by laCour on 8/16/11, 7:53 AM with 167 comments
by Isofarro on 8/16/11, 1:15 PM
2.) Customer informed and appropriate action taken for unpaid accounts (suspend account for non-payment)
3.) Customer's friend makes a public complaint on Twitter
4.) Web host responds badly (but perhaps with some justification, outside parties getting involved in disputes, where a simple pay-the-outstanding-invoice would have resolved the situation)
5.) Non-payee gets abusive
6.) Web host deletes the account for abusive behaviour.
Apart from point 3, everything else seems in order. The customer's friend was provoking a reaction in public. What did he want, the webhost to publicly state that his friend's account had been suspended for non-payment? That seems worse than a firm private message to butt out of a contractual matter.
Suspending the customer's friend does seem harsh, but taken from the view that he's complaining publicly about a problem that doesn't involve him, it might be a long term justification of ejecting bad customers instead of just tolerating them (perhaps there's more to the story). That sort of approach is recommended by things like The 4-hour work week, firing your worst customers.
The guy should have paid his bill, either on time, or as soon as justified. There was no reason for his friend to escalate matters, there was no reason for the non-payee to escalate matters. You pay for the service, you get the service. You don't pay, then you get no service. Yes, the web host can be more lenient, but it's not something you should feel entitled to.
There are a number of extenuating circumstances that can warrant or could result in one or more of these points being appropriate responses.
And look at it, it's a cpanel / shared-hosting reseller - those margins are razor thin to non-existent, even loss-leading. If you're not paying at least $7 a month for a cpanel account, then expecting the host to be lenient for non-payment and subsequent abuse from the non-payee is unjustified.
by patio11 on 8/16/11, 11:49 AM
by Hates_ on 8/16/11, 8:15 AM
Loads of times we've received pretty insulting emails, but done our best to be polite and helpful back, more times then not we've received a really thankful and praising email back in response. A lot of times customers forgot they're sending a message to a real person, and just think they're contacting a faceless corporation.
by jrockway on 8/16/11, 12:51 PM
Nice DoS vector; all I have to do is claim I'm foo.com on Twitter, then I just tell foo.com's host to fuck themselves, and then foo.com is gone forever. It also sounds like a good way to cancel unwanted credit cards. Instead of waiting on hold for hours to talk to high-pressure "you don't really want to cancel, do you" guy, just tell your bank to fuck themselves on Twitter, and your account magically goes away.
Somehow I feel I'm missing something here...
by thirsteh on 8/16/11, 8:32 AM
by corin_ on 8/16/11, 8:16 AM
by jarin on 8/16/11, 8:20 AM
I'm sure we've all heard horror stories of shared hosting providers, but personally I've had one just completely disappear, taking my 2 years of prepaid hosting with them (along with hundreds of other customers, at least).
by pbhjpbhj on 8/16/11, 10:14 AM
This seems to be about a web host not accepting people not paying their bills.
It's not really the web hosts problem if you can't pay, doesn't matter if you've a dispute with paypal. Don't pay and they're in their rights to cease providing service.
Don't pay, then bitch about them not providing your service, then provide profane public responses and post a call on Reddit to try and get the company destroyed ... well is it a surprise that they delete your data at that point.
Aside: berfarah needs to read up on the Gunpowder Plot.
by shabble on 8/16/11, 10:35 AM
"It's no surprise that when things work as they should, people rarely talk about them. When things don't work, however, people are often very quick to criticise, condemn and even publically discourage the use of the service or product. Fortunately for us, there's none of the latter - and we hope that remains the case for as long as we're in business.
Unfortunately for us, because of an excellent proven track-record, there's relatively little in the way of comments or reviews of this* on the Internet. We'd like to ask for your help to change that.
If you're happy enough to write a review for us, here are some of the best places you could do so: [ ... ] Social Networks - everything from a quick Twitter message to a forum post on any of the forums you frequent. Every little piece of exposure is appreciated!"
Isn't that pretty much...what he did?
by davidandgoliath on 8/16/11, 2:30 PM
Allowing it to descend to the point where backups were deleted is just an absolutely appalling situation though. I've given clients the boot before, but descending to the point where removal of their backups occurs after suspending them is just wrong.
