Today we received many conflicting stories as to why the server had been down so long, along with information that led us to believe that this was more than a technical problem.

Not least amongst these was the threat of WebDirect Limited (the company behind clan-servers.biz) being struck off the company register, the fact that the company hadn't filed accounts for two years running, that we knew for a fact that the company had a real cashflow problem, and that no-one could contact Rogue-T (AKA Steve Palmer, c-s.biz admin). Eventually, someone got hold of his home number and called him, only to be told that an "announcement" would be made today and that he didn't run c-s.biz anymore. Eventually, we saw this message posted at http://clan-servers.realbadidea.com/default.htm:

Clan-Servers
PO Box 8763,
Birmingham.
B14 6DY

On the 12th of February 2003 (My Birthday) the Cisco Router that connected all the servers to the outside world decided to pack up. I traveled down to London on the 13th and managed to get it going again but it was only up for 8 hours before it packed up again and now no matter how much its restarted it will not route traffic. It is still not determined what is actually wrong with it, to find out alone would cost in the region of £1000, to fix it would be in the region of £3000. I traveled down again on the 14th and collected it from RedBus to see what else could be done with it but have still not found the cause of the problem.

I have decided that as it is impossible to repair or replace this router withought becoming even more in debt that it is best to cut my losses, closing clan-servers and sell the equipment to repay any months outstanding on customer contracts. I started clan-servers as I was a keen gamer who also had a lot of experience with networks and computers being both Microsoft certified and Cisco certified and my family trusted that enough to lend me the money to set clan-servers up and run the gaming service. I have spoke to them over this weekend and made them aware of the fact that the money that was invested will be gone as they are losing thousands. I am now preparing my CV as I have absolutely nothing apart from what was in the cabinet at RedBus and need to secure an income.

Server contracts will be refunded after receiving notification in writing to the above address that a refund is required. Contracts will only be refunded for whole months left on a contract and will be calculated by subtracting the time that you have had the server as the contract period against the amount that was received.

I can only apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.

Sincerely,
Steve Palmer aka Rogue-T