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Stay away from This* (thiswebhost.com)

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

#131

Post by dendory »

samarudge wrote: post #34
jarin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jules is also listed as the company owner on the reviews: http://www.webhostingreviews.com/thiswebhost-reviews.htm And is the registrant of the domain name (and the only contact).

WhoIs lookup shows him as the domain owner Registrant Contact: ThisWebHost Jules Robinson () Fax: South Building Upper Farm Basingstoke, HAMPSHIRE RG23 8PE GB Administrative Contact: ThisWebHost Jules Robinson (domains@thiswebhost.com) +1.5555555555 Fax +1.5555555555 South Building Upper Farm Basingstoke, HAMPSHIRE RG23 8PE GB Technical Contact: ThisWebHost Jules Robinson (domains@thiswebhost.com) +1.5555555555 Fax +…

It's against the rules to use false info so feel free to email contact@namecheap.com with that little bit of info.

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

#132

Post by burgerbrain »

jdelsman wrote: post #13
tormentor wrote: post #7

You better believe everyone will hear about this and drop them. Very unprofessional for a grown man to act like a child.

You are assuming he's a grown man.

Even more unprofessional to allow a child to do your customer service, so assuming he's a grown man is really giving them the benefit of the doubt now isn't it?

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

#134

Post by tjogin »

jbooth wrote: post #121
patio11 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, and feel free to fire your pathological customers. But what they did was close this guy's account and delete his backups without warning. It seems they then did the same to his friend for shooting his mouth off on twitter. That's beyond "handled poorly", that's unprofessional and unethical.

It wasn't awesome. But we're talking about a $3/month host here, is that something you should rely on for backups, even before your account is terminated? If the abusive customer didn't keep a local copy, well, now he's probably learnt to keep a local copy.

Having said that, if you choose to run a low cost hosting service, you should know that your customers are going to be greedy entitled bitches, and you should deal with that fact in a professional matter. Otherwise, just get into some other line of business.

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

#135

Post by berfarah »

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.

Let's just be fair here for a second: I was paying for maybe a 16th of what you would get on Mediatemple for half the price.

But I'm taking people's advice - I will now look into paying over $10-15 per month - I don't want to risk something like this again.

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

#136

Post by pbhjpbhj »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #108
samarudge wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If this is how things went down I see just about equal fault on both sides (contracts aside, I'd guess suspension of all accounts is in the "if you don't pay" part of the contract if not then there's something there for sure).

When the accounts were suspended for non payment instead of telling the host to "fuck off" they could have attempted to arrange an alternate payment method. If they were going to antagonise their former host (I say former as the obligation to host the data presumably ended on non-payment) then they could have used their CP, it seems, to download backups - then they could profane their host for wanting payment in return for service happy in the knowledge they were untouchable.

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

#137

Post by pavel_lishin »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #136
pavel_lishin wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If this is how things went down I see just about equal fault on both sides (contracts aside, I'd guess suspension of all accounts is in the "if you don't pay" part of the contract if not then there's something there for sure). When the accounts were suspended for non payment instead of telling the host to "fuck off" they could have attempted to arrange an alternate payment method. If they were going to antagonise the…

As I understand it, there are two people here. Guy[a] didn't pay, and had his account shut down. Fine. Guy[b], who is Guy[a]'s friend, simply bitched them out on twitter, and lost his account - along with ALL of his backups - in the process.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I were Guy[b], I'd consider googling lawyers.

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

#138

Post by jbooth »

tjogin wrote: post #134
jbooth wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and feel free to fire your pathological customers. But what they did was close this guy's account and delete his backups without warning. It seems they then did the same to his friend for shooting his mouth off on twitter. That's beyond "handled poorly", that's unprofessional and unethical.

It wasn't awesome. But we're talking about a $3/month host here, is that something you should rely on for backups, even before your account is terminated? If the abusive customer didn't keep a local copy, well, now he's probably learnt to keep a local copy. Having said that, if you choose to run a low cost hosting service, you should know that your customers are going to be greedy entitled bitches, and you should dea…

Again, it's worse than "not awesome", it's unprofessional and unethical.

If you commit to provide a service, whether you're charging $1 or $100k per month, there are some minimum standards of behavior you should hold yourself to. This isn't "you get what you pay for" because the host went down. Maliciously deleting backups that you're supposedly responsible for, over a twitter slapfight, is unethical. No matter what.

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

#139

Post by drivingmenuts »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #106
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.

If you're no longer in a business relationship with the customer, there is no need to retain backups, unless contractually specified.

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

#140

Post by patio11 »

jbooth wrote: post #121
patio11 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, and feel free to fire your pathological customers. But what they did was close this guy's account and delete his backups without warning. It seems they then did the same to his friend for shooting his mouth off on twitter. That's beyond "handled poorly", that's unprofessional and unethical.

I don't think many people on HN are at risk of cursing their customers and deleting their data, but many people are repeatedly at risk of undercharging, so that's where I focused my comments. I think "Don't curse at your customers, even if it would be very satisfying giving how much of a raging git they are being" pretty much goes without saying.
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