Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Dedicated Server : Beware Versaweb clients - cancelled services go to collections

[server prodigy]

14 months after moving from Versaweb to Quadranet we received a collections letter in the mail today. Contacting Versaweb bililng, they claim they never received our cancellation.

It's funny because we were in negotiations with a sales person from Versaweb for weeks prior to giving them notice - they were unable to match quadra net's deal so we said "no thanks, we're going to move - it's been fun but goodbye" and sent them an email telling them to cancel our server after the next month's service. (We even paid for another 30 days we didn't use).

After moving our sites we never logged into the server again.

Now, 14 months later - we get a collections letter asking for another month's service so we contact Versaweb and they basically tell us to go to hell and talk to the collections company.

We've leased dedicated servers from many providers for many years and we've never had this issue. (We completed our lease to own contract with Quadranet, have the hardware sitting right here and now lease a server from Slicebox - it's not an issue of us being cheap or not wanting to pay our bills).

We DID cancel and after I send this dispute letter to the collection agency I hope we never hear another word about this other than it's been taken care of. If not, I'd prefer to pay the 45 dollar small claims court filing fee and sue Versaweb.

So, those of you considering Versaweb or having left them should be very, very careful.

[Snat]

Not siding with either side but did you cancel it how they wanted based on their terms of service which was to contact the billing department using the "billing and customer management system" or did you just send an e-mail to support ?

Requests to cancel services may be made by notifying our Billing Department from within our billing and customer management system. All requests for service cancellation must be made a minimum of 5 days prior to the renewal date of the service being cancelled. Failure to provide notice at least 5 days prior to the renewal date will result in a full billable monthly cycle prior to cancellation. Where all services are considered to be provided on a strictly prepaid basis, no prorated or partial refunds will be made. All outstanding invoices must be paid in full prior to requesting cancellation, and all unpaid charges must be satisfied prior to the return of any customer-owned equipment.

[Rob T]

Hello,

I've looked in to your situation specifically. We never received any sort of cancellation notice from you - not via email, support ticket, or any other method. You claim to have canceled via email - had you done so, a ticket would have been generated by our helpdesk. Can you provide a ticket number? As far as I can see, your service was simply abandoned. We kept your server online for over 2 weeks, expecting that you had just run into some problem or were unable to pay the bill. During this time, you were sent no less than 3 overdue invoice emails in addition to the email that was sent when the invoice was generated. Never during any of this time did we hear anything from you. If you thought you had canceled, why did you not respond to the invoice or one of the overdue notices that were sent?

Finally, when you contact us earlier today, in no way did we tell you to "go to hell". We simply explained why your account had been referred out for collection and also provided you with the time/date stamp information on when emails were sent to you notifying you that you had an overdue invoice.

So, after giving you every chance to pay or contact us to let us know what was going on, making multiple attempts to contact you via email, and leaving your server up assuming that you would make good on the invoice, we were left with no choice but to take your server down and refer your account to collections per our ToS. If you can show proof where you requested to cancel (i.e. a ticket number), I'll be happy to forward that to our billing manager for review and we'll get the situation corrected ASAP, but we certainly don't show any record of it on our end.

[server prodigy]

So you want 120.00 for two weeks service? I've never received any emails from versaweb after we canceled other than one network down notification.

We were with your company for a long time, always paid our bill, etc. I could understand if we were a new client or someone who had been problematic to deal with.

The cancellation email was sent 14 months ago using a domain we no longer own. We switched from PC to Mac in that time and no longer have any of those emails. (We were using MS outlook back then).

At some point we switched our versaweb support email to a gmail account which is the account we received the network notifications on. I'm wondering if your billing dept had issues connecting the dots (the cancellation email did list our company name, server IP and my name). The gmail account matched our payment method email as well.

All I can do is stand on my record as a client and you can contact our former and current hosts if you want to verify that we've either completed our hosting contracts or canceled correctly.

It's been a very long time but I seem to remember submitting a ticket in addition to sending the email.

What I do have is a support system email sent to our gmail account and since I've never received any invoices in that time I'm sure you wouldn't be able to find that any were sent to that account. That should prove our registered support account was canceled as requested.

