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Moving On...

thiswebhost.com

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Re: Moving On...

#41
post #28

Again: enough. These people do not matter. We can stop wasting time talking about them. The travails of people who run into payment problems over $5 web hosting accounts do not constitute "Hacker News". This is a fake controversy. We do not need to evaluate what either side says; neither side matters. Flagged.

So because you have the opinion it's faked, you're going to tell the rest of us how we should react and what we find interesting? Thanks, but I'll make my own choice.

I don't think it's faked. I think it's a waste of our time. I think this is an unprofessional tin-can web host grappling with an unprofessional penny-ante web site making an amount of noise completely out of proportion to their relevance. Like I said earlier, the only thing any of us have to learn from these people is: "don't be these people".

Re: Moving On...

#42

1. Are there seriously smiley faces in this serious post defending your company? 2. From what I can understand, they suspended multiple accounts, one of which was paid in full. The paid in full account's owner cursed out the company on twitter. I assume everyone will agree with this statement, but I'll state it anyway: You can't cancel valid accounts! If the account is paid in full, and assuming the account isn't bei…

> I assume everyone will agree with this statement, but I'll state it anyway: You can't cancel valid accounts! If the account is paid in full, and assuming the account isn't being used for nefarious purposes, you cannot cancel valid accounts for any reason.

I'll agree with that, but with qualifications. Certainly you don't just cut off somebody's service. But there are pathological clients who aren't worth keeping on. I don't want to go into details, but I've personally seen one particular case, at a hosting company I once worked for, where it was no longer worth the time and aggravation to keep a certain customer, despite their (as far as I knew) flawless payment record.. We gave them a month to find another service provider, but there was no way we would allow them to remain a customer after that.

As a business, you have the right to deny service to anyone for any reason, aside from certain protected classes such as race and sex. Unless you're broke, you can and should exercise this right to whatever extent it benefits your business. And even if you're broke, sometimes you should consider it.

Re: Moving On...

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TL;DR: I deleted all your backups over one swear word. Now I'm justifying it because profanity equals abuse.

> profanity equals abuse which is illegal under an internet law I just made up. You could go to jail .

I'd make a comment about backtracing, but instead--

I don't agree with email-bombing the company with profanity. I do agree with email-bombing the company with well-worded emails about how you're canceling your service over this and/or not planning on doing business with them.

Re: Moving On...

#44

This blog post was preceded by a different post by Jules. That post was deleted and this post by Doug took it's place instead. Here's the google cache link of the deleted post: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=ca... Content of the deleted post: The Reddit Incident POSTED BY Jules ON August 16, 2011 AT 4:45 pm UNDER Uncategorized I’m sure you may have heard about it by now, and if not I’m sure you…

Why do people (and in this case a "technical" person) think they can delete anything after they post it?

Re: Moving On...

#45
Get over the issue will you! What's done is done, "sh#t happens"..

I think the company has taken appropriate steps and I for one would like them NOT to fire (but give him a strike on top of what they already have done) the poor nerd why got so frustrated that he used a totally inappropriate tone with clients.

Re: Moving On...

#46

1. Are there seriously smiley faces in this serious post defending your company? 2. From what I can understand, they suspended multiple accounts, one of which was paid in full. The paid in full account's owner cursed out the company on twitter. I assume everyone will agree with this statement, but I'll state it anyway: You can't cancel valid accounts! If the account is paid in full, and assuming the account isn't bei…

> I assume everyone will agree with this statement, but I'll state it anyway: You can't cancel valid accounts! If the account is paid in full, and assuming the account isn't being used for nefarious purposes, you cannot cancel valid accounts for any reason. I'll agree with that, but with qualifications. Certainly you don't just cut off somebody's service. But there are pathological clients who aren't worth keeping on…

I understand 100%, as I'm a small shop and I turn away bad clients all the time. But if you're not going to provide the service, you return the money, and you _definately don't delete the backups_!

What This* did is terminate the account, pocket the money, and delete the backups. Not only is that unprofessional, it's _illegal_. If it weren't it would give a legal defense to every person charged with fraud ("we just decided to terminate the business relationship without a refund").

Re: Moving On...

#47
As the Co-founder of a statup that has dealt directly with situations like this in the past, I don't see much wrong with how the situation was handled.

You wouldn't expect a restaurant owner to put up with a rude and insulting customer being a dick to restaurant staff, so why should any other service have to put up with it?

Some customers just aren't worth the hassle they put out PERIOD. I don't give a shit if you're willing to pay me $9.99 a month, if you purposely go out of your way to insult myself or a member of my team, you don't gain the benefit of using our product, end of story.

* Edit * - Just to clarify, I don't see the need for them deleting the previous blog post, if you're going to respond to something in public, you should probably stand behind what you are saying before pushing publish.

Re: Moving On...

#48
post #37
post #23

I would like to remind people that contacting us with abusive e-mail messages is in fact illegal and we will be taking the appropriate steps to forward these messages and information gathered to both the relevant ISP’s and law enforcement agencies. Sadly it is the people who post such messages that are causing me to disable comments on this blog post. Having to disable comments on your conciliatory blog post is a sig…

I can't agree here. Nobody owes the world comments, and most particularly they do not owe the Reddit hivemind the opportunity for a good one-minute hate.

I agree that nobody owes the world comments but the point of a conciliatory blog post is to make people stop hating you. If they're still hating you to the point where you've had to turn off comments then your post isn't doing its job properly.

(I also agree with your earlier post that if you're selling web hosting for $3/month you'll have to deal with quite a few difficult customers. Often the people who pay the least are the hardest to deal with.)

Re: Moving On...

#49
It's amazing to me how incompetent otherwise sophisticated companies are at handling public relations. It's not rocket science, and it's not about who's right.

This post comes off as smug, half-hearted, and insulting. Why are they joking and making light of the technical director's unprofessional conduct? Why are they trying to parse how the customer's twitter comeback wasn't justified? Why are they separating the latter part of the post as the "more serious note," thus implying the first half isn't serious? This is serious for the company, whether they know it or not.

After reading this post, I come away thinking the company doesn't take this situation seriously, they don't take their customers seriously, and they wouldn't handle my problems seriously if I were a customer. They should have 1) Made a direct, unmitigated apology; 2) Clarified what their company stands for regarding terminating accounts with specific policy improvements, not a promise to review the policy; 3) Left the excuses for Jules out of it; 4) Left out the legal threats to people e-mailing the company (the blog post isn't about the company's problems, it's about the customers' problems); 5) Titled it "An Apology" or "A New Direction" or basically anything besides "Moving On..." which sounds like a command being issued in conjunction with an exaggerated eye roll.

Why don't these firms just hire a pr/crisis consultant to help? If they suspect the crisis could cost the company more than a few thousand dollars if not handled correctly, it's a no-brainer. The best-case scenario is that they lose a few thousand dollars improving their public image; the alternative could be losing a chunk of their user base.

Re: Moving On...

#50
post #28

Again: enough. These people do not matter. We can stop wasting time talking about them. The travails of people who run into payment problems over $5 web hosting accounts do not constitute "Hacker News". This is a fake controversy. We do not need to evaluate what either side says; neither side matters. Flagged.

I agree. Some idiots were idiots on the Internet. Why is this interesting to hackers?
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