We have a managed server customer, who was orginally with us for the past two years+ as a virtual hosting customer. Uptime has been 99.9%+ for the past two years. They are now on a dedicated managed server with us. They are an ecommerce site. They were down for 5 hours last night, early morning. Software misconfiguration which made their site inaccessable. Completely our fault and agree completely on the issue we should give them a credit. I said I would give 10 days ($120.00) out of their $390.00/monthly fee. Do you think this is fair??

They expect me to credit the entire month managed hosting fee because of this issue. They claim to have 'lost' $1100.00. I state we don't based it on sales lost and are not liable for it. I state if the web site is that important to you we should discuss multiple servers, load balanced at our multiple data centers.

What do you guys think? two years ago we had another small issue with them and they wanting huge amounts of credit then also.

Do you think they are being unreasonable? Any recommendations?

What does your TOS say? I'd follow that if I were you.

What does your TOS say? I'd follow that if I were you.


right now we have been a little vague with that and need to be more specific in the future. We state we give credits but not for the amount.

You might want to make that a priority because, I'm no lawyer but I'd say you have a good chance of being screwed for the $1100 if they can prove they lost it during that period if your TOS wording is indeed vague... I'd have a lawyer consult you on this situation and then pay that lawyer to help with a rock-solid TOS. I'd also recommend considering insurance to cover future liability (obviously won't help in this case).

How important is this customer to you. Two years, seems like a good customer not running to the cheapest place they can find. Hmmnn 390 * 12 = 4680. I would give them the full credit and then tighten up you TOS and draw their attention to the TOS for any further issues..

How important is this customer to you. Two years, seems like a good customer not running to the cheapest place they can find. Hmmnn 390 * 12 = 4680. I would give them the full credit and then tighten up you TOS and draw their attention to the TOS for any further issues..

It's not dedicated mind you. On a decent machine with hardware RAID. It's managed that includes backup, monitoring, and softare upgrades.

they just upgraded to a managed server last month. So they have not been paying 390 for that long.

Sorry it's $360/month they are paying.

If you gave them 10 days credit for 5 hours of downtime, then I believe you were more than fair. I would have offered them 5 days (1 day per hour). Giving them credit for the entire month would be a nice offer, but I don't believe it is required. It depends on if you believe this one issue is enough to make them leave, AND if you think giving a full refund will convince them to stay.

You mentioned that you had a problem with this customer 2 years ago. Did you give a large refund then? One problem with full refunds is that they start expecting it every time there is a problem. Whatever you decide, update your TOS to adequately protect you in this area and make sure all customers are aware of it.

All comments are my personal opinion. I am not a lawyer. Use this advice at your own risk.

Our hosting guarantee is specific. We guarantee 99% and refund the customer 10% of their month's hosting cost if we fall below it. If we fall below 97% we refund the entire month.

We use several outside monitoring services and accept their findings as final.

Follow your TOS and your gut feeling on this and you should come out ok. Good luck!

If you gave them 10 days credit for 5 hours of downtime, then I believe you were more than fair. I would have offered them 5 days (1 day per hour). Giving them credit for the entire month would be a nice offer, but I don't believe it is required. It depends on if you believe this one issue is enough to make them leave, AND if you think giving a full refund will convince them to stay.


We are trying to be fair with the customer. They want nothing less than the full month. My guess is they are probally looking at other vendors. They state that if the this was the worst time (when is it a good time to have problems with an ecommerce web site?) They made the same arguments the last time.

It's just the fact they they complain about the issue and then are expecting 100% uptime. We have uptime listed in the contract and never promised 100%. We promised 99.5% uptime. So that 3.6 hours per month down. So technically we only have to offer 1.4 hours of credit.

They don't understand this though. They say they understand issues happen. Again if a site is that important to you it should be load balanced and replicated. I've made this very clear to the customer. In addition we more than exceeded our SLA for the past 2 years. No customer gives you more $$$ if you do better than expected :-) So this is not an everyday occurance. Heck, it's not even a monthly occurance.


You mentioned that you had a problem with this customer 2 years ago. Did you give a large refund then? One problem with full refunds is that they start expecting it every time there is a problem.


Yes we did. I believe almost the full month credit. In that case the downtime really our fault either (a patch needed between Miva and linkpoint, we weren't notified of the upgrade) that caused the issue. Of course the client blamed us for it. We did it to keep them happy. In retrospect we should have kept to our guns and not given any credit for the issue.

As far as credits we rarely give them out. Mainly because we rarely have problems. When we do have issues and the client wants a credit we do give it to them.

I don't want this customer coming to us every month with requests for more credits for other minor issues or issues not related to our service. Stressing the fact that if the site is important to you then you should pay the fees to build the web site out right. In the end if this means the customer leaves to go to another vendor because of we were fair to them. Then so be it.

If they make that much in a few hours they need to be on redundant systems paying a lot more for something that can be guarenteed uptime.

I think you were more than fair, but that was a long outage for something simple like a config issue. It's a tough spot, but you have to judge from your experience. Some people will bitch no matter what you do, so you tell us what these guys are like. I've seen a lot of different things in the last four or five years, but usually when a client asks for money it's because they are going to try to get something for nothing any chance they get. Most people that really are upset will just leave.

I would credit them what you honestly feel is fair for the situation, and let them make the decision if it was enough or not. You will know their answer when your next months bill is due.

If they make that much in a few hours they need to be on redundant systems paying a lot more for something that can be guarenteed uptime.


Agreed. Customers sometimes just don't get this. While servers in the past 10 years have gotten much more reliable, your playing with fire if you only have one server and it's that important to you.


I think you were more than fair, but that was a long outage for something simple like a config issue. It's a tough spot, but you have to judge from your experience. Some people will bitch no matter what you do, so you tell us what these guys are like. I've seen a lot of different things in the last four or five years, but usually when a client asks for money it's because they are going to try to get something for nothing any chance they get. Most people that really are upset will just leave.


I think in this case it's try to get something for nuthin.

I think you were more than fair too.

If you give them more than that (full month), then you could be opening the door....

I find that dealing with big companies throws out any sense of the word "fair," if you screw up, which is why you must be absolutely sure that your TOS is updated as possible, and includes everything you need to keep out of trouble. Remember, you may think that their claim is preposterous...a judge in a court of law may think otherwise.

Personally, since there is no specific mention of how much credit you give (YIKES!!) - I would credit the full month and tell them that further outages will be credited according to your new Service Level Agreement (SLA) and make sure they acknowledge this. Get that SLA in place immediately! ;)

--Tina