Hey, I need some help. I just recently suspended my first client for being 18 days overdue on a hosting invoice.

They have a habit of paying late on almost every invoice they get, so I was really tired of it and I wanted to put an end to late payment.

ANYWAYS, I suspended their account, after warning via email with no response. Now, I am using a WHM/cPanel set-up, so it just placed the default suspended account page up. In case you're not familiar with it, you can reference it here (http://host22.scridizzle.com/suspended.page/).

So, the client finally paid after being suspended for four days, but now they are saying that I have terrible business ethics because the suspended page let the world know they had not paid their bill.

Of course, I am continually saying, if you had paid it on time, or even contacted me to let me know what was happening, we could have avoided this.

So to my point. I have told them that many other hosting companies use this suspension page or one similar to this. So I need to show them that other hosting providers do the same. Google is no help to me. Can anyone help? Just reply with a URL or a simple 'we do it too' so I can print the thread and show them.

Thanks for all your help!

I can't seem to post a link on here yet...

Our suspension page simply says "This account has been suspended". No reference to billing or anything, just simply that it has been suspended. No need to divulge that kind of information.

That page is so generic that it is obviously their guilt making them feel the way they do.

There is no way to tell 'why' the site is suspended. Only that it is.

That page does not, "let the world know they had not paid their bill."

That page says, "This Account Has Been Suspended."

It's ugly. But, it's effective. And, after all, if you are left with suspension being your last recourse to get a response; effective is good. :)

Although, you could remove the contact information. Cuz they know who to contact.

Yupp.. we do suspend sites. (but we modify the default suspended page). To a nicer looking page :)

I would have emailed them a warning with a cutoff time (24 hrs).
then suspended it.

I wouldn't worry about it honestly. If they are cronicly late with their payment and know when its due then its their own fault. When someone doesn't pay their cell phone bill and it gets suspended the message people get when they call is pretty bad. Do you call the cell phone company and tell them their message makes you look bad? No. You pay the bill and deal with it.

In my opinion a bill is a bill, its due when its due, if you don't pay it you get what you deserve. Sounds harsh but its business not personal.

Yeah, I went onto yahoo and found the links that google couldn't give me. I guess google is to smart to show the suspended pages, which is what I wanted.

So, yahoo returned 3.8 million pages that are all account suspended pages that all say contact that billing department. Most of them are a lot worse than mine. I think that should suffice for now.

Thanks for the help!

If they had not paid their bills, and weren't responding to e-mails, I think it is okay to let them know through their site to contact billing/support. It does not say "Your site has been suspended because you have not paid your bills".

there are good and bad customers just like there are good and bad service provders.

in this case, since you say they constanly delay payment or wait until way way past due. i think you might be better off just refund them and tell 'em to f'off. you want to keep good customers and kick out bad one. let's say you own a aparmtne complex and this dude keep telling you, yeah yeah yeah just give me few more days so i can pay you the rent and meanwhile he is living in your aparment complex for free and you're paying for the gas, elecrtic, water...etc.

unless you really need that customer to pay your bill, i say you are well off without a bad customer. save you more time and headache.

18 days overdo?!! I would have suspended them a lot sooner, and probably charge extra for being late. We're pretty specific about that in our tos.

Also, if they don't respond via e-mail you might try calling them.

It all depends on what is your your Terms of Service. If you are insistent that the bills be paid on time and give them no grace period - this is where you want to ask yourself: Is this really worth my time and effort? Sounds like you waste more time getting them to pay every month rather than work on other things

I still don't see where you are in the wrong, they just need to refresh their views on web hosting. Any host would have suspended them unless there was contact, that's common knowledge. Let them sweat it, you did the right thing.

you dont have to mention in the TOS that a payment is late if it isnt paid on time!

*????*

I would have emailed them a warning with a cutoff time (24 hrs).
then suspended it.

He did.

Outside of being bland, I don't think there's anything wrong with what you have on your page. It didn't divulge too much information.

Put your payment terms in your Terms of Service and what will happen if invoices are late (include XX number of days until you suspend). If a customer gets suspended for being late, point them to the Terms of Service and don't bother arguing/debating the issue with them.

--Tina

Couple points:
A) The excuse, well others do it, is unacceptable.
B) He was late paying, his faults. Make it clear that he was late and thats all there is.
C) Don't doubt yourself infront of a customer

Originally posted by AH-Tina
Put your payment terms in your Terms of Service and what will happen if invoices are late (include XX number of days until you suspend). If a customer gets suspended for being late, point them to the Terms of Service and don't bother arguing/debating the issue with them.

--Tina

I agree on that one. When people grill me, I just email them back with "please read our TOS agreement that you agreed to upon signup". :emlaugh:

I would only have waited a week before suspending them. And you can find those "Suspended" pages all over the net so they aren't alone :)

I have to agree with the others.

I find it amusing that it took him 4 days to figure out it was suspended and that he is complaining that his customers saw that message... any good site admin checks their page constantly and should notice it prior to that.

If the site being down affected his business, your simple answer to that is, "Your late payment affects my business". People need to stop making excuses of why they can't make payments on time. I know for one thing, if my mortgage/car payment is more than 3-4 days late I get slapped with monster late fees. Its no different with any other bill. Pay or be punished.

don't worry about him, just remember to make him regret for not paying in time after time :)

I have one even worse case, now he is trying to get services for free x)

He thinks that just because i developed his site, would give him the right of paying whenever he feels like that, and have multiple times tried me feel quilt about it, and even threatening me to close his site.

Question is, how can he threaten me about closing his website? oO;

oh yeah... that client is french, and i probably won't ever take any more french clients because of him.

And remember to charge over fees, and if even that doesn't help, add to your tos that those who are chronicly late will have higher fees as follows: .....

I know of a guy who charges 25£ for having invoice late even for one day.

When we suspend a customer we just cut off their service and their page(s) come up as "cannot be displayed". However, I don't see anything wrong with a "suspended account" message. Unless it states the exact reason for suspension there really shouldn't be any problem. Hey, if this guy can't his bill, what kind of credibility does he hope to have in whatever kind of service he's providing?