Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Running a Web Hosting Business : Very bad experience with a customer - Any advice?

[JasonC0]

Just tonight a customer of mine started asking for a refund. He says he wants it because I suspended one of his accounts he uses (he has a reseller package). It is a website that has a whole bunch of images of cd labels for various software. About a week back the site caused the server load to go above 20 and caused the server to go down for over an hour. I had to have the server techs reboot it and when I logged in I notice it was his site causing the trouble. Of course, I immediately suspended the site (not his whole reseller account, just the site causing the trouble). I e-mailed him within an hour about it. I unsuspended the site within 4 days and monitored it. The guy now wants me to refund his payment. I was prepared to send him an overusage bill of $30.00 because I have lost at least one customer. I decided not to, but now he is threatening to post bad reviews of my company at various websites if I don't give him a refund. I told him if he wanted to be immature and spiteful I was going to send him a overusage bill to pay for my troubles and time spent (wasted) on getting the server online, dealing with customers complaints, etc. I could give in and refund his unused time and cancel his account and then not have to deal with him, or I could stay firm and not refund him. What should I do? Here are some copied of his e-mails:

His first e-mail:

Hi,
I'ld like to cancel my acount and apply to moneyback guarantee.
Reasons:
1. I had my account suspended, and i had no notice of that. I didnt knew and the site was down for several days.
2. The server load was allways slowing down the server, and that means o lot of server down time.
3. I never were able to setup private dns, althoug i follow all the steps/instructions near my registrat.
I'll wait for your comments,
(his name)

My reply:

Your account was suspended because it was bringing the server load to over 20, which then caused the whole server inclusing ALL of my customer's sites to go down for over an hour. This is a perfectly good reason for suspension and because of this you will not receive a refund. In fact, I should be charging you for overusage but I have decided against that. The server load WAS CAUSED BY YOUR SITE, and you have no right to complain about it. Also, about private dns I instructed you several times about how to do it but you never set it up. I cannot set it up on the server if you don't set it up with your registrar.

His reply:

My main complain is not the fact that the server doesn't support my aplication, as it should. My my complain is that you didn't advised me about it, and i didn't know that you suspended the account.
"This is a perfectly good reason for suspension and because of this you will not receive a refund."
Do i need better reasion, than not being happy????

My reply:

If you were having problems with a script, you should have created a trouble ticket. I did tell you about the suspension through an e-mail. I described which account was suspended and I told you why. You are not receiving a refund because your account caused the wholes server to go down and caused my other customers a large amount of grief. I even had a customer cancel because of the downtime caused by you.

His reply:

Is this your final word? You will not honnor the refund?
YOU and ME know that you didnt email me notifying the account cancel, and YOU and ME know that the script is working just fine, and it just didnt on your server.
If you dont have anything else to say you dont need to answer this email, since it is a useless. You will see each other in other instances.

My reply:

I don't even know what script you are talking about. I just said you should have created a trouble ticket so I could at least look at it. If I don't know about your problem, how in the world am I supposed to fix it? No, I am not going to refund you, and I told you why - you caused my server to go down.

His reply:

http://www.hostingspeeds.com/index.p...owreview&id=76
This is just the first...
I'll take 5 minutes of my day to remember you.
i'll be posting 10 per day, starting from the top results of quarion google listing.
I'll stop when i have a refund.
My imagination is starting to give more ideas :-)
Regrads,

My reply:

As I said I will not refund you. I am going to charge you $30 dollars for CPU overusage which will cover the costs of the customers that I have lost because of your account. I was originally not going to do this, but since you want to be immature about it and throw a fit I am going to charge you for it.

His reply:

Dear Jason,
I'll send a representative to visit you at Waldo Avenue, to try to discuss with you.
In the meantime, please check whats appearing on google, when you ask for quarion, in the next few days.
Regards

My reply:

I am not going to refund you and threats are not going to do anything to help your case. Perhaps you should try apologizing for hurting my business?

His reply:

Dear Jason,

We will see who'll be apologising...
The fact you are emailing me everytime is giving me some freshideas (do not confuse with fresh freshhost).
Have a nice day.
Regards

My reply:

You are being extremely immature. If you had just apoligised I would have refunded your money, but instead you chose to be immature, rude, and spiteful. That will get you nowhere.


Am I in the wrong for denying him a refund after he caused my server to crash, and should I refund him? Or should I just ignore his threats?

[Corey Bryant]

The problem is - he is an angry customer. He wants his money back and depending on your TOS and the issuing bank, he might get his money back. It will mainly become a war of words on some forums - my advice, don't even say anything. The more you say usually the worse it gets

The emails bacame too personal and all you have to do is look thru this forum and hundreds of others to see people complaining about something rather than giving them a high five.

If I were you, I would email the customer, letting him know that he has 30 days to locate another host. Hopefully your TOS covers you in all these matters.

[Devil Inside]

Then sue for slander and defimation of character or whatever - unless of course, everything he posts about you is true...

*shrugs*

Another thought... it's $10... maybe just refund it and let the problem go away?
Sure, you may be right - but which is less costly to you? $10 or the negative information about your company?

[AcidNet]

This is where your terms of service come into play.

In your terms of service do you have anything about denying a refund? Or anything about server overloads?

To be honest with you I would of issued the refund minus the $30 for CPU Overusage then lost contact with him.

It is a shame when something like this happens, especially now that he is spamming everyhwere about you. But what ca you do. Maybe write a standard reply and reply that to all his posts?

[AcidNet]

Oh rite I didnt realise it was $10 , thats about £5.60. I would of just issued the refund and got rid of him.

