So as of late, I've been thinking to myself,
If I had a penny for every-time I got an e-mail/ticket for someone asking for "1000TB HDD/ 100000TB BW " I'd be around $4 right now.
Although every-time I reply back with a courteous reply stating that I'd be out of business if I saved a 1000TB / 100000TB BW plan specifically for 1 client, I just can't help but feeling like sending a team of assassins to take out the sender. I know the rest of my team probably feels the same.
Hah, come to think of it, a team of assassins may have been a little too harsh, but you get my idea.
Any other host out there that feels what I feel? Reading tickets requesting those packages after a time gets a little frustrating/old.
However, we're in that line of business, so what can we do except answer back! :) :agree:

I hopes that's not shared hosting they are after...?

I think customers are more prone to expecting large amount of disk space and bandwidths (thanks to some big oversellers). I do not think it is avoidable to answer them as it is your business but it will not be a bad idea to have one of newly hired tech to answer those tickets ;)

You're not the only one. I have people asking me why we don't offer unlimited space and bandwidth like hostgator...just pure ignorance to the real world.

I had my say quite a while ago about the stupidity of monthly burned el-cheapo customers...Took me a bit but I found it.
Same basic idea.....
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showpost.php?p=3856439&postcount=21

Well isn't this a thread full of turn-off.
I work in sales and get the industry equivalent of the same request countless times a day.
A prospect is a prospect no matter what they are asking for it's pretty dumb, in my opinion, on a host's part to slough those inquiries off...much less to come on here and publicly complain about it.
I guarantee you with a little sales-elbow grease you could probably turn at least 10% of those inquiries into sales and 10% is better than 0%.
Dave

Well isn't this a thread full of turn-off.
I work in sales and get the industry equivalent of the same request countless times a day.
A prospect is a prospect no matter what they are asking for it's pretty dumb, in my opinion, on a host's part to slough those inquiries off...much less to come on here and publicly complain about it.
I guarantee you with a little sales-elbow grease you could probably turn at least 10% of those inquiries into sales and 10% is better than 0%.
Dave
And you speak like a true salesman!
Most of the hardworking hosts here come from admin backgrounds. We do this because it's what we love. And to be quite honest, I'm not interested in quantity of sales, I'm interested in quality of sales. All these other dime a dozen hosts can fight over the "customer" who wants it all for nothing.
I'd rather have 10 happy customers than 10000 customers who are never content!

Right on, different strokes.... :)

Well isn't this a thread full of turn-off.
I work in sales and get the industry equivalent of the same request countless times a day.
A prospect is a prospect no matter what they are asking for it's pretty dumb, in my opinion, on a host's part to slough those inquiries off...much less to come on here and publicly complain about it.
I guarantee you with a little sales-elbow grease you could probably turn at least 10% of those inquiries into sales and 10% is better than 0%.
Dave
He does speak like a true salesman.
10% is better than 0% but at what cost?
So what happens Dave when a client wants the specs i listed above? And us hosts being "pretty dumb" tell the clients we can't accomodate?
How do you convert 10% of those inquiries when those clients want "almost" unlimited specs and they won't budge?
Perhaps you were referring to those 10% who after a careful explanation understand there's no such thing as unlimited. Then, by all means, I concur. :agree:
Not a personal attack on my end or anything, but as serve-you stated, it's about the quality of the sale, not the quantity.

That's the way to win them over.
Describe how much you want them assassinated in a public forum.

If they got in contact to you, it must mean they like what you offer otherwise and your site is doing a good job. Chances are you are the company for them, just that in their mind they think they need 10000s of GBs to exist on the web. Bring them down to Earth with a nicely written email, explaining what 30GB can really mean for a blog/forum or any other more or less typical site (hundreds of thousands of page views/a mid sized town browsing their site during the course of a month).
If they don't understand, their loss, if they do, you both stand to win. If they sound like the average warez kid, just tell them that you don't offer such. You're free to select your customers after all. :)
That's one way to look at it. The other is that maybe, just maybe, your site isn't getting in front of the "perfect audience", and work is needed in that department.

If they got in contact to you, it must mean they like what you offer otherwise and your site is doing a good job. Chances are you are the company for them, just that in their mind they think they need 10000s of GBs to exist on the web. Bring them down to Earth with a nicely written email, explaining what 30GB can really mean for a blog/forum or any other more or less typical site (hundreds of thousands of page views/a mid sized town browsing their site during the course of a month).
If they don't understand, their loss, if they do, you both stand to win. If they sound like the average warez kid, just tell them that you don't offer such. You're free to select your customers after all. :)
That's one way to look at it. The other is that maybe, just maybe, your site isn't getting in front of the "perfect audience", and work is needed in that department.
Well written :)
Either way, we're always wishing for that perfect audience but I guess we can't always get what we want :D

Most of the hardworking hosts here come from admin backgrounds. We do this because it's what we love. And to be quite honest, I'm not interested in quantity of sales, I'm interested in quality of sales. All these other dime a dozen hosts can fight over the "customer" who wants it all for nothing.
I'd rather have 10 happy customers than 10000 customers who are never content!
Very well said and i agree quality is always better than quantity.
To the OP, IMO i think the best way to deal with this type of client is to explain exactly why this type of plan is impossible to provide. If as hosts we just shrug these clients off without an explanation nobody learns and we're no closer to properly educating them about the costs involved in what they're after. It only results in them moving onto the next host and asking the same question until one host takes the time to educate the client.

