Cancellation Requests

[Rado_Ch]

Well it is the clients responsibility to take regular backups of their sites. We may take daily backups for our own security and allow clients to pay a £2 a month fee so they can request a copy or a restore of their site, if they dont take this option then they are charged £15 for a copy or restore, but if an account is terminated then they lose the rights to a copy of any backup ( this is in our TOS), if they are terminated for non payment then they can request a copy upto 7 days after termination ( this is how long it will remain on backup server) but only if they pay the outstanding invoice along with a £15 fee.
We cannot keep backups on the backup server forever thinking a terminated client will ask for their site files.

Of course not, I wasn't suggesting so
I am just commenting on the difference between fully terminating the account on day 10-15, instead of doing so after day 30. After all, even tho most customers think of really fairytale reasons about why they were late to pay, they do sometimes face extreme cases, when its impossible for them to get into contact for some time.

I am all about having clear procedures that all should follow and that protect the company, but when dealing with clients on a daily basis you HAVE TO be flexible. You can make an exception that takes 5 minutes from your time, or spare a small fee here and there, but that can often win you a loyal and happy friend for years to come. I've had such a case with a leaving customer a couple of years ago, where we took a little time to find an old backup and provided it for free to a leaving customers (even though our TOS stated a fee). The guy was so happy that in the next year he recommended our services to 4-5 of his friends. At the end we still gave the backup at a nice profit :rolleyes2

 

[easyhostmedia]

Of course not, I wasn't suggesting so
I am just commenting on the difference between fully terminating the account on day 10-15, instead of doing so after day 30. After all, even tho most customers think of really fairytale reasons about why they were late to pay, they do sometimes face extreme cases, when its impossible for them to get into contact for some time.

I am all about having clear procedures that all should follow and that protect the company, but when dealing with clients on a daily basis you HAVE TO be flexible. You can make an exception that takes 5 minutes from your time, or spare a small fee here and there, but that can often win you a loyal and happy friend for years to come. I've had such a case with a leaving customer a couple of years ago, where we took a little time to find an old backup and provided it for free to a leaving customers (even though our TOS stated a fee). The guy was so happy that in the next year he recommended our services to 4-5 of his friends. At the end we still gave the backup at a nice profit :rolleyes2

our backups are carried out daily and weekly using cpremote, initially this is set as default that as soon as an account was terminated then the backup was automatically terminated from the backup server, but we had this changed to 7 days after an account is terminated the backup is removed from the backup server.
Yes with late fees we will waive in most cases if we get a plausible reason, but for backups then the fee stands and we have never had any issue asking for this and client not paying this, as we will go beyond our scope with support, so client appreciate the help and support we provide.
as a one man band i need sleep, but if a client needs help i will stay up until it is sorted.

 

[Alex - A2 Hosting]

Its acutely better like that. Leaving an account 30 days sometime takes a toll on the server usage

Maybe better for an oversold / old hardware server provider. A suspended page would really only take up some disk space, nothing intensive so yes, it may be better for you (the hosting provider) to clear out the unused disk space more quickly but it is not good for the client. And 14 days is half the average in this industry.

 

[easyhostmedia]

A suspended page would really only take up some disk space, nothing intensive so yes,

But you wont just have a suspended page, you will still have all the sites files on the server and the same amount of traffic going to the site.

I think our 28 days from initial invoice being sent to the account being terminated is long enough for any client to either pay or make contact.

 

[ExeterWeb]

Why don't you go with a billing system? Have you previously used one finding without works better for your needs?

Just thinking for the future, if you ever decide to go online and really start to push your company the growing sales might become difficult to manage as you do everything manually. If that was the case, eventually you may need to opt for a billing system which then makes things even more of a mess as you have clients that need to be imported in, records that need to be imported etc

Not sure we'd manage without an automated billing system in place as we have thousands of clients.

We dont have a billing system for our main brand because we do everything by hand, these customers are not just the £10 a month kind of customers, there more like £1000 a year...

We also, have hundreds of customers, but we have things working very well, and have no need for this...

However, our other brands do you one...