Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com) • Hacker News Board

Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)

#101

Post by mtogo » Tue, Aug 16, 2011, 2:47 PM UTC

Isofarro wrote: post #87

1.) 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…

Yeah, uh, no. Read the Reddit comments and this*'s twitter stream. This is the kind of support they provide.

Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)

#102

Post by davidandgoliath » Tue, Aug 16, 2011, 2:50 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #36

boriskourt: "That's not cool. Suspending a friends account because of a minor PayPal dispute? When did you get into doing that?" 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 provi…

The account was paid up until February of '12, it was new services that had the payment reversed by Paypal. e.g. domain names or something to that effect that they had just bought.

Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)

#103

Post by patio11 » Tue, Aug 16, 2011, 2:52 PM UTC

leon_ wrote: post #84

patio11 wrote: post #52

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.

> 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.

I call them pathological customers, and they're drawn like flies to low prices. See hnsearch.com [pathological customers] for more on the subject.

Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)

#104

Post by mtogo » Tue, Aug 16, 2011, 2:55 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #36

boriskourt: "That's not cool. Suspending a friends account because of a minor PayPal dispute? When did you get into doing that?" 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 provi…

This* terminated his account (that was paid and in good standing!) and deleted all his data, including databases for calling them out on twitter. Seriously. That's just insane.

If you still think that this* is somehow justified in any way, read their twitter feed. This isn't the only time a customer has been treated like crap by this*.

Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)

#105

Post by berfarah » Tue, Aug 16, 2011, 3:01 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #78

TLDR, someone told a hosting company to fuck themselves on Twitter, so the hosting company canceled their hosting? 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…

Let me be clear (customer here) I told him to go fuck himself AFTER he cancelled not only my account, but that of my friend's. And he did this on a few tweets, based on our Twitter handles - had we been using pseudonyms, that could have been a whole different can of worms.

Yes, I got really riled up. Yes, I'm not free from blame. It's kind of ridiculous to delete someone's account based on a personal dispute with no prior notice.

Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)

#106

Post by pavel_lishin » Tue, Aug 16, 2011, 3:02 PM UTC

Isofarro wrote: post #87

1.) 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…

> That sort of approach is recommended by things like The 4-hour work week, firing your worst customers.

Okay - but removing all of his backups? That's just petty and vindictive. There is zero justification for that.

Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)

#107

Post by berfarah » Tue, Aug 16, 2011, 3:10 PM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #66

berfarah wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey - the customer in question here. I'll admit, it was really stupid, definitely a mistake - I was really angry. My friend had just told me my site was down, and I got an email saying my account had been terminated, and then to top it off, a tweet saying "good luck finding your next hosting provider". The "go fuck yourself" was a kneejerk reaction to a guy clearly enjoying his powertrip.

Tell your friend if it's on liquidweb shared hosting then there are four levels of backups with rotations on an external drive array. The data is definitely there and a reseller can get it restored within an hour for free - if they are motivated of course. If they can prove ownership of the content to liquidweb maybe they can do an end-run around the reseller.

Thanks, I'm looking into that.

Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)

#108

Post by pavel_lishin » Tue, Aug 16, 2011, 3:16 PM UTC

samarudge wrote: post #45

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there was a valid reason for not being able to pay the bills (I.E. PayPal having a problem) // It's an excuse, but it's not payment. Continuation of the contract would presumably require payment. A clients inability to pay ends their right to receive service. Sure a larger company can usually manage to give grace in such situations (but often won't) but small businesses, as this appears to be, seem to suffer a lot…

I don't think that's the issue, the issue was that they suspended accounts and sites that had already been payed for , and the only payment method the company offers is PayPal so there was no reasonable way for the customer to pay the outstanding ballance immediately (About $5 from the looks of it). He also offered proof that the small outstanding ballance would be payed within a couple of days. Yes if it was +$100 m…

I think cancelling the paid account is bad, but not disastrous. Deleting all of his backups, however, is petty at best, criminal at worst.

Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)

#109

Post by cwilson » Tue, Aug 16, 2011, 3:21 PM UTC

This is why, as a startup or small business, it's crucial to have that guy/gal on your team who is just superb at support and dealing with customers.

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.

Re: Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)

#110

Post by hollerith » Tue, Aug 16, 2011, 3:24 PM UTC

hyperbovine wrote: post #75

patio11 wrote: post #52

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.

Redditors are demographically distinct from the average purchaser of web hosting? I'm suspicious.

Grandparent (patio11) has not implied they were. Are you assuming that selling web hosting services for $3 a month must be a satisfactory business model?