Clients who rents a month

E

ExpandHost

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Do you get clients when they sign up for a month, then when it comes to paying they go overdue and just don't show again?

I had my first the other day.
 
Yup, you can get this from time to time.

It is not always something to do with the service or support, sometimes they just lack the ability to check emails, or struggle to get in touch with you.
More or less 'noobs'

It could even be a lack of funds, some people think they do not need to renew and it will just cancel, that is a bad part of the industry.

Just my 2 cents
 
ExpandHost said:
Of course the overdue emails get sent, and i even add within the emails if they are struggling to pay let us know.
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Indeed, but as I say, some think ignoring it is a way to cancel.

I usually drop them a call, I give it a few days and just cancel it, no time for it.
It is the way it goes, some people cancel properly, others don't.

It is a downside to selling services like hosting.
 
Send your notices, run your suspensions and then perform terminations. If you setup your invoicing system correctly, you'll never be providing services and not getting paid.

Here's how ours is setup;

Invoice sent 14 days prior to due date (usually the 17th or 18th of the month)
Invoice is due on the 1st
Credit cards run each day
Account suspended
Notices continue to send daily
Account terminated (1st of the following month)
 
some clients will even sign up with you and maybe pay the initial invoice then ignore the next invoice and so your system suspends, but you find the site still up so when you check whois you find they have changed hosts/namservers and then complain and be abusive towards you as your system still sends out invoices
 
There are a ton of reasons these folks sign up for one month and disappear. What gets me are those who leave and then attempt to sign up again in six or seven months. I've signed up one account three different times, but I talked with them throughout the entire process. Every case has to be evaluated on its own merits.
 
Steve-Hostirian said:
There are a ton of reasons these folks sign up for one month and disappear. What gets me are those who leave and then attempt to sign up again in six or seven months. I've signed up one account three different times, but I talked with them throughout the entire process. Every case has to be evaluated on its own merits.
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if a client signs up and then leaves, as i use WHMCS i will let the hosting account go through the suspend and then terminate. i then mark the clients account as fraud and leave the invoice as is (overdue) and then if this client tries to sign up again they system will not let them if they use the same details. i have had clients try using different IPS but thhhey use the same name and address, so i refuse to accept these until they pay the outstanding invoices
 
Steve-Hostirian said:
There are a ton of reasons these folks sign up for one month and disappear. What gets me are those who leave and then attempt to sign up again in six or seven months. I've signed up one account three different times, but I talked with them throughout the entire process. Every case has to be evaluated on its own merits.
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People have tried that with me, but they got a shock.

I tend to have a rule either way, that 3 months should be paid up front, we live from our businesses I have no time for people who wish to mess me about.

If they cannot give notice and have not done so several times, then they deserve to pay up front.
Some of them go mad but hey, they should learn rules. :crash:
 
kunnusingh said:
I don't know why they never use cancellation option or even they did not send a email for cancellation :crash:
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because most clients are unable to read. i had a client send these 2 messages yesterday 1 via support ticket to pre-sales and another via email.

please cancel my subscription to your servers as a reseller hosting my domaine is www.******.co.uk regards
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i would like to cancel my subscription to your server, very unreliable domaine www.********.co.uk fortunatly i did not host anyones website in there yet thank you
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server has been up 100% since he joined (less than 1 month) aprt from a few hours downtime when my server provider changed datacenters but the old serve3r was left up to minimize downtime ( infact we were told that their would be no downtime) all clients were kept in the loop on the progress frokm the time we wewre told that DCs were been changed. all clients that suffered the downtime were give a months free hosting.

our TOS actually state

Customers may cancel at any time. Cancellations MUST be requested through the cancellation form (from your client area under "My Services" look for server to be cancelled and then click on the page icon on the right and then scroll down the page and click Request Cancellation)
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this client has not cancelled this way, so as far as our system is concerned invoices will still be generated even though he has changed the nameserver for his domain.
 
Ah, I see - well, if it's just one month, could be a lot of reasons - a planned project that never happened, trying out several hosts to see which works best for them, stand by (parachute) account for someone having problems with current host etc.

Could be lots of reasons they don't renew. The best way to deal with it is to simply treat the non payment as a cancellation request.

