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  1. #1
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    Customers leaving in the middle of the night

    Occasionally, we have a client that just picks up an leaves.

    i'm talking about finding another host (like godaddy) and switching DNS's etc.)

    Question: After that point (especially when they don't return your calls) do you just assume they left and go through with the appropriate cancellation process?

    I mean, giving the benefit of the doubt, there is a very small possibility, they changed IP addresses but are still using URL-forwarding to your site.

    In the case i'm talking about, the website A record is pointed elsewhere as is the DNS. The MX is still pointing to our servers though... and no response - of course.


    Lawrence
    Last edited by maknet; 07-02-2009 at 11:49 AM.
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  2. #2
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    We just leave them, if they don't pay their invoice after X amount of days, their account gets suspended then terminated.

    I wouldn't cancel anyones account if they're still within their billing period and not requested cancellation.

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dan_EZPZ View Post
    We just leave them, if they don't pay their invoice after X amount of days, their account gets suspended then terminated.

    I wouldn't cancel anyones account if they're still within their billing period and not requested cancellation.
    I agree, I would wait until their invoice is due. If they don't pay then I would try to contact them several times as sometimes they are on vacation/family issues, etc. Also, take a look at their history (if they have one)usually the fly-by-night clients are outside of the country and we can't send them to collections.
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  4. #4
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    Not fly-by-night as in, they are bad customers.

    As in, they just switched providers.

    The only issue i have with the invoicing method, is past experience has shown that 100% of the people that left, didn't plan on paying the future invoices (and rarely contact). So you have the voice-mail tag and other fun games before you decide they are no longer going to pay anything and it gets cancelled etc.

    Similarly, does anyone keep the backups of the files?

    Lawrence
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  5. #5
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    I understand that it can be frustrating but terminating someone's account that actually was going to pay is going to give you a huge headache. I think that this is just one of the drawbacks with doing business online.

    As far as the backups, once the account is terminated, we do not keep the files.
    Stephanie Ostheimer
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  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by maknet View Post
    Similarly, does anyone keep the backups of the files?
    Short answer is yes, but then I leave myself with the next Q / headache:
    for how long ?

    To be honest, whatever the circs. I get realy miffed with clients/exclients that will not communicate, there the ones that realy are not worth having.
    But I guess I also get miffed with those that 'over communicate',
    so maybe it's just me ?
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  7. #7
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    I would never suspend their account nor Terminate it, unless I get an confirmation email from that client.
    Infact, I would send emails after emails to have his confirmation of what to do with his account and whether he would like to Pay the Invoice & continue his account or get it Terminated.

  8. #8
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    I would never suspend their account nor Terminate it, unless I get an confirmation email from that client.
    Agreed, I'd rather deal with an "I didn't use this account for 6 months now, I want a refund" than an "Why the heck did you cancel my account for? I still had use for it and have always been paying on time."

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by maknet View Post
    The only issue i have with the invoicing method, is past experience has shown that 100% of the people that left, didn't plan on paying the future invoices (and rarely contact).
    [...]
    Similarly, does anyone keep the backups of the files?
    We'll suspend a site after 30 days of non-payment unless there's some kind of "promise to pay". 30 days after that we'll remove it from the server.

    We absolutely keep backups of canceled sites. It only takes a few minutes and we ship the bits off to Amazon S3 (which we'll generally keep for around a year). You never know if they had some tragedy (like illness or a death in the family) and losing all their data would just compound it. You can always ignore the money situation for a moment and try to get them talking by asking if they need a copy of their backup "before you delete it". I wouldn't hold the files hostage.

    Our situation is slightly different since we mostly do application hosting (On-Demand/SaaS) rather than standard web hosting, but it's the same general idea. We also started out as a host.
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  10. #10
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    Well we have customers from some Asian countries who order dedicated server and dont even care to inform us before leaving and i guess this is common in the same region, and they the longest customer i had was 3 months. So this leaves us no choice so we just pull the plug on second day of their billing date.
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  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dan_EZPZ View Post
    We just leave them, if they don't pay their invoice after X amount of days, their account gets suspended then terminated.

    I wouldn't cancel anyones account if they're still within their billing period and not requested cancellation.
    I agree with that because they could just be trying stuff out and it is within their right to keep their account for as long as the billing term lasts - otherwise you could be facing legal issues if you have something in your TOS or something telling everyone that you won't cancel accounts before billing periods, or anything relating to that.

    You're better off just leaving them alone - better to let then go quietly than to give you a headache about the situation.

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by Brian-de-vie View Post
    Short answer is yes, but then I leave myself with the next Q / headache:
    for how long ?
    When a clients account is closed for any reason, I grab their latest backup and store it on an external hard drive at my office for, well, forever. I'm not sure how practical this is for larger hosts, but I figure that doing it the way I do will at some point in time payoff somehow. Even if it doesn't, terabyte externals are cheap these days, so I'm not really losing out on much.
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  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by Plutost View Post
    I would never suspend their account nor Terminate it, unless I get an confirmation email from that client.
    Infact, I would send emails after emails to have his confirmation of what to do with his account and whether he would like to Pay the Invoice & continue his account or get it Terminated.
    People actually will respond to you? We've had reminder emails sent daily to users who still do not bother. If we did not terminate accounts we'd have to dedicated entire servers to delinquent accounts.