[Rob T]

Hello,

All email correspondence related to your account was sent to the gmail address we have on file for your account, including all invoices and past-due notices. Our system logs every email it sends. As far as I can see from our logs, we have always used the same gmail address for correspondence with you - I have records showing emails to that same address going back to August of 2007. We have no record of ever sending any email regarding your account to any other email address.

If you sent a request for cancellation from an email address unknown to us, we would disregard the request for very obvious security reasons. In those cases, our standard process would be to advise you that we were not able to process the request, and to inform you that you would need to either log in to your account and request cancellation via our helpdesk or send the request from the email address associated with your account so that we could verify that the request was legitimate.

I'm very sorry if you feel like you have been wronged in some way here, but the fact of the matter is that we made every attempt to let you know that you had an outstanding invoice due on your account, having sent multiple emails to the email address we had on file for your account (I provided the time/date stamps to you) - the same address we had used for correspondence with you for years. We incurred expenses when we left your server online for over 2 weeks in good faith that you would pay. I don't think it's unreasonable that we should attempt to collect to cover the costs we incurred. Had you replied to even one of the emails we sent to you during that time, I'm sure we would not be in this situation now.

[Alex - Fibervolt]

I find it pretty silly that he would just abandon his server however gogadget, wouldn't you get an email back if you cancelled? I'm pretty sure they would respond somehow to a cancellation.

[server prodigy]

Originally Posted by Rob T

Hello,

All email correspondence related to your account was sent to the gmail address we have on file for your account, including all invoices and past-due notices. Our system logs every email it sends. As far as I can see from our logs, we have always used the same gmail address for correspondence with you - I have records showing emails to that same address going back to August of 2007. We have no record of ever sending any email regarding your account to any other email address.

If you sent a request for cancellation from an email address unknown to us, we would disregard the request for very obvious security reasons. In those cases, our standard process would be to advise you that we were not able to process the request, and to inform you that you would need to either log in to your account and request cancellation via our helpdesk or send the request from the email address associated with your account so that we could verify that the request was legitimate.

I'm very sorry if you feel like you have been wronged in some way here, but the fact of the matter is that we made every attempt to let you know that you had an outstanding invoice due on your account, having sent multiple emails to the email address we had on file for your account (I provided the time/date stamps to you) - the same address we had used for correspondence with you for years. We incurred expenses when we left your server online for over 2 weeks in good faith that you would pay. I don't think it's unreasonable that we should attempt to collect to cover the costs we incurred. Had you replied to even one of the emails we sent to you during that time, I'm sure we would not be in this situation now.

I've searched the gmail account for "versaweb" and "R&D Technologies" and there are no invoices. All I have are the payment confirmations up until our last payment and a network maintenance notification.

We moved and did not use the server at all after we made our last month's payment and canceled. You don't have an "costs" that we're liable for.

I hope you have a court judgment for the sum you're attempting to collect but I'm letting you know - we will not work with your collection agency and will not pay anything more, period. I hope the agency you hired is extremely complaint with the fair credit reporting act.

If it was so critical to contact us you had our mailing address and phone numbers.

Given the amount of time we were clients of yours I find it amazingly petty you would even go this route. We've never "abandoned" a server but lately we've noticed a trend of hosting companies who make cancellation very, very difficult.

As someone who also runs a business I'm blown away you would take such an approach with clients who were with you for the length of time we were. The amount you're asking for is excessive and nowhere near enough to justify the bad press, IMO.

[server prodigy]

Screenshots of our gmail account:

search for "versaweb:

http://s798.photobucket.com/albums/y...rent=versa.jpg

After our payment sent on 4/15/09 there's nothing. The cPanel update script picks up "versaweb" due to a CentOS mirror they serve. After that the only email is my inquiry this week asking why I'm getting a collection notice over a year later.

Search for "R&D" results in two pages of returns:

http://s798.photobucket.com/albums/y...urrent=rd1.jpg

http://s798.photobucket.com/albums/y...urrent=rd2.jpg

None of the search hits are for them.

