Okay I undersold my bandwidth in the start, as a somewhat professional business man, I'm prepared to pay for the overages. Recently, the server had some outages and a majority of my clients are cool with it. But there is this guy who goes over his limit of 20 GB each month and I was being to nice to give him 25 GB. Yet he is the only person who keeps complaining about his sites unreachable when I and the other staff along with a few buddies of mine can reach it fine. I have already notified him and a all my other clients that the server was unstable and a server at pwebtech is up and blah blah blah. 90% of the clients have moved over and its been 3 weeks and they are still saying "I want my sites up immediately" when the bind/apache fail. I'm about to pull the plug but the thing is that I don't feel professional if I do so even though I loose alot of money just having them 20-25 GB a month (I also have others going around 5-10 GB a month but they have paid overage charges for it); however, they are my clients and I can't do such thing to them (I assume they have been kicked off from other hosts before). Any suggestions on what I should do?

This is not the matter of money lost.... When I did my business plan, I'm already prepared for underselling but I don't want someone to complain when the server is extremely unstable and unsecure and keeping the server just for him.

You be extra nice. You explain to him/her that the server they're on is having problems beyond your control. You tell them you know they need to have their site available, and that if you were in their position you would feel the same way. You apologize for not being able to provide the service they need. You offer them 30 days of free hosting to give them time to find another provider.

don't you have contracts to fall back on, you can point them to that, nicely ofcourse

If he just doesn't understand then let him go. I'm sure no other host would be so kind to him. He'll come back to you.
Have a great day :)

Regards
amar

Originally posted by bobcares
If he just doesn't understand then let him go. I'm sure no other host would be so kind to him. He'll come back to you.
Have a great day :)

Regards
amar

I think it is more than 1 clients. :stickout

You have to look at it yourself. Nobody can tell you what to do in this case. You have to say "Is this worth it for me?"

You have to look at it yourself. Nobody can tell you what to do in this case. You have to say "Is this worth it for me?"

netsolutions, are you really Dr. Laura or Anne Landers? Come on - you can tell us. :)

Its not 1 client but I have decided to keep them....
Not worth a few people bashing me over this.

Although I understand how your feel about the situation, I have a different opinion.

As we all know, the cost of doing business goes up over time. We know this and our clients know this. I think you should explain to him that in order for you to provide this service that there is a cost, it does not make sense for you to be undersold. And it is important that there is conformity (all clients use same pricing model) as your business grows. You can say that you cannot accommodate the special pricing arrangement any longer.

I think it would be a healthy move for you to migrate him to the set-pricing model, and if he doesn't like that then he'll move. In either case, he is not a problem or you are at least making up the cost of doing business with him.

P

Well if they complain again, put your foot down and make them pay overage. I get so sick of people who b**** getting their way. Make'em pay like everyone else. Don't go at them in a terminator fashion however... take a martha stewart approach. Just remember, you are human and if someone keeps complaining, that sticks in the back of your mind slowly building up to the point where the "enough is enough" stage has been bypassed with the "I'm not taking this c***" followed by more 4 letter words stage.

Originally posted by JustinK
Well if they complain again, put your foot down and make them pay overage. I get so sick of people who b**** getting their way. Make'em pay like everyone else. Don't go at them in a terminator fashion however... take a martha stewart approach. Just remember, you are human and if someone keeps complaining, that sticks in the back of your mind slowly building up to the point where the "enough is enough" stage has been bypassed with the "I'm not taking this c***" followed by more 4 letter words stage.

Good thing I'm a born sales and customer relations person ;) I have talked to them nicely and got bitched at over the phone which I don't mind as long as the client is happey.