Steve
 
Posilan said:
Ah, I see - well, if it's just one month, could be a lot of reasons - a planned project that never happened, trying out several hosts to see which works best for them, stand by (parachute) account for someone having problems with current host etc.

Could be lots of reasons they don't renew. The best way to deal with it is to simply treat the non payment as a cancellation request.

Steve
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how can you treat non payment as a cacellation request. we have a set out cancellation process. if a client follows this once the cron cancels the account and terminates the files from the server we mark the account closed and the client placed in the ex client group. if a cancellation request is not made any invoice remains active and after being unpaid the account goes through the suspend and then terminate process, we then mark the clients account as inactive and the client is placed in the fraud group with any invoice still marked unpaid
 
easyhostmedia said:
how can you treat non payment as a cacellation request. we have a set out cancellation process. if a client follows this once the cron cancels the account and terminates the files from the server we mark the account closed and the client placed in the ex client group. if a cancellation request is not made any invoice remains active and after being unpaid the account goes through the suspend and then terminate process, we then mark the clients account as inactive and the client is placed in the fraud group with any invoice still marked unpaid
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We use WHMCS (as I'm sure most of you do). We raise the renewal invoice 14 days before it's due. If payment is not made on the renewal day, the customer gets an email warning. If payment is still not made within the next 48 hours the account is suspended.

We don't use the auto terminate routine to prevent accidental deletion, but if a customer has not contacted us in the following week or so, it's likely the account will be deleted from the servers.

It's simply not worth the hassle of chasing a customer and causing bad feeling for £2 when their intentions may have been just to cancel the package anyway - and as all our self service hosting packages are paid in advance anyway it's not an issue.

Obviously if this was a longer term, reseller or annual customer we would look at it differently - but not a customer who signs up one month then doesn't pay 30 days later or respond to reminders/site suspension.

We would only mark a customer as "fraud" if it was actual fraud such as a charge back, using another persons details etc had taken place.

Steve
 
Posilan said:
We use WHMCS (as I'm sure most of you do). We raise the renewal invoice 14 days before it's due. If payment is not made on the renewal day, the customer gets an email warning. If payment is still not made within the next 48 hours the account is suspended.

We don't use the auto terminate routine to prevent accidental deletion, but if a customer has not contacted us in the following week or so, it's likely the account will be deleted from the servers.

It's simply not worth the hassle of chasing a customer and causing bad feeling for £2 when their intentions may have been just to cancel the package anyway - and as all our self service hosting packages are paid in advance anyway it's not an issue.

Obviously if this was a longer term, reseller or annual customer we would look at it differently - but not a customer who signs up one month then doesn't pay 30 days later or respond to reminders/site suspension.

We would only mark a customer as "fraud" if it was actual fraud such as a charge back, using another persons details etc had taken place.

Steve
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we have had clients who sign up and maybe with use a couple of months and then they ignore invoices etc. so their account gets terminated and then several weeks later they sign up again and do the same thing, so now if a client does this and not use our cancel process then we mark them under the fraud group.
we too send invoices 14 days before due, and from this invoice being sent to account termination is 28 days, which is plenty of time for either the invoice to be paid or the client to contact us saying they will be late paying. if a client contacts us we will do what we can to help them
 
petergm said:
We used to get those a while back. I would recomend looking at your WHMCS settings to avoid this.
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no matter what your WHMCS settings are, if a client signs up and passed the fraud check and pays the initial invoice then the order at this point is just a normal approved order, nothing in your settings can force them to pay the net invoice. as I stated from the time the invoice is sent to the account being terminated is 28 days, so if someone cannot pay their invoice in a period of 28 days i doubt they would pay anyway.
once an account is terminated and if they have outstanding invoices then we will issue a letter before action to the client, some will pay once receiving this and other dont, if they dont pay an LBA we have it stated the debt will go to collection, which normally we dont go this far and write off the debt, only once did we take this all the way to CCJ and this was due to a client abusing/threatening us because we termainted his account for non payment. in the end his £30 overdue invoice cost him with all legal/court costs £225 which he paid before the court issued a warrant against him
 
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