Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Hosting Software and Control Panels : www.rackspace.com contacted my customers after downtime

[wscreate]

I had servers at Interland until last week when my servers all went down due to a power failure. My servers were down for 36 hours straight.

Anyway, I have moved my customers away from Interland. And, just today, one of my most loyal customers who has been with me since 1999 told me they got a package from www.rackspace.com telling them they realized they experienced downtime recently, and they wanted to know if they would consider switching. The customer said he had never heard of rackspace nor had he contacted them before receiving the package.

Fortunately, this customer is only a shared hosting customer who uses my service because he is non-technical. So, I don't fear losing him. However, www.rackspace.com spend $4 worth of shipping to send him the package.

QUESTIONS
1. How could rackspace have found this shared hosting customer and how did they learn about his downtime. We do not advertise our hosted accounts publicly.

2. I recently began using www.siteuptime.com, a 3rd party service to monitor my servers. Could they have sold this info to rackspace.com? NOTE: I do not use their free service. I pay a monthly fee to www.siteuptime.com .

[Corey Bryant]

It is fairly easy to find out what is being hosted where. Rackspace probably heard about the outage, did a search & then sent out the information.

[t c]

Easy or not, that is really grimey to be doing that to other competitors clients.

To wscreate, if they have a paid membership over at WhoIS.sc, they could do reverse ip lookup and get the 1st 1000 results on the ip address and could've gotten the site from there.

That is just one of the many ways.

[coight]

Ouch!, this should be in the main webhosting forum

[wscreate]

Yeah, thanks guys. I think it was slimey too. Let's hope this never happens to www.rackspace, right.

[Ravnos]

I am not a lawyer, so you want to check with one before listening to me here

That said, you might be able to make rackspace think twice before they try to poach your customers in this matter. Send Rackspace a certified letter. You and your customer have a contract -- even if it is just month to month -- right? Yes? Good.

Advise Rackspace that they have just improperly interfered with your relationship with your customer. Tell them that you have a contract with your customer, and that given the state of the industry, they almost certainly knew that anyway. Then tell them that as such, they are interfering with a business relationship, and that if they further contact your customers, you will refer such contact to your counsel for possible legal action for Rackspace's tortious interference.

Note that under normal circumstances involving competition, Rackspace is completely justified (legally) in doing this. Legitimate competition automatically cancels any claims of tortious interference. However, if your customer were to break off the relationship, Rackspace would not serve him as they do not do shared hosting. As such, Rackspace cannot claim protection under legitimate competition! In other words, IMHO non-lawyer opinion, Rackspace has just left themselves open to litigation over tortious interference in your case.

It's just an idea and it may or may not work, and it may or may not be worth your time. But it should make them think twice before you continue, especially if you tell them the above reasoning of WHY they have just opened themselves up to liability.

-- As an aside, in fact, if I were Interland, I WOULD sue them for tortious interference. If they sent this stuff to one of your shared web hosting customers that you know of, you can be sure they sent it to MANY of Interland's customers and customers of customers. For the same reason above, Rackspace is commiting tortious interference in this case (imho); because they have no actual intent to serve many of the customers they are contacting, and there is real damage being done to the relationship between Interland and its customers as a result. Definately tortious interference, imo.

[jayglate]

To bring some more light to this subject. The method in which RackSpace aquired "your customer list" isn't very difficult. In fact they thought they were calling YOU, to solict you to come over to them, and didn't realize they were calling a shared customer.

Shortly after Interland's extended downtime. Netcraft sent a blast email to their marketing list, myself, rackspace, and I am sure ev1, and SM are a part of.

This list they were selling provided contact info for servers hosted within Interland's Dialtone facility. But with most lists of this kind they aren't very accurate.

This isn't the first time this happened and it won't be the last.

[dmaven]

My experience with rackspace has been good. They seem very ethical in their practices.

[wheimeng]

That's spam isn't it?

[TMX]

Originally posted by Ravnos
Advise Rackspace that they have just improperly interfered with your relationship with your customer. Tell them that you have a contract with your customer, and that given the state of the industry, they almost certainly knew that anyway. Then tell them that as such, they are interfering with a business relationship, and that if they further contact your customers, you will refer such contact to your counsel for possible legal action for Rackspace's tortious interference.

That's ridiculous, as rackspace will surely tell the OP once they stop laughing long enough to do so.

All rackspace did was solicit the OP's client, hardly "tortious interference" by any stretch of the imagination.

