Hey everyone. I've had a customer who has requested a 2 day trial with my Starter plan and I made a coupon which accidently gave him one month free. I told him about that and I asked if he could make a manual payment after the trial and the rest would be automatically billed with the subscription. He agreed to it and it's been a few days past that trial period already. I've tried contacting him through his contact email and leaving him offline messages through MSN but I've gotten no response. His accounts have nothing uploaded and his domains aren't even set to my nameservers yet. I have given him a warning telling him that if he doesn't send that manual payment his account will be suspended until the subscription. Should I just do that or should I cancel the subscription and cancel his account because I don't want to be taking money from a guy who is inactive.

I'd classify it as a "dead" sales lead. Either the person found another vendor, or they have been too busy with other things to respond. It seems reasonable to shut things down once you deem it necessary, especially since they appear not to be using it.

If he is overdue on payment, then yes - go ahead and suspend and cancel the subscription. If he really wants it, then he will contact you to arrange payment.

I would have suspended him the day he was overdue.

--Tina

Go ahead and suspend, if you hear from him then..activate..if you hear nothing for a week..terminate him completely

Go ahead and suspend, if you hear from him then..activate..if you hear nothing for a week..terminate him completely

I agree with above. Send client notice of what you're doing, suspend, then terminate.

Depending on the 'flavour' of the service your offering, you may consider Tel. / fax. as an extra attempt to reach the customer/client.
But if your just auto/online hosting, then yes suspend, but there's no point in rushing to terminate the account.
Should he come back, you can say, yes give me some money & I'll re-instate your account, which will take you 2 secs if your slow.

Lack of communication from customers is a headach, if only we did not need them.

I agree with the above, I would suspend the account. This way the customer can be easily reinstated once a payment is made to you.

From what you've described, it sounds like the customer isn't that interested. Close out his account and call it a lost sale.

Alright I've given this guy a few more days and I've gotten no response from him. I haven't seen him online on MSN. So I decided to send 1 last email to him regarding the incident, suspended his account, and canceled his Paypal subscription. His account isn't taking up any space so just leaving is suspended shouldn't be much of a problem. I guess if he ever decides to get in contact again I can reactivate his account. Thanks for the advice everybody. It's my 1st time being a webhost and now I know what to do thanks to everyone here :).

Suspend his account until he contacts you. Delete it after one week if you dont hear anything from the client. I have also found that clients that are quiet are usually up to no good. Keep an eye on the account for spam and phishing.

He's not using up any space so I don't find any reason to suspend him. I'll just leave it here so if he ever does come back it'll make it easier for him to just reuse his account :). I've decided to delete his account after 1 month of inactivity though since it would be a waste to just leave it there.

Did you check your mail logs? If he's not using any space I'd be worried about him having sent our tons of spam, which is exactly why free accounts never touch our servers.

He's not using up any space so I don't find any reason to suspend him. I'll just leave it here so if he ever does come back it'll make it easier for him to just reuse his account :). I've decided to delete his account after 1 month of inactivity though since it would be a waste to just leave it there.

That is up to you on how long you leave the account active but make sure you keep an eye on it. Being blacklisted is no fun when your trying to please paying customers. :)