Are hosts too busy to reclaim server space?

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Posted by TechniSmart, 11-09-2009, 12:57 PM
Over the years we have dealt with quite a few hosting companies. As we came to a point they could not deliver we would just downgrade the account and put new customers on the new servers. Recently I did a rationalization of our accounts and discovered we had a small reseller account with this Indian based company PLUGINSPACE since 2003. We canceled it after I noticed we were paying for it each month, but not using it. Formal cancellation was done. Despite notifying them of cancellation, for the past year, and repeated reminders, they still continue to send out a monthly hosting account. We even get 2 duplicates sent at the same time. All to the junk mail now without being read. We have written to them nicely, and asked to stop billing us, but every month we still receive the bill. It goes to junk mail automatically Are you guys at Pluginspace reading this? Next, we had a 6 monthly account with DIMERESELLER and even though we have canceled the account, I clicked on the saved link in the browser and to my surprise we are still on their server as resellers. Yep, our space is still allocated and we are active. All that wasted resources and we are not even paying for it. It leads me to ask has space become so cheap that it's not even worth reclaiming the space after the client leaves? Am I alone, or do other WHT members experience this? If either of the companies are reading this, well, you know what to do. --Michael
Posted by antony_m, 11-09-2009, 03:51 PM
HostYourIdea By monthly "hosting account" I take it you're referring to an invoice? I would recommend try contacting them again to get this sorted out because the last thing you want is a stack of invoices that you're responsible for. Off course if you have a cancellation reference number then you're safe.
Posted by TechniSmart, 11-09-2009, 03:55 PM
Yes in fact Paypal, so we would not be authorising any payments to them. No they never did respond, that's why I was wondering if they read WHT.
Posted by ldcdc, 11-09-2009, 05:40 PM
It seems that cancellations are a weak spot at a lot of hosts. Weird, and it gets even weirder when you have them suddenly wake up 6-12 months down the road, going after their customer, threatening to send them to collections etc. I can come up with no real explanation as to why hosts outright disregard or fail to follow through repeated canceling tickets though. I suppose that there's too much (relative) emphasis put on the tech side of things, and too little on accounting.
Posted by solor403, 11-09-2009, 06:26 PM
I admit this is the first I've heard of other hosts doing this.. it could be their just truly unorganized and/or lazy when it comes to that. Maybe they don't have the need to reclaim that space right away, so they just shove it aside for later. If this is true it's a poor way to operate your business and will just cause headaches down the road, but that's kind of how I see it. I could be wrong all together though
Posted by iTom, 11-09-2009, 06:41 PM
I have seen it done many times with shared hosting environments, even with dedicated servers d/c's leave them on until they get another client. Generally when you cancel a shared package or reseller you have already relocated your account to another server/provider therefore they are not getting any more of your traffic. Now most shared servers have masses of hard drive space and unless its getting full they don't really have any reason to go through and delete the old data, also if your not giving them any hits Bandwidth, RAM and CPU your not effecting on that shared server so if they are lazy yet again there is no benefit to deleting your data. I wouldn't worry about any of it really as long as you have cancelled. What I don't get is why some companies don't automated everything, its really really easy to do and saves even more of their time.
Posted by plyrjohn404, 11-09-2009, 07:21 PM
That's reality now for "kiddy" hosts who claim unlimited space.
Posted by ddosguru, 11-09-2009, 07:51 PM
I think the problem is tongue in cheek cancellations. I've received a good number of "cancellation" requests that had little to do with wanting to cancel and more to do with the customer hoping we'll call in with a retention effort, provide an account credit, etc. WHMCS provides a neat function for this where the customer can initiate their own cancellation if they're indeed serious.
Posted by Softsys Hosting, 11-09-2009, 11:01 PM
Are these hosts using WHMCS by any means? WHMCS does provide a net way of cancelling the accounts - however, if you have any pending "unpaid" invoice for given product/service, this will not be cancelled automatically when the product is cancelled (very unusual). Our representative was in touch with Matt from WHMCS regarding same and they acknowledged this issue - however, mentioned that we should be paying them $50 for patching this up. Weird.. as I believe this should be something standard of billing panel.. Sorry to be off topic but just wanted to check with OP that his hosts are using WHMCS or not!
Posted by larwilliams, 11-10-2009, 03:35 AM
As far as I know, it is a feature that will be coming in a upcoming version of WHMCS. I published a small addon on their forums which *mostly* automates canceling invoices upon cancellation of a product (only hosting products). If you want the most up to date copy, send me a PM and I can e-mail it to you.
Posted by AmpleHosting, 11-10-2009, 08:54 AM
Administering accounts is the greatest flaw when it comes to hosting - host are more interested in new business - than in maintenance and admin. I recon if these hosts just got rid or old accounts - they could probably save themselves the cost of few extra servers. I know in our business this can be a problem - however we've worked on a system that removes old accounts and it's really helped. as far a server space.
Posted by larwilliams, 11-10-2009, 08:55 AM
A simple auto-termination system, plus a few automations, can mostly take care of this stuff.
Posted by charlier, 11-10-2009, 11:39 PM
I had auto terminate on with my whmcs system. But one time I changed the due date of a client, and whmcs returned it 00/00/0000 and termed a account on me. I sent a note to the client, gave him some free months and apologized profusely, and said that I will never let a system auto term again. So I now try to clean up accounts and such (if any), along with keeping track of my static ips once a week and it keeps it manageable. I do feel myself that HD space is pretty cheap now a days, but it's definitely more of a pain to try to clean this stuff up months and months later. I'm not sure why anyone would let it stay much longer.
Posted by larwilliams, 11-10-2009, 11:57 PM
I assume you entered the due date incorrectly, as I have never encountered such an error.
Posted by charlier, 11-10-2009, 11:59 PM
I made a few changes at once. I didn't enter it by hand, I used the calendar pop up. This was a bunch of versions ago and I have since never seen this problem. But the situation remains the same I just don't want to accidently do that again.
Posted by larwilliams, 11-11-2009, 12:31 AM
Hmm i'm not sure if that is even possible anymore, as the page would refresh when you click Save. If the date is incorrect, it should display then. Regardless, we do use a basic auto-termination addon that handles only the simplest of invoices and such.
Posted by charlier, 11-11-2009, 12:36 AM
That's what happened. I clicked save, it refreshed, and showed all 00's for the date. And then I'd get the email a second later about the account getting term'd. Like I said it happened once, and that was enough for me to get biten. I attributed it to running an older version of whmcs, and upgraded shortly after that. Also don't get me wrong, I love whmcs, I don't mean any bad press for them, but it was this one freak accident that I wasn't about to repeat again, and that was the point I was making about not instantly deleting accounts and reclaiming disk space, as this one episode made me change my approach on a few things.
Posted by Jag, 11-11-2009, 01:29 AM
Auditing can become a nightmare for hosts of all size. It doesn't get any easier with age or size, let me tell ya. Fortunately it can be made a lot easier with a good set of devs, money, and some time to help automate a lot of the mundane checks. Even if your using software that auto-creates/deletes accounts there is no substitute for doing full audits of your operations.
Posted by angeli, 11-11-2009, 03:43 AM
Learn from mistake, you need to find out about all hosting provider services track before you choose them