    Quote Originally Posted by IMeanWebHosting View Post
    When a clients account is closed for any reason, I grab their latest backup and store it on an external hard drive at my office for, well, forever. I'm not sure how practical this is for larger hosts, but I figure that doing it the way I do will at some point in time payoff somehow. Even if it doesn't, terabyte externals are cheap these days, so I'm not really losing out on much.
    Yeah not really practical on a large scale unless you enjoy it costing you $50,000/yr or some silly number to store data of users who have moved onto other providers.
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  14. #14
    It would be probably reasonable to send out notice that access will be suspended, and then suspend the account while leaving the contents intact. At some point, you may want to archive it off. As some posters have said, someday that backup will save someone's butt, and they will be forever grateful.

    As an aside, it is always daylight hours somewhere in the world.
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  15. #15
    If they are paid up, why suspend them? Keep their account active. If they reach their renewal date, and do not renew, follow your standard cancellation process found in your terms of service hopefully. (Example: 10 days late, suspend...30 days, terminate)

  16. #16
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    Three days past due, suspend them. Thirty days past due, terminate account. Keep backup for around 3 to 6 months (whenever I get around to deleting archived accounts).

    Dedicated servers have no grace period.

    For all customers, if they contact us ahead of time - we tend to work something out for payments.

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  17. #17
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    I agree on dedicated servers not having a grace period, but for shared hosting I have to make a judgment call on these issues, as every customer is different.

    For relatively new accounts with no history it is more standard. I don't terminate an account unless it is on its second unpaid billing period (monthly). The reason is that they do indeed come back a lot of the time.

    As for backups, I try to keep them about 6 months but do not make any guarantees if their account was terminated for non-payment / no communication.

    My biggest pet peeve is when people just disappear rather than properly canceling their account. Is it asking so much to expect a reply to a past due notice?
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  18. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by everity View Post
    I agree on dedicated servers not having a grace period, but for shared hosting I have to make a judgment call on these issues, as every customer is different.

    For relatively new accounts with no history it is more standard. I don't terminate an account unless it is on its second unpaid billing period (monthly). The reason is that they do indeed come back a lot of the time.

    As for backups, I try to keep them about 6 months but do not make any guarantees if their account was terminated for non-payment / no communication.

    My biggest pet peeve is when people just disappear rather than properly canceling their account. Is it asking so much to expect a reply to a past due notice?
    You mean people should actually communicate their desire to not continue a service? hogwash i say lol
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  19. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by everity View Post
    My biggest pet peeve is when people just disappear rather than properly canceling their account. Is it asking so much to expect a reply to a past due notice?

    No kidding and with accepting Paypal they can just walk away without ever giving any notice. At least if they pay via CC the automatic charge will continue an account along so they need to actually provide a cancellation. There is nothing like trying to guess what a user intentions are with their account.
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  20. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by Brian-de-vie View Post
    Short answer is yes, but then I leave myself with the next Q / headache:
    for how long ?

    To be honest, whatever the circs. I get realy miffed with clients/exclients that will not communicate, there the ones that realy are not worth having.
    But I guess I also get miffed with those that 'over communicate',
    so maybe it's just me ?
    First of all, save an ulcer and don't take it personally. With 1000s of customers, I've had them come and go all the time, and there are a certain group that never wants to tell you face-to-face.
    If they have changed DNS, and are still using your MX, let the contracted time expire, then put it all on hold. Give them 30 days past their due date, if no work, dump it all, call it a done deal.
    Except for the mail, if their web traffic is not coming your way, they really aren't taxing your tangible resources, so, the only thing left is just being mad about them leaving.
    Just look forward to the two customers that will replace him.

    One thing I've learned, if you are nice, even to the one's leaving (given a chance), they sometimes have second thoughts..."hey, I'm leaving, and he's still willing to help?".
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  21. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by IPStrada LLC View Post
    Well we have customers from some Asian countries who order dedicated server and dont even care to inform us before leaving and i guess this is common in the same region, and they the longest customer i had was 3 months. So this leaves us no choice so we just pull the plug on second day of their billing date.
    that's bad for business. I'm one of those guys that forget to pay the bills and almost always pay them 2-3 day late. Not just hosting....most of the bills. But I do pay! Don't think it ever happened to get a service canceled for only a few days late.

  22. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by mugo View Post
    First of all, save an ulcer and don't take it personally. With 1000s of customers, I've had them come and go all the time, and there are a certain group that never wants to tell you face-to-face.
    A big part of this is probably the non-communication that occurs.

    But if they do move the A record, and not the MX, i can only communicate by phone and e-mail. If they ignore both, well at least on my server, there's not simple quick-way to just "disable" the account besides moving the MX record again. And then you have propagation issues.


    Lawrence
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  23. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by mugo View Post
    One thing I've learned, if you are nice, even to the one's leaving (given a chance), they sometimes have second thoughts..."hey, I'm leaving, and he's still willing to help?".
    Seconded! Even if they don't change their mind immediately, you'll be evolving your services in the meantime and they'll probably be shopping for another host before long.

    You could send them a quick follow-up in 6 months and ask how things are going. We've earned back a lot of business that way.
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  24. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by IPStrada LLC View Post
    Well we have customers from some Asian countries who order dedicated server and dont even care to inform us before leaving and i guess this is common in the same region, and they the longest customer i had was 3 months. So this leaves us no choice so we just pull the plug on second day of their billing date.
    We have many dedicated severs clients in Asia and never had a problem.

    For dedicated servers, we send a reminder 7 days before the billing anniversary date, and followed by another 4 reminders.

    Once 5 reminders are sent and the box is 5 days past due, we suspend the server. After 7 days we remove the server and format the hard drives.

    We don't totally depend on Billing Software for this and have a separate Billing Person who contact the clients individually.
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