Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Dedicated Server : NetDepot Bad Business Practice

[anonpiss]

I rented 2 dedicated servers from NetDepot, ServerA and ServerB.

ServerA was ordered early this year and was paid 1 year upfront.
Then about a month ago I ordered ServerB but the payment was still pending.

NetDepot just decided to disable BOTH servers and ask me to contact billings department 9AM tomorrow when the time now is 10PM.

I believe that by not paying for ServerB, they should have not disabled ServerA which was fully paid by the thousands.

[VINAX]

It looks like some mistakes with the billing. Hope they can work this out for you quickly.
Why you ordered the 2nd server and payment is still pending?

[linuxissues]

Originally Posted by anonpiss

I rented 2 dedicated servers from NetDepot, ServerA and ServerB.

ServerA was ordered early this year and was paid 1 year upfront.
Then about a month ago I ordered ServerB but the payment was still pending.

NetDepot just decided to disable BOTH servers and ask me to contact billings department 9AM tomorrow when the time now is 10PM.

I believe that by not paying for ServerB, they should have not disabled ServerA which was fully paid by the thousands.

It goes by your account standing. Many companies do that, if you are past due, one server or more, they terminate all your services until billing is cleared. But yeah I hear your point.

[anonpiss]

That "some mistakes" with the billing caused me a few hundred dollars of loses. Are they going to pay for that?

[chennaihomie]

Email Brandon, He can get it resolved quickly bhale(at)gnax.net

[anonpiss]

I did, he did ask a few questions which I answered and now nothing from him.

I guess he went to sleep before resolving this issue.

[Coolraul]

Originally Posted by anonpiss

That "some mistakes" with the billing caused me a few hundred dollars of loses. Are they going to pay for that?

If that downtime of a few hours is worth a few hundred you really should have some redundancy. Good luck sorting it out.

[anonpiss]

The server is strong enough to withstand the amount of visitors on my website. If you're talking about getting another server, I've calculated that in a long run it would be a waste of money.

Now it's just a problem with them disabling servers that are "not affected".

[Coolraul]

Well clearly your website generates so much revenue that a few hours downtime costs hundreds of dollars. When that is the case, having some redundancy is usually a good idea.

[anonpiss]

Actually it's within 24 hours my site can generate a few hundred.

By the time the billings department goes back to work, it would be nearly 24 hours.

[JSCL]

It could be because of a multitude of reasons - just stick with it and remember that Billing department don't work 24x7 like techies do.

It could be due to suspicious payment or account being over-due - practically every provider does this as mentioned above.

[RyanD]

Originally Posted by JSCL

It could be because of a multitude of reasons - just stick with it and remember that Billing department don't work 24x7 like techies do.

It could be due to suspicious payment or account being over-due - practically every provider does this as mentioned above.

It's just nasty to suspend a server at end of business knowing billing won't be available to validate anything until the next morning. It would be best to do all billing related suspensions first thing in the morning, should a client be past-due they can immediately handle that with billing staff rather than wait hours

[chennaihomie]

I would completely agree with Coolraul, If your website is going to earn hundreds of $ each day, then you must consider an enterprise setup.

[RelativeDesign-Jerret]

Redundancy is a separate and unrelated topic in my opinion. Personally, I would also be very upset if a billing mistake resulted in service interruption. It brings up an interesting point though. If you paid for a service in full, should a problem with another order render the first service invalid? Personally, I wouldn't think so provided they're not interconnected and you haven't done something that violated the TOS/AUP/ETC for the first service.

I can understand this behavior for budget providers but if you're spending decent money or have been a long-time customer I think it would be in the providers best interest to have a little patience and work with you to resolve the issue.

I've lost and canceled a credit card that was tied to a hosting account while I was on vacation and this happened a day or two before my due date for an invoice (auto-pay). When I got back into town and noticed I was almost a week late I was very grateful that the host (PacificRack/Quadranet) hadn't turned anything off. I'm not sure if they have an X day grace periord or if someone in accounting realized I had been with them for years and knew I would pay up. Either way, my opinion about the company went up a notch and I'm loyal in many regards because of treatment like that.

[anonpiss]

Just talked to the billings department and they said they deactivate the "account" when they don't receive payment.

A lesson learned, even if you're going to have multiple servers, get them on different account. Because one account problem WILL cause all servers deactivated.

I still think that this is a really bad business practice. I know for a fact that I would never get anymore new servers from them.