Greetings!

As the new owner of Brontobytes, I'd like to extend my apology for what you experienced. Please do note that we are now in Canada while the previous owner was in Cyprus. The previous owner's company was CTRL (Control) and it was doing business as Brontobytes.

For now, what I'm able to investigate and find is this:
- You have 2 accounts with us, both are inactive/closed.

- Both of them have a purchase of our WHMCS modules and not hosting. You never hosted with us under those 2 accounts so your review is not for our hosting service.

- I see your screenshots. You showed the previous owner's business address but are hiding yours by editing the invoice.
The invoice that I see is generated automatically by our system. It's using WHMCS and that's what invoices look like. I do not understand the part about fake invoice as that's what every customer gets. I still see your invoice in our system for the same amount mentioned in your screenshot so there's no change in "accounts receivable" as you said.

- I do not understand the Facebook image nor what it has to do with Brontobytes. There are many people and companies who are in Paphos, Cyprus.

- I reviewed all the tickets and live chat logs you have had with Brontobytes and most are fine and you were content. There was one where you were asking Brontobytes for custom development of a WHMCS module to including a full accounting software. They weren't able to accommodate that request as it was too much work for the amount of 600 EUR. There doesn't seem to be a disagreement there and previous tickets were fine. The last ticket might have been the one to cause you to write this negative review.
You lodged that last ticket (VAT invoice #201710-2336) and told Brontobytes support the following: ".... my accountant tells me that I would not have to pay VAT on this invoice.
It can not be recovered, I would be grateful if you want to refund the VAT via Paypal for balanced banlance. ...."

Brontobytes support replied with: ".... Unfortunately this won't be possible as we already closed our accounting books for 2017. I have set your account as tax except for future invoices. ...."

You replied with: ".... Thank you for your return, I will see tomorrow with my accountant how to solve this problem, in any case it will be necessary to find a solution, since I would not have to pay VAT.
So I hope you would be professionel. ...."

That was the last comment in that ticket and that ticket was on April 16, 2018, two days before this review.

I don't see any other communication method of you trying to resolve this matter with Brontobytes, so you proceeded, out of frustration for paying VAT, to write this negative review about fake invoices and something else that I'm not understanding. If you were truly unhappy, you should have reached out again about VAT but I cannot find any communication attempt after that date. I cannot help when it comes to the previous owner having to take VAT for a purchase. That is what his country required at the time. And, I cannot tell if he was able to refund the tax or not.
You also said, in your review here, "give an opinion on our company". Can you clarify, please? I see nothing of the sort done in our system and ticket replies and invoice.

I'm sorry to say and please correct me if I am wrong, but it seems this review is unjust, not entirely truthful, and doesn't fully reflect what happened. It's also not related to our hosting service nor hosting payments but only our WHMCS module products.

We wouldn't lie, nor deceive. We give invoices as they are in our system. If anything requires an amendment, we can discuss that.

I hope this helps shed some light, especially for future readers.
Do let us know if you have any other concerns about this.

Hello,

I am coming back to you following the response to our review, have you read my comment and have you seen the images?

I think not because otherwise you would have understood our opinion in 2018.

I recall the do, I think hostadvice can confirm since they did the necessary in 2018.

The links that no longer work now show that your company created a false invoice in the name of our company to validate their opinion on hostadvice.

Lucky for us, we have the archives and we have tracked our communications and attachments with HostAdvice.

I join them to you again, then you will understand that creating false invoices in the name of a business is a practice which is totally illegal.

https://www.transfernow.net/dl/20211201d5mBrpxL

Good continuation

Hi Sébastien,

Thank you for your quick reply!
I reviewed the screenshot and the PDF you sent. I must also mention that I did review the screenshots you sent before, which is why I commented about them in my first reply. I only see 2 images in your original review. If there are more, I am not seeing them.

First, the image in your original review shows Brontobytes. Everything looks normal there.
Second, the image in your new reply now shows Club Hosting, which I assume is your business, and a service of hosting.
Third, the PDF shows our invoice from Brontobytes that was sent to you.

I do not understand the second image. It seems to be coming from your business. I don't see any hosting service from you as that second image says, about a website xeroteana.com. I cannot find any account with xeroteana.com in our hosting.

If you're saying that the second image of Club Hosting was sent by the previous owner of Brontobytes, then can you please tell us how he sent you that? Was it via email?