The "network" maintenance notice went to a different email account which was used to register for the versaweb user forum. That came in on May 24th of this year.

[Rob T]

First, our cancellation policy has not changed significantly in the 6 years we have been in business, and it is in line with industry standards.

Second, we had to pay for power, space, and connectivity for your server for the time it was left online that was unpaid. Additionally, there is obviously lost revenue as well since we could have re-sold the hardware in question to another paying customer.

Finally, I would be happy to provide you with screen shots from our billing system showing that emails were sent regarding overdue invoices for several months past the date you referenced (4/15/09), and that emails were sent to the same address dating back as far as 2007. Obviously they can not be posted publicly without violating our privacy policy. Since your Gmail account seems to lack any emails that we normally would have sent to you - such as invoices, etc - perhaps the gmail account you used when signing up for service and the gmail account you are using now are not the same. I can only guess from there.

One thing I did notice is that your screen shots lack any trace of an email or ticket referencing the cancellation of your account.

At this point I believe that my participation in this thread has reached the point of futility, so if you wish to discuss the matter further, you are welcome to contact us directly.

[FernGullyGraphics]

Originally Posted by gogadget

14 months after moving from Versaweb to Quadranet we received a collections letter in the mail today. Contacting Versaweb bililng, they claim they never received our cancellation.

It's funny because we were in negotiations with a sales person from Versaweb for weeks prior to giving them notice - they were unable to match quadra net's deal so we said "no thanks, we're going to move - it's been fun but goodbye" and sent them an email telling them to cancel our server after the next month's service. (We even paid for another 30 days we didn't use).

After moving our sites we never logged into the server again.

Now, 14 months later - we get a collections letter asking for another month's service so we contact Versaweb and they basically tell us to go to hell and talk to the collections company.

We've leased dedicated servers from many providers for many years and we've never had this issue. (We completed our lease to own contract with Quadranet, have the hardware sitting right here and now lease a server from Slicebox - it's not an issue of us being cheap or not wanting to pay our bills).

We DID cancel and after I send this dispute letter to the collection agency I hope we never hear another word about this other than it's been taken care of. If not, I'd prefer to pay the 45 dollar small claims court filing fee and sue Versaweb.

So, those of you considering Versaweb or having left them should be very, very careful.

This is why it is always important to get a confirmation for your cancellation (then printing/saving that confirmation).

[server prodigy]

Originally Posted by Rob T

First, our cancellation policy has not changed significantly in the 6 years we have been in business, and it is in line with industry standards.

Second, we had to pay for power, space, and connectivity for your server for the time it was left online that was unpaid. Additionally, there is obviously lost revenue as well since we could have re-sold the hardware in question to another paying customer.

Finally, I would be happy to provide you with screen shots from our billing system showing that emails were sent regarding overdue invoices for several months past the date you referenced (4/15/09), and that emails were sent to the same address dating back as far as 2007. Obviously they can not be posted publicly without violating our privacy policy. Since your Gmail account seems to lack any emails that we normally would have sent to you - such as invoices, etc - perhaps the gmail account you used when signing up for service and the gmail account you are using now are not the same. I can only guess from there.

One thing I did notice is that your screen shots lack any trace of an email or ticket referencing the cancellation of your account.

At this point I believe that my participation in this thread has reached the point of futility, so if you wish to discuss the matter further, you are welcome to contact us directly.

As I already explained we used a domain account with Versaweb up until we switched to gmail after choosing not to renew the domain. I no longer have those emails but as I've posted - there are no invoices after our last payment.

I've never received a confirmation of cancellation from any provider, I've just no longer gotten a bill except in one case. All I've ever gotten is an email asking us "if we were absolutely sure" we wanted to terminate our service. In that case we ended up paying for an additional month of hosting plus cpanel plus extra IPs even though we HAD to change providers due to their inability to add the needed IPs before our deadline.

When we came to the end of our quadra net lease to own agreement we discussed leasing a new server for over a month, just like we did with Versaweb prior to leaving. When they could not match the deal slicebox offered we chose to have the server boxed up and shipped to us. The day after we were sent tracking info for the server we received an invoice for the next months service for the server that was on it's way to our house.

