Account Suspended?

py2006

Hi all,

I recently came back home from being abroad for a few weeks. There was several emails in my account from my hosting provider saying that my credit card details were out of date.

I went to check my site and I was horrified to see that they left a statement on my site saying:

"This account has been suspended for non-payment"

While they are possibly right to suspend the account are they right to publicly name and shame me like that? Is this not poor customer relations? Surely this is a private issue between ourselves.

I think I should cancel my account with these people. What do you thnk?

Thanks

nikimere

I'm sure they are perfectly within their rights to say what they did, however it's not the type of company i'd like to deal with if that's the way they do business.
Why don't you name and shame them too

seamus

Bad form maybe, but I can't see anything wrong with it - they haven't defamed you because the non-payment is the truth and can be proven.

Many of the Control Panel systems will come with default system messages like this one, so it's possible that they just never reviewed the system messages (or aren't able to change them) - i.e. nobody specifically logged into your account and put that message up just to piss you off.

Explain your story to them, and mention (nicely but firmly) that you absolutely didn't appreciate that message being shown to your customers. The company may be horrified about the message and might offer you a discount.

py2006

Yea I sent them an email saying how dissapointed I was to see that statement was left on my site and that I was strongly considering cancelling my account.

I did acknowledge that I agreed the account should be suspended but I didn't get notice of this.

CoNfOuNd

When I do have to suspend a customers account I'd generally just say "This account has been suspended. Please contact customer support."

I'd avoid putting any reason as to why it has been suspended, but I still get customers angry that I've suspended their account even if they haven't paid.

I wouldn't personally leave the host if everything else has been perfect. I would just provide feedback to them saying you are not happy.

PixelTrawler

Disgraceful really.

If, and a big if - they made repeated attempts to get in touch and were absolutely sure you were not making payments, then maybe. And then only as a last straw. And even then I wouldnt agree with it!

They really should consider how an action on their part could impact other peoples business, especially since mistakes happen (as seems to be the case here). Imagine how it looks to your audience.

I would consider it a gross breach of privacy and is a childish attempt to embarrass people into payment. It would be like ESB printing a list of those with overdue bills. Sure, the message might be a system message and a default but I would hazard a guess the display of the message and the text of it in this case is designed to humiliate customers into payment.

Leave them.

I wouldn't name them here though, you'd only be going down to their level.
I would make it very clear to this company though when you leave, why you are leaving.

Note: since you seem to have resolved your issue I hope they apologiesed for the message displayed, and did they mention they would prevent it being displayed in future - if not, I suspect it wasnt displayed "by accident" or was just an unchanged system message

py2006

Joebloggs4817 wrote:

Disgraceful really.

If, and a big if - they made repeated attempts to get in touch and were absolutely sure you were not making payments, then maybe. And then only as a last straw. And even then I wouldnt agree with it!

They really should consider how an action on their part could impact other peoples business, especially since mistakes happen (as seems to be the case here). Imagine how it looks to your audience.

I would consider it a gross breach of privacy and is a childish attempt to embarrass people into payment. It would be like ESB printing a list of those with overdue bills. Sure, the message might be a system message and a default but I would hazard a guess the display of the message and the text of it in this case is designed to humiliate customers into payment.

Leave them.

I wouldn't name them here though, you'd only be going down to their level.
I would make it very clear to this company though when you leave, why you are leaving.

Note: since you seem to have resolved your issue I hope they apologiesed for the message displayed, and did they mention they would prevent it being displayed in future - if not, I suspect it wasnt displayed "by accident" or was just an unchanged system message

Well I have yet to get a response from them. If I don't get a positive response I will change hosts. Probably to an Irish one.

Would they release my domain to me if I cancelled my account?

steve-hosting36

We, for example, simply state 'suspended' on the account, and that's after daily email warnings for 14 days (past the payment emails).

Citing the suspension reason is breach of privacy and etiquette if not quite a legal issue.

As for the domain name, as long as you are the admin-c on the domain whois, then you should be able to do what you want with it.

ChicoMendez

i have been dealing with a client for about 3 years now - which is abotu to come to an end thank god! and i did the exact same to them 2 days ago

why - they have repeatedly refused to pay invoices on time and are regularly 8 months late - i told them i was cutting the site on aug 15th and they did not even have the curtosy to reply - however when i have thier site down (tens of thousands of hits per week) with ' this company does not pay thier invoices '- it does not take them long to get the finger out !

im not saying it was right for your provider to cut your services but in certain circumstances its the only way to go!

py2006

ChicoMendez wrote:

i have been dealing with a client for about 3 years now - which is abotu to come to an end thank god! and i did the exact same to them 2 days ago

why - they have repeatedly refused to pay invoices on time and are regularly 8 months late - i told them i was cutting the site on aug 15th and they did not even have the curtosy to reply - however when i have thier site down (tens of thousands of hits per week) with ' this company does not pay thier invoices '- it does not take them long to get the finger out !

im not saying it was right for your provider to cut your services but in certain circumstances its the only way to go!