Also, why would the previous owner send that? What benefit is there?
Both invoices show the same amounts, same invoice number, same tax amount.
One is falsified. There's no way our system would send your logo and info in an invoice since it would mean we would have to change our logo in our system for all customers (which we would never do as it has nothing to do with Brontobytes).

Thanks in advance for your reply.

Hello,

I will come back to you following your last answer, there are two documents, an image file and a PDF, the pdf shows that I purchased a module from you and the image shows a false invoice in the name of my company, the image file with the fake invoice comes from hostadvice, it is hostadvice which requests an invoice from people for the validation of a comment when it is disputed.

I invite you to see the dates, the invoice number and the transaction references on both documents to understand the fraud, I no longer remember all the details but you have to see this with the person who made the false invoice and the must comment in order to ask him why he did this.

I just remember that your company canceled a module that we bought in one time and closed our account, I also see that our account is still closed, I invite you to open it in order to to review the history of tickets.

We just told the truth about your business following your comment about our business when your business is not even a customer.

Good day.

Good morning,

I'm having a difficult time understand each message due to the language barrier. You're welcome to reply in French. We're in Québec, Canada now :).

You have 2 accounts with us, both were closed. I have set them to Inactive now so you might be able to log in. The second account has a different address and the domain is with mydatacenter.fr. The other is Club Hosting.

There's a staff comment that I see in your main account with us, the one with Club Hosting, and it's this: "Opened PayPal case after 6 months and threatened us for bad reviews."

This is probably why your account was closed since the moment you open a PayPal dispute, it means that you'd like your money back and you forfeit all usage of what you had purchased, should PayPal return the money. I do not know the details of that dispute as we do not use the same PayPal account. I do not know if the money was returned or not. Nonetheless, it seems that all of this is because of the small amount of VAT. I do not know the laws in your countries, but perhaps the previous owner should have just returned the VAT to avoid any issues, in a separate payment. Also, the VAT amount is small and didn't warrant a PayPal dispute. Or, were you looking to get a refund for the whole module? What we can tell, according to the terms, is no refunds are given for modules, or at least it's on a case by case basis.

We can also see your review here (we had replied not too long ago, by editing the first message by the previous owner): https://marketplace.whmcs.com/product/3645-expenses-tracker#reviews

We're unable to confirm the false invoice, unfortunately. But, if it was created by the previous owner, then we're trying to understand his reasons for doing so, and in a sloppy way too. If it is from him, I hope we can put this behind us as we'd never do something like that, nor do we understand the reason for that, nor the end goal. The details remain, it seems you were not pleased to pay VAT and then there was no more communication from your end. A PayPal dispute was opened by you, according to the note. We cannot confirm who created that invoice, I apologise. There's also no attachment in any ticket so we can't find where that false invoice was given to you. There's no complaint from you anywhere in our system about a false invoice. Unless, he closed your account and thus why you couldn't reply. It can't be that an account is closed and all this happens over a few EUR. Perhaps you writing a negative review caused all of his supposed bad behaviour? I apologise nonetheless. We're under completely new ownership and staff. We're honest, transparent, and work legitimately.

You can check the tickets and other details in your account with us now and if you need anything else, please let us know. We can continue communicating in our ticket system, if you prefer, since we do not want to take over this review section any further.

Bonjour,

Je reviens vers vous suite à votre dernier message, merci d'avoir fait l'activation du compte, cela a permis de comprendre l'historique, je vous invite simplement à lire le dernier ticket 778981.

Nous avons fait la demande pour avoir un remboursement de la TVA sur une de vos factures, en France, il n'est pas possible de récupérer la TVA d'un autre Pays, je vois dans mes messages que nous avions fait notre demande proprement.

Après quoi votre entreprise a mis un mauvais commentaire sur notre entreprise, il est possible que nous eussions fait l'ouverture d'un litige sur Paypal pour récupérer le montant de la TVA mais je pense pas que cela justifie le commentaire.

Cordialement

Thank you for your reply. I understand a bit more now. It is a shame that the VAT was not returned to you because the previous owner had closed the accounting books for that year.

Nonetheless, I do not know who added a negative comment but none of the staff nor the previous owner work with Brontobytes. They have stopped effectively on August 2020. Everything after that date is under the new ownership and staff.

We hope we can move on from this.
Please let us know, via our ticket system on our website, if there's anything we can do for you.