[JasonC0]

I have in my TOS that I do not give refunds - I changed it a few months back (before he signed up, so he agreed to it when he signed up). Here are a few excerpts that would apply to this case:

Money back guarantees: We will ONLY offer a refund under extreme circumstances with staff approval. If you would like to request a refund, please create a trouble ticket. Quarion reserve's the right to allow or deny a refund for any reason. This policy was changed due to abuse.

You must not abuse our services by using an excessive amount of resources. This includes, but is not limited to, using an excessive amount of CPU load. This will be decided upon by Quarion.

You must not abuse our services by harming or attempting to harm us, our servers, other customers, or any other server connected to the internet in any way.

If you are found in violation of any parts of these terms of service, we (Quarion) reserve the right to suspend or terminate the users account WITH OR WITHOUT refund. We reserve the right to post your personal details publicly if you do anything to threaten us, harm our servers, send UCE/Spam. Please make sure you are in accordance to these terms in order to ensure service stability.

This document may be updated at any time with or without notice to the user.

[StackHost]

Let your terms of service guide you. You should not have to think about what to do under these circumstances, all of the guidelines should be written out for you all ready, and you should be able to quote him your terms of service when he asks for a refund.

If he is entitled to a refund according to your terms, then give him the refund. If he is not entitled to a refund according to your terms, then do not give him a refund. If your terms are not thorough and do not cover this sort of instance, then you should also give him a refund, as you terms should specify.

Basically the lesson of this story is - always have a thorough terms of service for instances like this. And when they come about, never get personal with your clients, always stay professional and never state your opinion, because in the end you shouldn't have an opinion, your terms should tell your companies opinions right off the bat.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

[AcidNet]

This document may be updated at any time with or without notice to the user.

Urm, im sure thats not right.

You would need to notify your customers.... Otherwise you could just add anything to it.

I cant say I agree with your tos.

I offer a 14 day no quible money back garuntee. After 14 days no money back, end of story.

But realy, just give him his $10 back an be done with it.

I dunno if anyone agrees with me.

[Trophimus]

I agree with AcidNet. If refunding him money will possible keep your company from receiving a bad name? Go for it! I would rather refund $10.00 than have my company name ruined... But thats just me .

[JasonC0]

I just gave in and refunded $2.70 for the unused portion (8 days) of his payment.

[JasonC0]

Okay, get this, the ungrateful fool just told me it wasn't good enough for him. After he caused my server to completely fail for over an hour he still is grateful for a partial refund of his unused service.

Dear Jason,

I'm expecting a full refund, since it is not a question of what i did not used, but is a question of expectations.

I had the expectation of a certain level of service, and I didn’t get that.
I had to move my clients to another server. I had the account canceled without any notice.
I never asked you for a compensation for all the losses I had.

10 USD is a symbolic small value, but when it comes to refund it is strong enough to show ethics.
I'm sorry to inform you that the partial refund will not stop me.
I'm sure that I’ll spend much more, but I’m convinced I will make you see things as they should.

We will have the opportunity to discuss face to face in the near future.

Regards,
António

I replied:

How ungrateful can you get? I dropped the $30 penalty and refunded the unused portion for you. I do not really care whether or not you try to make me look bad, because all it will do is show people how much of an ignorant fool you are. When you tell (or I reply and tell) people that I gave you a refund, but it wasn't good enough for you they will think of you as a fool. I will laugh at your efforts.

This guy is a joke.

[imwired]

Hey Jason

Working in customer service for 5 years, the last thing you want to do is get personal. If you feel your TOS will cover you in case things get really bad, just make a statement about your policies in a professional manner and leave it at that. If he continues harassing, either restate the policies or disregard his emails.

All this, in the hope that your TOS is well written
If it isn't, just leave pride at the door and refund him his $10. Sure, it'll be a kick in the nuts for a couple of days, but your future customers' will more than make up for it.

Cheers

Ray

[Ariel74]

Originally Posted by JasonC0

I decided not to, but now he is threatening to post bad reviews of my company at various websites if I don't give him a refund.

Pretty much nothing you can do about it. As I found out a couple of months ago, the review sites don't really verify anything, and anyone can go in and post anything they want, whether its true or not. Review sites (in general) won't remove innacurate information even if you have overwhelming evidence that the person was lying.

[MoxieColo]

I had this problem with a Client who came here to wht to attack my company in the same regards this person has been attacking you. Many people say give in refund the money and get rid of the person. I dont agree with that, It allows a person to use threats agaist a company just cause they didnt get their own way. If your TOS was there for the client to read before signup and indeed he did cause the problem then he should not get a red cent and futher more you should bill him the $30. You getting is a diffrent story but least it shows that you will not back down just cause a ex client decides to bash you. Leasson to be learned over time those people are found to be full of it and your real clients tend to go to bat for you.


He broke the rules what you did was more then enough.

[bryceton]

Originally Posted by Moxiehosting

I had this problem with a Client who came here to wht to attack my company in the same regards this person has been attacking you. Many people say give in refund the money and get rid of the person. I dont agree with that, It allows a person to use threats agaist a company just cause they didnt get their own way. If your TOS was there for the client to read before signup and indeed he did cause the problem then he should not get a red cent and futher more you should bill him the $30. You getting is a diffrent story but least it shows that you will not back down just cause a ex client decides to bash you. Leasson to be learned over time those people are found to be full of it and your real clients tend to go to bat for you.


He broke the rules what you did was more then enough.

Totally agree with Moxiehosting

now I sapose it would be differnt if you told him you could host his "script"
however that doesnt appear to be the case, a partial refund shouldnt have been given at this case. Because he abused the server. You were kind enough to suspend just the one site instead of his whole resellers account and gave him notice of the suspension.