There are better ways to handle one's customers than displayed by the CS employee here, but be that as it may: think long and hard before you get into the business of taking $3 a month from people who are demographically similar to Redditors.
:)
Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)
81–90 of 188 posts
Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)
#82It irked me that he didn't seem to care about lost customers 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.
I am of the opinion that businesses are defined by how they handle the exit of customers more than by how they handle take-on of customers. A customer being difficult to manage or not profitable still deserves a professional exit. These sorts of customers are not, however, automatically "stupid customers". They are "difficult" or "non-profitable". In my experience, a user simply being "stupid" doesn't in itself mean…
These sorts of customers are not, however, automatically "stupid customers". They are "difficult" or "non-profitable".
Yes. notalwaysright.com is funny, and I'm sure some are good customers. However it's a good 'ammo' against the idea that "The Customer is always right" (a corrollary is that businesses should care about losing any customers).
Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)
#83I won't judge This* without knowing the whole story. From experience I know that customers can get really retarded PITAs and waste all your time with nonsense.
Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)
#84There are better ways to handle one's customers than displayed by the CS employee here, but be that as it may: think long and hard before you get into the business of taking $3 a month from people who are demographically similar to Redditors.
> think long and hard before you get into the business of taking $3 a month from people who are demographically similar to Redditors
This is so true. Whenever I have a sale of one of my apps and lower the price to $1.99 or something in that range I'm tempted to disable my support mail account.
Cheap people tend to get a huge sense of entitlement when they pay you one or two bucks.
Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)
#85There are better ways to handle one's customers than displayed by the CS employee here, but be that as it may: think long and hard before you get into the business of taking $3 a month from people who are demographically similar to Redditors.
Redditors are demographically distinct from the average purchaser of web hosting? I'm suspicious.
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Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)
#86There are better ways to handle one's customers than displayed by the CS employee here, but be that as it may: think long and hard before you get into the business of taking $3 a month from people who are demographically similar to Redditors.
Similar to redditors as in educated, technical and young? Or is this some sort of reference to the liberal bent of the site's users? I really can't tell what exactly you're alluding to.
Judging from his other comments, I think he just means white, male, tech-enthusiast twenty-somethings without much money. Sell to underserved people with lots of money to throw around and a track record of spending it (instead of people you would hang out with) is the advice patio11 always gives.
Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)
#871.) Monthly web hosting invoice unpaid
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.
Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)
#88There are better ways to handle one's customers than displayed by the CS employee here, but be that as it may: think long and hard before you get into the business of taking $3 a month from people who are demographically similar to Redditors.
> think long and hard before you get into the business of taking $3 a month from people who are demographically similar to Redditors This is so true. Whenever I have a sale of one of my apps and lower the price to $1.99 or something in that range I'm tempted to disable my support mail account. Cheap people tend to get a huge sense of entitlement when they pay you one or two bucks.
To be fair they did buy it.
If you disable your support account then also write a fat bold and _short_ statement such as:
THIS IS PROVIDED WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY AND NO SUPPORT WILL BE GIVEN.
And don't hide that inside 1, 2 or 50 pages of text of course. Then it's all fine. If you don't, then support is going to be expected, no matter the price and that makes complete sense to me.
Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)
#89Pretty dumb to tweet "go fuck yourself" before you've got your data off their servers - given you've only just seen that they clearly take things personally and act like kids.
I had such a relation with a provider (not hosting, but anyway).
The guys were obviously "bad guys" you know. Being sarcastic and all, about issues that were their and not mine.
Anyhow, I played nice until I got everything, as you recommend. Once I did, I wrote that they had a very poor service etc.
They pasted my communications with them where i've been nice saying that didn't reflect it etc.
Moral of the story, you should do whatever you like, the outcome is hard to determine.
Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)
#90One of the hardest things when communicating with customers is not taking it personally. Don't take criticisms or complaints as personal attacks and above all else resist the temptation to try and "one-up" your customer. 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…
That's how it should be, however, it happens the other way around too:
* Company's person in contact with the customer insults the customer/make fun of him/etc (or even swear)
* customer responds politely that it's wrong and uncalled for
* Company respond another sarcastic comment or that it's "not insults" (even when its crystal clear) and that you're in that class of annoying customers
* customer gets real angry
bonus points: * company goes personally against the customer and tries to threaten him by all possible means
Sounds like a true story? Well yeah, it is. ;-)