I'm not picking on them as they were a great provider and fixed the issue immediately.

When you pop up 14 months later and want 120 dollars for "two weeks" of electricity for a server that was not being used in any way I know it's about your company pushing for money or trying to add debts to your books as outstanding revenue, period.

I'm fairly sure canceling a service paid for via paypal subscription meets the legal requirements of giving notice in addition to us advising you we were moving to quadra net based on your inability to match their price. (Which was higher by a substantial amount but offered the hardware we needed).

I'm done paying hosting companies for services I haven't used and allowing them to think a TOS will save them in court. All you've accomplished is to show that your long term clients will be treated like crap. If we'd burned up our bandwidth and used the hell out of the server up until the day it was shut off I could see your point. You were paid for a month of zero bandwidth usage and that's more than enough.

I tried to talk to you directly, you told me to go away and call your collection agency.

[IRCCo Jeff]

Originally Posted by gogadget

As I already explained we used a domain account with Versaweb up until we switched to gmail after choosing not to renew the domain. I no longer have those emails but as I've posted - there are no invoices after our last payment.

I've never received a confirmation of cancellation from any provider, I've just no longer gotten a bill except in one case. All I've ever gotten is an email asking us "if we were absolutely sure" we wanted to terminate our service. In that case we ended up paying for an additional month of hosting plus cpanel plus extra IPs even though we HAD to change providers due to their inability to add the needed IPs before our deadline.

When we came to the end of our quadra net lease to own agreement we discussed leasing a new server for over a month, just like we did with Versaweb prior to leaving. When they could not match the deal slicebox offered we chose to have the server boxed up and shipped to us. The day after we were sent tracking info for the server we received an invoice for the next months service for the server that was on it's way to our house.

I'm not picking on them as they were a great provider and fixed the issue immediately.

When you pop up 14 months later and want 120 dollars for "two weeks" of electricity for a server that was not being used in any way I know it's about your company pushing for money or trying to add debts to your books as outstanding revenue, period.

I'm fairly sure canceling a service paid for via paypal subscription meets the legal requirements of giving notice in addition to us advising you we were moving to quadra net based on your inability to match their price. (Which was higher by a substantial amount but offered the hardware we needed).

I'm done paying hosting companies for services I haven't used and allowing them to think a TOS will save them in court. All you've accomplished is to show that your long term clients will be treated like crap. If we'd burned up our bandwidth and used the hell out of the server up until the day it was shut off I could see your point. You were paid for a month of zero bandwidth usage and that's more than enough.

I tried to talk to you directly, you told me to go away and call your collection agency.

If you did not properly submit a cancellation request then Versaweb is in the right, the issue is more than electricity:

- Physical space

- Opportunity loss, the server could have been sold to someone else or otherwise allocated.

- Impact to sales projections, Versaweb expected to have that $120.00 (or however much) that was never received. Multiply this by the number of customers who see fit to abandon services as is common in our industry and it becomes a rather serious problem.

- Collections costs, before handing off to an agency administrative time was likely spent attempting to collect on the account (via e-mail, phone, or whatever the case) as well as the time now being spent running damage control on this forum as a result.

These are the big ones that I can think of offhand. Versaweb is a for profit company, your responsibility to them is not directly proportionate to the cost you incurred. They expect to make profit also and when they don't receive cancellation notice that impacts profits.

Also, canceling a PayPal subscription does not constitute an account cancellation. Many people cancel PayPal subscriptions or remove their on file credit card without the intent to cancel. In fact, PayPal will cancel the subscription for you if either account is placed on hold.

[server prodigy]

Once again for the reading comprehension challenged:

1. We were in discussions with Versaweb about matching a new deal after we'd been with them for a year. We told them at the end of those discussions that we were going to cancel and move.

2. We gave them formal notice of cancellation and paid our last month's service. We moved our domains the next day and never logged in again, we're used to having to pay for a month's un-needed service in order to switch providers.

