This is new - lately we've received several forum posts (not in our pre-sales forums, mind you) from someone who isn't even hosted with us! :eek: They claim that our servers are infected with a virus that is permeating their subdomains. When I did a search on our servers for their site or the site being redirected to - nada. I did a lookup of the A records for both domains and the IPs are nowhere near ours. Go figure.

Does this happen to you? How do you handle it? We made some suggestions for getting his issue fixed and suggested he contact his current host with any further questions.

What I would do is offer them so tips to try to help them fix the problem and tell them if they need any further help to contact there webhost.

Also maybe add it to your rules that support will only be given to your customers for future problems and just advise them to contact there current webhost.

We get a lot of posts and questions from people not already hosting with us but they are primarily pre sales questions while deciding if we are the host for them.

Sometimes we get the occasional troublemaker but it's actuallly fairly rare. We have a great community of non staff moderators who look out for that type of thing and will notify us if something happens. Then the troublemaker will be warned and depending on the post it may be removed, replied to or modified appropriately. If they continue, they run the risk of being banned.

I would respond politely to the post which it sounds like you did. If he is posting multiple topics on the same issue, I'd PM him requesting he cease spamming your board and to only open one thread on the same issue. Make it clear in your response that this issue has nothing to do with your hosting so potential customers don't get the wrong impression.

I had one threaten to sue me if we didn't fix her email problem. I sent her an email back saying what is your domain and what was the email problem.

She sends back a domain name we don't host and says the problem is her email can't send or receive email.

I send back "we don't host your domain" it is hosted at company X and "is the email you sent me from the domain whose email doesn't work?"

She says "yes this is the email that doesn't work". 5 minutes later another email telling me that if her email doesn't start working right away she is going to sue me.

I sent her an email saying I couldn't respond because you said your email didn't seem to work and we only allow 4 emails per hour or we consider it spamming. Since your email isn't working when you write to us and you are now guilty of spamming from the non working email account we are going to have to delete your account.

I had to laugh.

Its good if they post in your forums, incase they dislike their host at sometime they will have a bond with you and your forum, will know that you are helpfull so they might try you out! I think it would pay in the long-run.

Originally posted by P-nut
This is new - lately we've received several forum posts (not in our pre-sales forums, mind you) from someone who isn't even hosted with us! :eek: They claim that our servers are infected with a virus that is permeating their subdomains. When I did a search on our servers for their site or the site being redirected to - nada. I did a lookup of the A records for both domains and the IPs are nowhere near ours. Go figure.

Does this happen to you? How do you handle it? We made some suggestions for getting his issue fixed and suggested he contact his current host with any further questions.

If you run a forum you are bound to get people there that aren't customers. Treat them as potential customers. ;)

exactly! like i mentioned above, it gives you an opportunity to market your services to them for free :D and for the first time you wouldnt have to spend $$ to get them, they came to you! wow how delightfull :D

People do come onto our forums, and browse around. We just had a database failure, and only 5 people registered.
People would come online and chat -- then they automaticly assume they are apart of our staff. I made one guy a moderator of a Scripting Forum, so far he's done nothing, that's because we only have like 10 posts.
We treat everyone like they are a customer.