I returned home today and logged on to my site, only to be greeted with my web hosts holding page.

I then checked my e-mail and found an e-mail from the company asking me to pay for additional bandwidth before 12 noon. The email was sent just before 9am, giving me 3 hours, had I been in, to arrange the cover.

I emailed them a nice letter after arranging the cover through their site, explaining to them that giving such a short time period to comply was tantamount to blackmail.

They didn't think so, and said they never took off line until 5pm, as if that is supposed to make me feel better!

ok, so I could have arranged the cover in advance, but my disgust is a 3 hour deadline!

Do any of you web hosts behave in such a manner, or do you sympathise with hosting company in this instance?

If that's the first you heard of it I would say that it was time to move on..

I guess I would have to go on their past credit history with me before giving a client less than 24 hours to pay for extra BW charges.
Or if the amount was high . . . I wonder why they didn't catch it sooner. Wasn't it obvious a few days ago that you were going to be over?

acec,

How long has this excess bandwidth fee been around? How much extra bandwidth did you use? We rarely charge for that except in extreme cases and even then provide a month for users to pay for it.

If your host is this impatient on a new charge I'd be careful, though this feels a little odd.

Sincerely,

-Matt

I have previously paid for additional bandwidth on time and they never set a time limit either.

I was 400Mb over a 2Gb limit but imho that doesn't condone setting time limits to pay! even a phone call before the deadline would have been nice just to make sure I was aware they had made such a request.

Well, they say we learn from our mistakes, anyone know a good Windows host with more than 3Gb data transfer on offer?

Whoa...this sux.

You'd think they could give you more a of a heads up than just redirect your site to theirs. Is this a common manner in dealing with overages in bandwidth? I am in no danger of having this happen to me as my sites are not very popular, but, if I had worked hard and established a popular site only to have this happen to me, well, then it would be a total bummer. :(

Hope you get the situation resolved with this host or a new one should it come to that. :)

Gearhost.com is a Windows host, and they seemed like very nice people in private communications. Haven't used them personally, though many seem to like them.
;)

acec,

what are you paying for a 2Gb BW and they need what more for 400Mb extra?

this was funny...

Wow! I understand them asking you to pay if you use more transfer, but that's an unfriendly way for them to go about doing it. We'd have given you a whole lot more time to make arrangement or upgrade the account or something. Certainly more than a few hours!

Gee... 400mb of b/w?

We had a customer who went over his limit by 27GB in one day - it would cost him ~$70.00 if we charged him. Since we had a lot of bandwidth to play around with, we never sent out the bill.

Bogdan,

Agreed. 400mb of bandwidth resulting in them suspending your site? They're either really strapped for bandwidth or insane.

-Matt

Are you sure your not Hosting on Australian Servers???

400 megs bandwidth would cost you $65.

Seriously i dont see why they would get upset over something like this 400 meg bandwidth they should at least give you approx 7 days warning that you are approaching your mark etc!

For example we would never shut off a reseller site that has gone over the bandwidth limit, we would instead allocate and calculate the bandwidth that we have against all the usage for that month. If its low some resellers suck through 20 gigs without even a warning.

It could be that the company is in financial trouble and is trying its best to stay afloat with these excess bandwidth " SHut you DOwn" policy.

All points and comments above are my own opinions as per usual.

Kind regards

Hows this one then....
A client upon moving to us told his current host he was moving and could they please transfer domains etc.... The host didn't like him moving away and decided that they would send him a bill for £35,000 GBP for bandwidth overages over the last 7 months. Their "justification" for this was that his contract stated 160Gb / Month of Data Transfer and that Gb refers to GigaBits, hence his allocation was only 20GBytes / Month. They even had the audacity to send him a single MRTG graph showing average usage for just a four week period stating that as his average usage was in excess of 300 GBytes for the four week period and that they would charge him for 300GBytes / month for the last seven months. Go Figure!!

He was the admin contact on a number of domains, they were tech and billing contacts and before he knew it they had submitted contact change requests and got themselves to be all three contacts so that he couldn't move the domains. They then shut his servers down and pointed his rather high traffic sites to a holding page.

Needless to say i can't mention the name of the host at the moment but they are UK based, have just gone into administrative receivership (wonder why!!).

I feel for you acec, but you've got to get away rapidly from cowboys with sharp business practices like that - there are plenty of decent, honest, hard working hosts out there you would be much better off with.

They were way too harsh in this. You should have been notified considerably sooner and advised of the likelyhood of exceeding your allocated bandwidth and given the opportunity to purchase additional bandwidth or to upgrade your account. Now I might understand suspending your account if you had been slashdoted and your bandwidth went from 2GB and spiked to 200GB in a day. The only argument I can see on their side is if you have consistently exeeded your bandwidth and not paid any prior excess charges or upgraded your account after sufficient notification.

