Greetings to WHT members!

I have been happily reselling for about a year now. Not with many clients though. But I am doing my best to make sure my clients is happy with my services.

After many months of research, I have picked up reseller packages and went with some good providers. They haven't disappoint me one bit. However I am very often troubled by my clients calling me and sending me tickets because they cant access their website/or send email. The server is fine , the DC is fine. But in the middle , there is always a broken link. The ISP.

Just last week, my server provider told me that teleglobe link was down. My client cant access it from Malaysia (the server in US)

Another client of mine, also have similar problem accessing their site from Philippines. After some tracing , I found tht there is no evidence of the server down , because they can access the server thru IP. So its the ISP again I suspect.

What do you do in cases like these? Drop the client and tell them to get someone with server in local DC ? Actually they just dropped their hosting provider with local servers and come onboard with me. :crying:

Joshua

Do you have a live status page for the server? That might be a good idea to have because even if they are unable to reach the server, you can take screen shot at that particular time to let them know that there is nothing wrong with the server.

I would work round the situation rather than dropping the client.

Thanks for your reply.

They are aware that the server is online. I am not really trying to convince them . But merely looking into how I can make it possible for them to be a happy customer with out making them "suffer" for using my services.

My initial thought of getting a local reseller package seems ridiculous as I cant get a package on every country my client come from...

Would you consider offering your client a backup domain on another DC ? But this would create lot of problem with the routing of their emails

Joshua

Why are you considering yourself responsible for the intermittent link problems? I would not think about this, and yes, having a backup domain will cause problems with email delivery. Not worth the hassle, especially when you are going out of the way to help your clients.

But look at this way, if you have customers from 10 different countries and 5 of them have ISP issues, what will you do? If your customers know that the server is online, I would suggest that you should stay clear of trying to do anything that will cause overheads on you.

Just my 2 cents !!!

hmmm... true. I agree. Thanks

Joshua

After some tracing , I found tht there is no evidence of the server down , because they can access the server thru IP. So its the ISP again I suspect.
That would indicate that the problem is with the ISPs DNS service, but you can reduce the chance of this happening by setting up your own DNS records properly and using truly redundant nameservers (ideally globally distributed).

The problem is that distributed DNS will cost a lot more, and an average hosting customer wants the sky for a dime !!!

Depending on the setup it may not cost that much but it's certainly extra management. Whether it's worth it depends on your target market I guess (I wouldn't want your "average hosting customer"!)

After some tracing , I found tht there is no evidence of the server down , because they can access the server thru IP.If the main reason they're unhappy is that they can't visit their own site, maybe you can instruct them to edit their hosts file (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file). If they're worried about visitors not getting to their site, things do get more complicated.

i usually just show them that the site is up via siteuptime.com and tell that they should contact their isp or wait out for it to resolve. sometimes getting them to edit their host file isnt worth the hassle.