetworks.com
Final-recipient: rfc822;slee@technicallnetworks.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.7.1 (Remote SMTP server has rejected address)
Remote-MTA: dns;technicallnetworks.com
(TCP|206.46.252.40|47722|205.238.47.19|25)
(booboo.cybcon.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.13.8/8.13.8; Tue, 3 Apr 2007 13:21:50
-0700)
Diagnostic-code: smtp;550 5.7.1 <slee@technicallnetworks.com>... Relaying denied

From: Edward Gallaher <ejgallaher@verizon.net>
Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2007 15:22:26 -0800
To: <slee@technicallnetworks.com>
Subject: Technicall e-mail working?
Scott -
I just wanted to try your e-mail link from the Technicall site to see if it is working.
EJG
Even if it were temporarily back yesterday, the site is still down today. I still have no access to the email server. Are these so-called hackers responsible for your not paying your up-stream provider? Since this seems to be the only way to reach your company, other than through a news reporter or the attorney general, and you are just now paying attention to us - please take no further monies from your old customers and stop accepting new VOIP customers who will not be receiving the service they sign-up for.
The site I have programmed into everything which links to what was important to me was cybcon.com - which is still down and useless.
If you truly have no customer information - why not aske every person who personally drove to your offices or tracked you down at home how they could be reached?
Why did you not tell anyone that our billing and personal information had been hacked when they called?
I'm not buying most of it. There is still no explanation for not trying to get a landline or alternate web site going to inform us of the status, especially if our personal information could be in hackers' hands.
Please provide us with the contact information for the authorities conducting the alleged investigation so that we may contact them to ensure our own charges for identity theft by these alleged hackers can be pursued.
Regardless of who took our payments after the site went down, you had access to our billing addresses through your payment processing company - to send explanations to if nothing else.
If you truly experienced such hardships, that is unfortunate. It is more unfortunate that you didn't care enough to hire someone to contact us all by mail - at least to let us know our identities are not secure! We will not be trusting you with our personal information again.
I was a Cyberconnectics customer for over seven years, starting with dial-up and moving to DSL after less than a year. For a long time, I was a veritable evangelist. I didn't need a lot of support, but was amazed that when I would e-mail a question on a Sunday afternoon, I'd get a reply from Elden by the evening.
After some major support issues when my DSL went down during the pre-Christmas storms (I wound up moving to cable), I developed some real doubts about the post-Elden Cybcon. Within about thirty-six hours of their disappearance this month (February), I moved my domain name and web/e-mail hosting to a reputable national provider and was back up within 12 hours. Luckily, I had been paying from month-to-month, so I didn't loose out on very much financially.
I greatly appreciate rzezula's effort to get some media attention. The story lacks the violence, sex or celebrity scandal angle to make it of interest to TV news, but perhaps one of the papers will follow up on it. It would be interesting to find out what really happened.
Well I managed to get hold of the CEO and learned the System went down while they where also transferring their telephone numbers. He said my Web Site would be up and I checked today and it was. I learned they have moved the entire System and dial was still working. Email was near done. I would not fret it as they are still around.
You would think that the first thing Cybcon would get back up is their own web site. Which it is not.
The whole approach to their lack of service is preposterous. For instance cashing my check after their system was down and without a bit of communication on Cybcon's part to their existing customers. I don't believe their good intent for a moment.
Only time well and I am sure eventually the truth will reveal itself
I got a call from Channel 2 News other day and they are following the story, albeit slowly.
Whatever some of you are being told about alleged hackers or the system just randomly going down is not truthful. The new owners are not being honest about having lost their up-stream provider and it seems glaringly obvious that they do not have the skill to switch to a new provider - or they have just given up. It was not an accident so much as neglect and there is no reason why they could not have at least switched one of their contact phone numbers to a land line by now with a recording telling us all what is going on and what to expect. If they were truly worried about their customers they would have tried anything to reach us - and they should have.
PLEASE email Channel 2 and they will forward it to the reporter investigating this (to let them know that I am not the only customer demanding answers)! They are also calling the Attorney General's office and I'd hate to be the only one who has sent them a complaint as well...hint, hint.
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