I can understand that and as I said I agree with my account being temporarily suspended but I just took offense to this. It suggests I am a chancer or something.

I had the credit card out in front of me ready to renew this morning but I just happened to check my site and I was shocked.

py2006

steve-hosting36 wrote:

As for the domain name, as long as you are the admin-c on the domain whois, then you should be able to do what you want with it.

Well the domain came free with the hosting plan so I could be caught out there.

PixelTrawler

steve-hosting36 wrote:

We, for example, simply state 'suspended' on the account, and that's after daily email warnings for 14 days (past the payment emails).

Citing the suspension reason is breach of privacy and etiquette if not quite a legal issue.

As for the domain name, as long as you are the admin-c on the domain whois, then you should be able to do what you want with it.

Thats the proper way to do it, good stuff.

WeeDiddly

If they're anyways a decent host,they'll give you control of the domain name should you decide to move host. and if they do ring you to complain, then you can leave feedback to them about how they embarrassed you.

If I had hosting, and I was a professional, with my portfolio or something that important on the site.. something like "Payment not received", basically "Our client appears to be bankrupt, or else is a fraud, now we're shaming them" really does not help your vital reputation.

If it was a cycling club like what I'm doing atm, at least you could say that the club doesn't have money to throw away, and is not able to afford their website, but I feel that it's disgraceful.

py2006

I have yet to get a response from these people!!

eoinhealy

I use a company called webstorm.ie to buy all my domain names and they host some of them. They are fantastic, if you have any problems at all you can call them and they are quite nice on the phone. They give you complete control over your domain name and hosting. I reckon they are that good I have bought 6 domain names through them. There hosting package is pretty cool, it has this deadly site builder program built into it that is possibly the easiest in the world to use.

Jeasus!, sounds like im advertising for them... Suppose you could call it a good reference.

Chow for Now

steve-hosting36

You sure it's www.webstorm.ie, as they're down at the moment?

CoNfOuNd

Stephen > They aren't just down. They aren't registered!

CoNfOuNd

Correction : it's stormweb.ie

AARRRGH

webstorm.ie sounds nicer than stormweb.ie

eoinhealy

steve-hosting36 wrote: »

You sure it's www.webstorm.ie, as they're down at the moment?

Sorry about that, stormweb is the company.

I didnt realise a silly misspell could cause such a riot. LoL

ethernet

py2006 wrote: »

Hi all,

I recently came back home from being abroad for a few weeks. There was several emails in my account from my hosting provider saying that my credit card details were out of date.

I went to check my site and I was horrified to see that they left a statement on my site saying:

"This account has been suspended for non-payment"

While they are possibly right to suspend the account are they right to publicly name and shame me like that? Is this not poor customer relations? Surely this is a private issue between ourselves.

I think I should cancel my account with these people. What do you thnk?

Thanks

Hope this makes you feel better. PC World's Irish site has been suspended too, or so it would appear: http://www.pcworld.ie/error.shtml

miju

so has halfords.ie

Ziycon

ethernet wrote: »

Hope this makes you feel better. PC World's Irish site has been suspended too, or so it would appear: http://www.pcworld.ie/error.shtml

All the DSG sites have been suspended!

mneylon

miju wrote: »

so has halfords.ie

That's been like that for a couple of months now

miju

yeah i know, makes you wonder why as they lost about €300 of sales from me last month cos I couldnt browse their wares on the site

Seth Brundle

Im surprised that BOLLEAUX.COM who I suspect are related to dreamhost (Halfords host) is selling Halfords related domain names. I wonder if Halfords are aware.
http://bolleaux.com/domains/for_sale/

the_syco

py2006 wrote: »

I went to check my site and I was horrified to see that they left a statement on my site saying:

"This account has been suspended for non-payment"

To me, that's saying "our service works, the page is not down, the owner just owes us monies", to be honest.

seamus

In fairness, even "Account Suspended" says all those things. There is nothing to be gained by including the "non-payment" bit except to embarrass your customer.

Seth Brundle

(thread resurrected from the dead)

Does anyone know exactly what the legal situation with this is? (I'm not looking for legal advice).

A client of mine who repeatedly would not make any attempt to pay their bill for hosting & domain renewal had the site pulled and a line similar to the one the OP got put up instead (1st invoice sent in Feb IIRC).

Email arrived today demanding an apology, €1200 per day for the "injurious and slanderous description" (honestly the line on the site is like the OPS) and suggesting that a claim for damages will be made.

Now whilst their demands are farcical (they can go and *****) especially as the domain and hosting are both in my name, I'm curious to know how far can someone go before it does become a legal issue?
What do you guys do when someone refuses to cough up?

CoNfOuNd

Our services are pre-pay, so if someone refuses to pay, they don't get any services in the first place. If they fail to renew, we'll try to contact them, but it's not always possible.

I'd love to know where the client creates the €1200 figure from.

Did they make payments in previous years? Did they agree to T&Cs when they signed up?

jhegarty

kbannon wrote: »

"injurious and slanderous description" ?

If it's true it can't be slanderous... but I would be 99% it's a breach of data protection act to publish that someone has not paid their bill...