Ok guys, I'm still relatively a newcomer to this game. I've built up a large ASP base of customers, and recently have moved onto PHP. Even though we are a reseller, we are because of being a new company. We use Peer 1 bandwidth (which is decent), and our technical support is good (we have a policy of replying to all emails within 5 minutes).

Recently something has rather wound me up. These are the certain companies (one in particular really get's my goat), who offer these "unlimited hosting packages", where they offer gb's of diskspace and stupid amounts of bandwidth for say £2.50 per month. To me that is not affordable.

I've had a couple of customers that have found these places and suddenly lost all sight of the support we've given them- and become enchanted by the stupid amounts of resources. It's even more ironic when I go to these company's websites, and 50% of the time you can guarantee they are down!

I've had one customer last night who basically is after something I can't give him. He sees these big packages and then asks me to price match, otherwise he is leaving. Why? How can I stop this?! We've given him the best one on one support we can offer. His site hasn't been down for second in the 6 months he's been with us. It's very fast. His emails are replied to instantly- we've even gone to the extent of helping him with his scripts.

What the hell can you do to compete with this??? I know I can get some cheap $99 / month server and offered unlimited bandwidth. However from past experience, I know you are lucky to get 75% uptime.

Some customers make me laugh, because as we all know- the minute the server goes down, they are rioting in the streets. Yet they are just as happy to go to a cheap company, if they will offer stupid amounts of bandwidth - we all know 95% of customers never use.

Sorry for the rantesqueness of this post. I'm slightly upset with this:(

Just let the customer go I guess. Let them learn a lesson, and they may come back to you.

This is the nature of hosting, or any other business... clients will want more for less and less and sometimes you cant match their needs or desires. Some of these clients will stay because they like the support, the speed, the uptime, but others, especially those with their first website who have never experienced a "slow" or "bad" will leave.

All you can do is thank the customer for their business, inform them that you can not meet the other site's offer but you would be glad to offer some special and wish them the best with their choice. You may want to remind them that hosting is like any other market; McDonalds costs far less than a nice sit-down restaurant but just like in McDonalds, the cheap host won't adhere to their needs, isn't going to offer the top services and really don't care about the client in the end for a single client is just 1 little number. The analogy may be a bit silly but the point isn't... if they have come to expect and like your service they will be sadly disappointed when the move. That's their choice and they may indeed choose to leave, all you can do is try and warn them enough to explain the options.

Also remember that a client may be “fishing” for offers; they may stay with you in the end so never be rude or treat them as a lesser client (not that you would have) for they mat just be looking to save a few bucks.