wacky stories from the hosting business

[Moondancer]

Sometimes you come across people and customers who make you laugh, especially if you have been in this biz for a few years. This last week we have had "one of those".

We suspended a nonpaying customer's site after being three months overdue (we are little lenient in this regard if they pay for a year at a time, not quite so lenient with monthly payers). Right after it was suspended, we get a call from the customer's husband about her site. So I take him through the payment process and re-enable the site. It's a small site with little to no traffic so a few hours uptime wouldn't kill us, you know. After 8 hours of still no payment, I suspended the site again.

The next day, the site owner calls about her site, which had been turned over to the account department for the 3 months of nonpayment where she was told that she would need to pay the 3 months arrears before her site would be accessible again. She later emailed that her husband would be looking elsewhere for hosting services for her... which to us is no problem because we are a business and nonpaying customers don't pay our bills.

Okay, so what, right?

Today, we get an order for a new site, paid for the year. The new site's owner is the previous customer's husband who was in charge of her site when it was up on our servers. I recognized the name because of having dealt with them for the last week. However, the domain name is not the same one that was deleted, nor is her name anywhere on the account.

 

[jojoyohan]

LOL. Do you use paypal?

 

[David G]

That is how it is when you deal with the public. We had even odder things happen many times involving different businesses.

I recall a U.S. hostiing customer who complained bitterly that the hosting was a few $ more a month than someone else advertised so she switched the hosting and transferred the 2 domains to MelbourneIT.com in Australia and went from $9 yr to $35 yr to renew the names but could care less about the extra domain costs when that was discussed. Sometimes I think most of the public are idiots.

 

[jojoyohan]

Wow. There are pleanty of idiots on the internet today.

 

[Moondancer]

LOL. Do you use paypal?

It's one of the payment processors we use.

"Sometimes I think most of the public are idiots."

Well, certainly not thinking clearly I would say. I don't mind helping people out when they don't know a lot, even if it's not something strictly dealing hosting, hosting accounts, and so forth.

 

[David G]

It's one of the payment processors we use.

"Sometimes I think most of the public are idiots."

Well, certainly not thinking clearly I would say. I don't mind helping people out when they don't know a lot, even if it's not something strictly dealing hosting, hosting accounts, and so forth.

Thanks, a much more diplomatic way to say it.

Idiots happens to be one of my favorite words, unfortunately.

 

[muzie]

It's one of the payment processors we use.

"Sometimes I think most of the public are idiots."

Well, certainly not thinking clearly I would say. I don't mind helping people out when they don't know a lot, even if it's not something strictly dealing hosting, hosting accounts, and so forth.

I agree with the not thinking clearly part which I believe at times makes people act idiotic. I don't mind helping my clients either but sometimes it really depends on their attitude and frame of mind as to how far I'm willing to go that extra mile for them.

 

[Moondancer]

I agree with the not thinking clearly part which I believe at times makes people act idiotic. I don't mind helping my clients either but sometimes it really depends on their attitude and frame of mind as to how far I'm willing to go that extra mile for them.

You said it there... in our early days, we had a customer who threatened legal action against us because his webmaster (not us) didn't and couldn't get his shopping cart working on his site.

 

[Steen]

we had a customer who threatened legal action against us

I got the same over a (then) $5 product.

 

[muzie]

I got the same over a (then) $5 product.

We are starting to talk about Hendricksons 3rd and 4th laws in his excellent treatise on Hosting, Domain Names, the Internet and Thermodynamic Combustability in End Users ©

The 3rd law states that you will rarely, if ever, be bothered by your business clients that purchase a $50 a month services from you.

The 4th law states that the more $5 a month products you sell the more your phone will ring and email boxes fill up. It is generally inversally proportional too. In other words it usually takes 10 times more effort, mail and calls with the $5 ones then the $50.

Now I'm really laughing as I remember horror stories from the past! Dont you just love the ones that type in all capital letters when they complain or ask questions?! That always makes me respond quickly (sarcasm).

My next favorite is the “your company caused us to loose $x,xxx today because of (fill in the blank)” You go to their 1 page site and the Web master $29.95 ebook product they are trying to resell and you start to wonder if you are in the right line of work yourself!! $x,xxx lost in the 35 seconds we were down for a reboot? Sign me up.

 

[Vivvy]

oh I've got lots of good idiot client stories...

i've got one client who decided they wanted to maintain their site on their own ... okay no problem, he was a pain anyway needing lots of changes often, and I charge a lump sum annual maintenance fee, not an hourly fee, so he was more than using his $$'s worth.

So now, instead of calling me daily to change things on his site, he calls me daily to tell him how to change things on his site. My favorite was on my message machine recently... refering to the title flash component "Viv, could you call and walk me through changing this? I've got about 30 minutes free time and want to make this look totally different"

It was all I could do not to say... Yeah.. sure.. i can teach you flash in 30 minutes, even though you have no flash software... can't everyone?

Vivvy

 

[Anthony Ng]

I also had a hosting/design/maintenance client who made me laugh. He wanted me to use some pictures he grabbed (a.k.a. stole) from the Internet, by telling me that:

a) one of them showed a certain equipment of theirs when I later found out from Google image that it was actually taken from his one of competitors;

b) another one is a "free" picture when it CLEARLY shows a watermark on it (and when I checked that URL out, that website explicitly asked for a fee to use their pictures);

c) now the best part: it's "okay" to use *any* picture "as long as you made some changes"! Can you believe it?

 

[Vivvy]

oh so sad but i can believe it...

how about the client that has me create 35 email accounts but the stats clearly show 30 of them have never been used... or the one that wants a dozen different email accounts, all with the same password (based on the domain name) and then doesn't understand why I want to do a random password instead.

but my all time favorite ... no doubt about it ... an email from a client and I quote: "Can't you just adjust that thingy to do that whatchamacallit dancing words stuff?"

Sure.. I'll get right on that with my thingamabob software...

Vivvy

 

[Moondancer]

Fun, no?

 

[Vivvy]

Fun, no?

you know... there's nothing else i'd rather be doing... and that's the truth..

Vivvy

 

[Moondancer]

you know... there's nothing else i'd rather be doing... and that's the truth..

Vivvy

Me, either.