3. It's been more than a year since then and the only thing we hear from them since then is the collections notice. They had all our emails, phone numbers and mailing address to contact us with. I don't know about you but when a client owes me money I get in touch with them via email, phone or postal mail and use collections as a last resort. I also do not submit accounts to collections without a civil court judgment in hand.

We met our informal contractual requirements in every way with Versaweb just like we have with every host we've done business with. The type of customers who "abandon" servers are usually problematic clients who use the server up until the minute it's terminated.

The problem as I see it is yet another host who wants to use web automation to make their job easier, require customers to use it for everything but then ignore it themselves. Despite changing our contact email in their web system they continued to use our domain email from our original sign up even after we'd switched. If their billing dept chooses to ignore the email in their own system that's not our problem.

I'm not just some end user, we're in the hosting business also. Our clients are Fortune 100 companies developing new projects with our partners. This BS of hosting companies ignoring cancellation requests unless sent through their web interface is just a way to squeeze another month's worth of money out of clients they've lost. If your company is willing to discuss sales and make deals via email, forum, live chat, etc then a customer's notice of cancellation should be accepted that way too as should support requests, questions, etc.

Versaweb was not 100 percent sold out and waiting for hardware. They were paid for a month's service we didn't need in order to give them time to line up new clients. Don't insult my intelligence. Most hosting companies require a month's notice and then sell the server prior to the month being up even though the client's paid for that time.

As I've said - we've always paid our bills, given a full month's notice and paid for services we didn't use every time we've switched hosts. We require the absolute minimum of support and have never "abandoned" a server.

There is no reason nor benefit for us to have acted differently with Versaweb than we have with every other company we've dealt with. The only scenario that makes sense is that they chose to ignore the cancellation for whatever reason.

Hence, my warning to current and potential Versaweb clients. I've only received a confirmation of canceled service from one provider and that was actually an attempt to ignore our request, IMO. I've never gotten an email from a former host saying "we've canceled your server per your request" or anything like it.

If you cancel with Versaweb, make sure you get a confirmation. I'd ask for a signed letter based on our experience.

[Nich]

Originally Posted by IRCCo Jeff

If you did not properly submit a cancellation request then Versaweb is in the right, the issue is more than electricity:

- Physical space

- Opportunity loss, the server could have been sold to someone else or otherwise allocated.

- Impact to sales projections, Versaweb expected to have that $120.00 (or however much) that was never received. Multiply this by the number of customers who see fit to abandon services as is common in our industry and it becomes a rather serious problem.

- Collections costs, before handing off to an agency administrative time was likely spent attempting to collect on the account (via e-mail, phone, or whatever the case) as well as the time now being spent running damage control on this forum as a result.

These are the big ones that I can think of offhand. Versaweb is a for profit company, your responsibility to them is not directly proportionate to the cost you incurred. They expect to make profit also and when they don't receive cancellation notice that impacts profits.

Also, canceling a PayPal subscription does not constitute an account cancellation. Many people cancel PayPal subscriptions or remove their on file credit card without the intent to cancel. In fact, PayPal will cancel the subscription for you if either account is placed on hold.

All of this makes sense. However, you are missing one big piece: Versaweb tried to collect $120 14 months after the fact. What the heck were they doing during that time?

IMO, there should be some kind of statute of limitation here.

Also, personally I think it's a PR disaster for Versaweb to try to collect $120 from a client "of years" (they said it themselves) 14 months after the fact. Business or not, someone at Versaweb has to have some common sense, right? They should have eaten the cost and moved on.

[Rob T]

I know I said my participation was done in this thread, but I wanted to clarify a couple of things.

1 - Every piece of email our company ever sent to you was to a Gmail account. No invoice or other official communication was ever sent to a domain-based email account.

2 - Our billing department will always confirm cancellations via email along with the date the server is to be taken offline. We've operated in this way for years.

3 - We continued to try and contact this customer for several months via email to collect the outstanding balance. We typically only send accounts to collections if they remain uncollected after several months. The statute of limitations for debt collection on this type of debt in our state is 4 years, I believe, and we are well within that limit.

4 - This customer has still yet to produce anything that looks like an email conversation or ticket where he requested cancellation.