-B

[A|J]

Originally posted by Ravnos


Advise Rackspace that they have just improperly interfered with your relationship with your customer. Tell them that you have a contract with your customer, and that given the state of the industry, they almost certainly knew that anyway. Then tell them that as such, they are interfering with a business relationship, and that if they further contact your customers, you will refer such contact to your counsel for possible legal action for Rackspace's tortious interference.

Since your client information is clearly public information (through whois.sc and then doing a whoislookup), I don't see anything illegal in rackspace contacting your clients. In addition, i don't think there's any substance in sending them that letter.

It is just like a united airlines representative walking up to you and offering you a deal on united airlines when they see you checking at an american airlines checkin counter.

[Rochen]

Originally posted by jayglate
Shortly after Interland's extended downtime. Netcraft sent a blast email to their marketing list, myself, rackspace, and I am sure ev1, and SM are a part of.

Yeah, this is most probably what happened.

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showth...hreadid=305101

- Chris

[datums]

For what it's worth.

If the company that produced the list, used whois information,
then you can take their *** to court.

The majority of registrars protect their whois information by including a clause stating that it is illegal to use the whois information to send unsolicited commercial advertising.

Register.com's

"The data in Register.com's WHOIS database is provided to you by
Register.com for information purposes only, that is, to assist you in
obtaining information about or related to a domain name registration
record. Register.com makes this information available "as is," and
does not guarantee its accuracy. By submitting a WHOIS query, you
agree that you will use this data only for lawful purposes and that,
under no circumstances will you use this data to: (1) allow, enable,
or otherwise support the transmission of mass unsolicited, commercial
advertising or solicitations via direct mail, electronic mail, or by
telephone; or (2) enable high volume, automated, electronic processes
that apply to Register.com (or its systems). The compilation,
repackaging, dissemination or other use of this data is expressly
prohibited without the prior written consent of Register.com.
Register.com reserves the right to modify these terms at any time.
By submitting this query, you agree to abide by these terms.
"

BTW Register.Com took Verio to court because Verio was contacting their customers via whois info.

Register.Com Won!

http://www.icann.org/registrars/regi...er-08dec00.htm

[Ravnos]

Originally posted by TMX
That's ridiculous, as rackspace will surely tell the OP once they stop laughing long enough to do so.

All rackspace did was solicit the OP's client, hardly "tortious interference" by any stretch of the imagination.

-B

Originally posted by 2fangs
Since your client information is clearly public information (through whois.sc and then doing a whoislookup), I don't see anything illegal in rackspace contacting your clients. In addition, i don't think there's any substance in sending them that letter.

It is just like a united airlines representative walking up to you and offering you a deal on united airlines when they see you checking at an american airlines checkin counter.

Well, none of us are lawyers here, but of the three of us, I bet I'm the only one who's actually read up on what tortious interference is and on the relevant case law.

The fact of the matter is, if you interfere with someone's business relations, you had better make damned sure that your interference is "proper", or you are liable for the interference.

The problem with Rackspace's behavior in this situation is that they "solicited" customers that are not in the same market as Rackspace. In this specific instance, they solicited a shared hosting customer; what do you think would happen if this customer said, "Okay, sell me some shared hosting Rackspace." Rackspace would say, "No, sorry, we don't do that." That's not competition at all, and so is not protected.

In fact, I'll bet you Rackspace actually had discussions in their marketing group about this:

RS #1: "Hmm, we have a list of companies hosting on Interland's dedicated hosting netspace. They had some downtime. Maybe we should solicit these businesses."
RS #2: "Yea, but who should we send them to? We know a lot of these people are only going to be shared hosting customers who will never buy from us anyway..."
RS #1: "Bah, just send to them all. Best case scenario, we get some customers. Worst case scenario, we rub it in with some of Interland's customer's customers and do some damage that way."

And that my friends is tortious interference.

[TMX]

Originally posted by Ravnos
Well, none of us are lawyers here, but of the three of us, I bet I'm the only one who's actually read up on what tortious interference is and on the relevant case law.

Please cite the case law that would back up a claim of tortious interference in this case.

Tortious interference requires the third party, in this case Rackspace, to willingly, knowingly, and improperly interfere with and break a contract between two parties, in this case, the OP's client and Interland (let's forget for a moment that the two don't have a relationship in the first place). We don't have that here. All we have is rackspace presenting a simple solicitation to someone else's customer - not only completely within the law, but also extremely common practice. There is not even a hint of improper interference or attempt to break a contract in evidence in this situation.

-B