As a provider you're the technical link between someone and their content, and your goal is to protect that content with everything you've got: Destroying it yourself is simply disheartening.
It's sad to see that thiswebhost* has arrived at this point, but the good news is all it will take is some effort & 'emotional distancing' to really improve. I know not many years ago I was in the same position as a fledgling company owner where it's very easy to take things to heart.
Hopefully thiswebhost* can dig through some backups (assuming they still have some) and provide the users with their content.
by rmc on 8/16/11, 9:15 AM
He doesn't sound like a good customer, I can understand why a company would want to ditch him. Companies shouldn't try to keep all customers all the time. Just read the blog http://notalwaysright.com/ which is full of anecdotes of stupid customers.
by X4 on 8/16/11, 9:52 AM
A 1and1 employee once ripped a domain from me. I was bored and bought top10.eu, a minute after I got a call from that company telling me that he is going to own that domain and I cannot buy it. I told him, you're late my friend, refreshed the browser to be sure about it, it was all ok, yes I owned it. Refreshing my account again revealed that there was no such domain anymore. So much for trust. He called again and said, sorry but you cannot own that domain, I own it now. Man was I pissed.
Trust nobody, even if it's nobody. Do your own backups regularly. Daily and hourly.
by _delirium on 8/16/11, 9:05 AM
by mikey_p on 8/16/11, 9:06 AM
by cwilson on 8/16/11, 3:21 PM
They should be the type of person who has the ability to not take insults or criticism about the company personally, they should have a very thick skin, and generally they should almost always be happy and upbeat. It's rare to find this person but even more rare for them to be one of your founders.
If you're in the business of having customers who require support I suggest hiring this person before almost anyone else when you have the ability to do so. It's a game changer.
by laCour on 8/16/11, 9:43 PM
http://www.thiswebhost.com/blog/2011/08/16/the-reddit-incide...
by amitagrawal on 8/16/11, 12:00 PM
The only reason I've not brought their actions to light is that I still have some months before my account there expires and they can terminate the account without any reason.
But after reading this I'm very motivated to bring their shady tactics out before they make a buck more by scamming their own evangelists.
by ZoFreX on 8/17/11, 1:53 AM
> It is our policy not to discuss client accounts with anyone but the account holder. I have unsuspended your account and hope that this allows you to retrieve any data required.
Pretty sure that I'm not the account holder, and yet he's discussing the details with me? I would certainly think twice before considering them as hosts.
by alanh on 8/17/11, 6:51 PM
1) Most importantly: They store passwords in plaintext and require the last four char of your password whenever you contact support. I kid you not.
2) Almost as important: They shut down customers when they disagree with them politically — this is a Salt Lake City outfit, and therefore extremely anti-gay, and you will be paying people who take down pro-LGBT websites simply for being pro-LGBT.
3) Terrible tech documentation (they "support" Rails but it’s quite difficult to actually use).
by mbrzuzy on 8/16/11, 12:30 PM
by Shenglong on 8/16/11, 5:09 PM
I poked LiquidWeb, so they should be aware of the issue.
by praptak on 8/16/11, 11:51 AM
It wouldn't even have to be Google - anyone with a huge social graph (LinkedIn, Facebook et al) could implement "check your friends' opinion on X".
by girlvinyl on 8/17/11, 6:51 AM
by laCour on 8/17/11, 12:19 AM
by markprovan on 8/16/11, 12:31 PM
by joshu on 8/17/11, 6:30 AM
by samstave on 8/17/11, 4:16 AM
by tormentor on 8/16/11, 8:28 AM
by leon_ on 8/16/11, 1:05 PM
by innes on 8/16/11, 8:27 AM
by kassak on 8/16/11, 12:59 PM
by atourino on 8/16/11, 11:49 AM
- Backups are your responsibility. Not the hosts, not the government. Not anyone else. You. Period.
- Cannot pay with Paypal? Paypal HQ spontaneously explodes into a huge ball of fiery death? Find another way to pay. It's your responsibility to hold your side of the contract.