Hi Doug - i think your post was aimed at acec as it was just 3 mins after mine, but just in case.... The client had no warning or letters or requests to upgrade or anything. Cheers

Yes my post was directed towards acec....but yours sounds even worse. I guess this just proves that the TOS and AUP must be scrutinized before signing up with a host and recommendations made by prior/present users. Thank goodness horror stories like these are in the minority.

I think any professional hosting company would give a customer at least 1 or 2 days notice!

You should definately consider leaving any host that only gives 3 hours notice like that!

Thanks for all your comments, I feel much better now.

Having just sat and worked out how much I would have to pay to continue on their server for the rest of the year without exceeding 3Gb data transfer (assuming I pay for the extra 2 Gb), I am already looking for another Windows host with a more suitable bandwidth limit.

GearHost are on my list, and to use these as an example, they will cost me $36 a year less for 7Gb more transfer, plus more control over the domain.

Let's hope that when I do go to move, they don't mess me around.

after this I'm convinced to always have a seperate registrar than the web hoster.

3 hour shutdown notice, that's evil.

well I thought I had a tough policy but that firm take the cake.

my policy is rather simple, I send a notice when you eat up to 80% of your B/W, I then send a follow up letter asking them what the growth was all about.

replys are :

1) advertsing
2) new downloads
3) we don't know

when I get the we don't know, I ask for permission to look at thier log files and run a quick number crunk and check for hacking. if everything is a ok then I advise them of there estimated consumption and if they are cool with the overage that will happen. they alway say yes it's ok.

Note to all people that deal with hosting companies:
Please give us the heads up on your advertsing dates, this way we don't panic wondering why the server's usage is up 5% gobally or why your usage is up 1000%

Mike from Adehost

i don't think thats a tough policy at all.... actually, thats a very helpful way of dealing with it, rather than just letting them go over and have it be their problem.

i also didn't think many hosts would bother asking to review log files... imho if its your server, you would have the authority/responsibility even to look at the log files to check for hacking.

Originally posted by Skie
i don't think thats a tough policy at all.... actually, thats a very helpful way of dealing with it, rather than just letting them go over and have it be their problem.

i also didn't think many hosts would bother asking to review log files... imho if its your server, you would have the authority/responsibility even to look at the log files to check for hacking.

thank you for not thinking it's tough policy but I have a high priortity to people privacy. so therefore it's better to ask than to just jump in.

Don't get me wrong, I do scan the files of all the servers many times a day looking for specific programs that I consider risky or related to potencial security concerns, virus..... Also I will investingate any web site on my server from the URL side, where on the web, the site is open to public, but to go into the files themselves without asking is about as close to invation of privacy that I can think of.

I very much surprised that host don't spend time with there clients checking log files, confirming that the web sites are doing fine, running link programs, and trying to improve thier clients web page ranking. The ranking part is something that if any clients ask me, I help them out. took a client from 450 to 80 in 5 weeks, now he's walking those last steps slower, but I got him on some basics steps should be top 15 in 5 months.

Mike

you certainly seem like you go above and beyond with your clients. i looked very seriously into ADEhost last year, but when i talked to support via AIM they said that you weren't taking any new signups for a period of time, and to look elsewhere.. i looked back and things seemed to be ok now, and i would have seriously considered you except that you don't offer multiple domain hosting, which i need.

Originally posted by Skie
except that you don't offer multiple domain hosting, which i need.

HU? yes we do, but you need to ask, all the accounts have it turned on, but it's a payable option.

also there are alot of things we have, we just don't talk to much about it. If someone ask then I tell, but your are right all the fetures have to be written out with a few bells. Same policy of privacy of whom are my client, Damm I want to shout about this these 2 accounts right now :) ( both are fortune 500 firms and pay there bills on time ) but I am forbidden by the rules to directly name them. :(

But I do offer my forum as a venue for people to inquire with, but nobody does that. I was hoping that the forum would help me develope a FAQ. Scratch that idea

anyway
ttyl

Mike

Originally posted by acec


I was 400Mb over a 2Gb limit but imho that doesn't condone setting time limits to pay! even a phone call before the deadline would have been nice just to make sure I was aware they had made such a request.



I would say this Host would have to be Crazy to charge a client for 400mb over on a 2GB site.

I have yet to bill a client for overage on bannwidth for a month although I have forced a couple to upgrade their packages after they have gone over their allowed or agreed purchase by 10 percent 2 months concurrently.

We set our overage to be billed at 5 dollars a Gig but really have never seen the need to bill overage as its much easier to work with a client and upgrade to a reasonable package.