I had someone come onto my live chat about 2 weeks ago and ask to trip my template (its not even that great). Then after I said no he was wonering why I am not going to offer unlimited, I explained that I may slightly oversell, but there is a cap for me at 70% server load, and that there is not such thing. Then he tried to argue with me about it, I got his website somewhere that I need to make sure he didn't take my site actually lol.
I've also had a couple that wanted "unlimited" but after about 30 minutes of explaining (about a 5 minute shpeel repeated over and over again lol) the guy finally understood.

If they don't understand, their loss, if they do, you both stand to win. If they sound like the average warez kid, just tell them that you don't offer such. You're free to select your customers after all. :)
If as hosts we just shrug these clients off without an explanation nobody learns and we're no closer to properly educating them about the costs involved in what they're after. It only results in them moving onto the next host and asking the same question until one host takes the time to educate the client.
Couldn't have said it better myself. db09 had a point: there's nothing wrong with entertaining inquiries such as this, giving a little time into explaining the "issue" with them. If they understood your point and continued doing business with you, you gained a customer and at the same time saved them from the dark side; if not, well, it wasn't your loss anyway.
Whisking them away and ignoring them on the grounds of "being cheap, ignorant, or too newbie" is just plain arrogance.

Same here, or you get those anyoing people asking for free hosting, or a free IRC Server! But no matter how many time you tell them to p*** off and get some money they still keep MSN and sending tickets. Eventually you just have to block there IP!

I think part of the problem is the current trend of hosting companies to advertise everything as "unlimited". Obviously nothing can be unlimited, but if that's what Joe User reads then that's what they expect. I think it is unfortunate so many companies advertise their prices this way then rely on the fine print to eliminate the small percentage of clients who actually want to use resources to their full maximum.

I agree. Hosting companies should say what they mean and mean what they say.

Exactly. Plus, I never really understood the whole unlimited thing. Yeah your giving them unlimited diskspace and bandwidth. But really all your doing is not limiting them an that area, but then turn around and limit them in other areas such as CPU usage. And its much harder for a client to know when it is time to upgrade based on resource usage, as that is not generally something they can see, but, in their cPanel, they can see their disk space and Bandwidth usage, as well as other limits such as email accounts and subdomains. I wish they would come out with some sort of law that says you must provide hard numbers for limits....

I wish they would come out with some sort of law that says you must provide hard numbers for limits....
Reasonable customers of such web hosting providers probably wish for the same. Personally, I don't see why anyone would want to go for these "unlimited" disk space/bandwidth plans. Surely people should recognize they are still limited, just not in an obvious way.

If you have a blog on your site, it would make sense to make a post explaining the so-called unlimited diskspace/bandwidth and explain why it is unrealistic. Then whenever you get someone asking for Hostgator-like plans send them back a link to this post :-)

So as of late, I've been thinking to myself,
If I had a penny for every-time I got an e-mail/ticket for someone asking for "1000TB HDD/ 100000TB BW " I'd be around $4 right now.
Although every-time I reply back with a courteous reply stating that I'd be out of business if I saved a 1000TB / 100000TB BW plan specifically for 1 client, I just can't help but feeling like sending a team of assassins to take out the sender. I know the rest of my team probably feels the same.
Hah, come to think of it, a team of assassins may have been a little too harsh, but you get my idea.
Any other host out there that feels what I feel? Reading tickets requesting those packages after a time gets a little frustrating/old.
However, we're in that line of business, so what can we do except answer back! :) :agree:
I hate the unlimited and complete overselling route, however I did consider setting up a separate hosting company only offering 1 package of unlimted everything for 1.99 / month and cramming sites onto the server. With this deal would be no support just a knowledgebase.
I decided I just could not do it as I don't agree with the principal! I wonder if it would had worked?

I hate the unlimited and complete overselling route, however I did consider setting up a separate hosting company only offering 1 package of unlimted everything for 1.99 / month and cramming sites onto the server. With this deal would be no support just a knowledgebase.
I decided I just could not do it as I don't agree with the principal! I wonder if it would had worked?
Let's say someone wants to use their 1.99 account to host large files, or has a high traffic website? How would you deal with that? I'm sure the bandwidth and disk space costs alone would begin to outweigh the savings from support costs.
Nothing against limiting support to kb only, but if you go that route you need to make sure the customers never have a reason to contact you. Building up the kb and proactively monitoring the servers will still require staff time, and customers will be much more frustrated when things go wrong as they have no one to contact. In fact, I'd think the support costs per customer of these unlimited hosts are minimal in the grand scheme of things.

Let's say someone wants to use their 1.99 account to host large files, or has a high traffic website? How would you deal with that? I'm sure the bandwidth and disk space costs alone would begin to outweigh the savings from support costs.
Nothing against limiting support to kb only, but if you go that route you need to make sure the customers never have a reason to contact you. Building up the kb and proactively monitoring the servers will still require staff time, and customers will be much more frustrated when things go wrong as they have no one to contact. In fact, I'd think the support costs per customer of these unlimited hosts are minimal in the grand scheme of things.
Completely agree! I hate the principle of unlimited when it can't truly be - I just had a business wondering lol. I don't think I could ever go through with it though!
I prefer to offer customers a decent support desk and let them know where the goal posts are in terms of limits :D