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CB Hosting and Web Design Review of Linkbright Media - WARNING, protect your website !!
Linkbright Media - WARNING, protect your website !!

Linkbright Media - WARNING, protect your website !! review: hosting / developing - nina logged into my website and changed all passwords 1

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Author of the review
1:31 pm EDT
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Because i wanted to move host, Nina logged in to all access points of my webste and changed all my passwords to stop all my access. Any password recovery, she changed from my email to hers. She then hit me with an inexplicable £400 bill and refused to give me my website back until i paid it.
See attached evidence and listen to the video file of her from a phone call refusing access all because i expressed i want to move and im disputing an inexplicable bill.

All evidence has been screenshot and attached

Here is the series of events which lead to it...

I have been with linkbright for 4 years. i found them through peopleperhour while i was a young person with the princes trust. They quoted a job to build our website and the princes trust gave me a loan to pay for it.

The first 2-3 years we have kept in good standing and always paid all bills in due time.

- PROBLEM 1 - Customer Services
In the last 12 months, they changed from direct contact to employing a 3rd party customer services team. This meant any problems, i would have to wait days for a reply. Unless it was a paid job.

- PROBLEM 2 - Charging for phone calls.
Previously, jobs would take 40 mins to 1.5hrs to complete. Similar jobs started taking a lot longer and they started charging for every phone call and email exchange. This was being reflected in their new time sheets. Price of similar jobs went from £40-60 into the hundreds.

- PROBLEM 3 - SSL Security certificates
SSL was never installed on my website, despite nearly every hosting website offering them for free. While contacting an SEO specialist, they said they offer it for free and our host might also. When i contacted Nina, she told me it would cost around £80 to implement. When i looked up the host she is using 'Guru Hosting'. i can see they also offer it for free.

At this point, i decided that LinkBright was no longer for me and would look into other options. I felt it best to first contact Nina and see if she would like to resolve these as i'd been with them for 4 years. She didn't get back to me for almost a week. This was confirmation for me.

I spoke to our new hosting company and explained that i had a few bills left with linkbright and i'd most likely have to pay those first before leaving, which is totally understandable. But that as we'd always paid our bills (well into the thousands), being in continued good standing, they may be happy for us to move. But id have to make sure they were happy with that first.

The next day i got an email from Nina saying "i almost forgot, you have another invoice for October see attached invoice (£400) and timesheet . I went to log into my cpanel to view the email bigger on the computer and the password had been changed.

I went to do a password reset thinking that i'd got it wrong or forgotten it and the primary email had been changed to Ninas email address.

Incase it was all a big mistake, i used the linkbright support ticket system to say i think my account had been hacked and i cant get access. The reply i got was shocking.
See attached email screenshot, but the words were "Your account hasn't been hacked. Access has been restricted to prevent it being moved until your account is settled."

She had systematically gone into every access point of my website, changed all my passwords and made her email address the primary contact to prevent me accessing anything. She has now also deleted my account on the linkbright ticket system so i no longer have access to details about previous jobs either. The following evidence and details are with what information i have access to from downloaded emails on a separate email address.

For the moment, i overlooked the issue of her holding my site to ransom and decided to focus on this £400 inexplicable bill.

In the previous month (september), i requested a job to be quoted as previous hourly rates were going up and up. The month before (july/August) 2018) was a bill well into the hundreds which came very unexpected. I had given the go ahead for the job and never asked about costs, so i felt it only fair to pay it, even if it did seem extremely excessive. I requested to pay it monthly as it was unexpected. Further jobs over £100 were to be discussed and quoted for.

We agreed for a job to be done that would take 6hrs at £35ph. Totalling £210 + vat. This was confirmed by one of her colleagues also. So i gave the go ahead.

The first bill for this came in september for £122.50 + vat, that i paid on 16th October for £148.23 that should have left a total of £87.50 + vat. Not the £400 bill that came in.

I decided to call Nina to try to resolve this issue. When i asked about the details, she kept repeating 'i sent you the timesheet' and told me that because i am no longer a customer as i want to move away, she has revoked all access because i'm disputing the invoice and will not grant access until its paid.

She now has full control of my website and is refusing to let me have access.

Nina uses a skype phone number to look like a UK number, but actually is located in the netherlands. They may have recently moved the company address from brighton area to birmingham. But she lives in the netherlands.

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Update by Beware of linkbright media
Oct 30, 2018 2:17 pm EDT

She has now decided to remove my website in the hight of christmas sales. While celebrating her posh new offices in birmingham, she's destroying other peoples businesses.

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Nina Berens
, US
Mar 30, 2019 6:57 am EDT

It seems this man is a professional when it comes to malicious harassment of businesses for his own financial gain e.g. this report from 2015

dreadsuk.com and elijah locke ceo — dreadsuk.com and owner elijah locke engage is defamation and harassment

This man continues to post bad reviews containing lies and fraudulent 'evidence' he is referring to e.g. the audio he is referring to is manually edited pieces of a conversation that we had when he called to verbally attack me as a fraud, completely out of the blue.

Elliot's hosting was suspended due to non payment of very many outstanding invoices including website hosting, that he said he was not going to pay. The invoices he did not pay are all directly attributable to service support requests received via our support ticket system, regarding the implementation of various website improvements and new product lines for his business www.dreadsuk.com. Detailed timesheets show the support ticket number (created by the client), details of what was done, staff member who worked on it, and the amount of time spent.

Not paying invoices is one thing, but this has escalated out of control with Elliot following us around leaving fraudulent reviews to purposely try to harm my business. He's toned the more recent reviews down saying they're his 'opinion' but still continues to claim that I issued fraudulent invoices.

I hope anyone reviewing this has the good sense to see through it. Thank you.