What is everybodies policies on a late payment or declined credit card once somebody has already been a customer...

Are you pretty flexible but get taken advantage of by customers....or are you strict by shutting down a site until payment is received and they come and piss and moan about their site being down and everything else that comes with a rude customer...

Try contacting them through email. Explain that you need a response with an explanation or a valid credit card so you can process their payment. If you get no response from them I would suspend the account until you either have the payment received or you get a response from them. Sometimes things happen so I would at least try contacting them first. Plus with it being the holidays some people may be travelling or forgot about it..

Just my 2 cents

You should get some sort of a system that automatically sends an email to the customer, when they are due for renewal. If it is a month-to-month contract...set them up for automatic recurring billing, or a standard email that gets sent out once a month with a link to pay. If they get more than 1 week behind, send a follow-up email stating that they have x number of days to submit payment or their site will be shut down (say it nicely though and sound concerned). Give it a day or two AFTER the deadline and then suspend their accounts - put up a default page that reads "SITE TEMPORARILY UNAVAILABLE" and wait for them to contact you.

If their site remains suspended for more than 2 weeks - then you know they probably have no intentions of paying you.

--Tina