2. From what I can understand, they suspended multiple accounts, one of which was paid in full. The paid in full account's owner cursed out the company on twitter.
I assume everyone will agree with this statement, but I'll state it anyway: You can't cancel valid accounts! If the account is paid in full, and assuming the account isn't being used for nefarious purposes, you cannot cancel valid accounts for any reason.
If I have a Rackspace account, I can go into twitter and say "Rackspace fucking sucks, everyone who works there can go fuck themselves," and there's no chance in hell my account would be canceled. The idea that they are still defending this action is unbelievable.
If I hypothetically had an account with This* (which I would never ever have), and there's an outage of some kind and I call to complain, I'm going to be afraid that if I lose my cool for a second, my account's gonna be canceled. I'm not exaggerating, I would legitimately have that fear. And one is supposed to do business with this people? Are they out of their minds?
You are way off base on this point.
Any company can refuse service to an individual for any non discriminatory circumstance. A company can't refuse your business because your race, ethnicity, age or sex or any other determination of discrimination by law but they certainly don't have to do business with you if you're a dick (Pardon my language). If you want to badmouth a company's service or product that you are currently using they certainly can choose to let (force) you to take your business elsewhere (closing your account). You may be entitled to a refund matching the remaining duration on your account, maybe--but as a company they don't have to put up with you forever just because you gave them some money.
Now, I'm not defending This*'s customer service or actions, I'm simply pointing out a blatantly false presupposition you are making.
Of course not. That's called breach of contract.
And unless This* has a carefully-written escape clause in their service contract, they would be just as liable for canceling service in the middle of a contract period as well.
Well, sure, ahead of time, but not after the contract has begun.
I'll agree with that, but with qualifications. Certainly you don't just cut off somebody's service. But there are pathological clients who aren't worth keeping on. I don't want to go into details, but I've personally seen one particular case, at a hosting company I once worked for, where it was no longer worth the time and aggravation to keep a certain customer, despite their (as far as I knew) flawless payment record.. We gave them a month to find another service provider, but there was no way we would allow them to remain a customer after that.
As a business, you have the right to deny service to anyone for any reason, aside from certain protected classes such as race and sex. Unless you're broke, you can and should exercise this right to whatever extent it benefits your business. And even if you're broke, sometimes you should consider it.
What This* did is terminate the account, pocket the money, and delete the backups. Not only is that unprofessional, it's _illegal_. If it weren't it would give a legal defense to every person charged with fraud ("we just decided to terminate the business relationship without a refund").
That is exactly the right way to handle the situation and, in my opinion, does not contradict what gfunk said. If you were to simply cut off a client, no notice, for no other reason except you don't like them -- that's not right.
I work as a freelance communicating with people with Skype. If someone has a bad tone, I'll politely tell him to change. If he doesn't, I'll refuse to work with him. I'll pull a refund for him, but that's only in the case I did no work.
And - holy cow! - you don't have a customer service rep writing the response, you have the CEO or owner do it. That it wasn't goes back to my original point - they don't (yet) recognize this as a PR disaster.
I'd agree on ethical grounds, but legally, just about every TOS I have read states that they can cancel an account at any time, for any reason. I don't know if this would hold up in court, though.
Here's the google cache link of the deleted post: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=ca...
Content of the deleted post:
The Reddit Incident
POSTED BY Jules ON August 16, 2011 AT 4:45 pm UNDER Uncategorized I’m sure you may have heard about it by now, and if not I’m sure you soon will! I wanted to take this opportunity to make a blog post about the situation and post some information from our side of the fence. Before I begin though, I’d like to thank the tens of people who felt the need to e-mail us death threats and general profanity. We have forwarded these on to your ISP’s abuse departments.
Yesterday on Twitter we were asked by a user why their friends account was suspended because of a PayPal dispute. Our terms and conditions are very clear that in the case of any PayPal disputes, or other payment disputes, all services are suspended until the dispute is closed and the payment issue(s) resolved. These are typical terms that most web hosting providers have, and in some cases a provider will even charge a fee to restore any accounts that have been suspended because of a payment dispute. We don’t, for the record.
So, when asked why their friends account was suspended we told them “Our terms are very clear. Your friend should not have opened a fraudulent dispute.” We then sent a DM to the individual who asked, saying the following: “Please mind your own business. Your friends account, and PayPal dispute has nothing to do with you.” Of course, as a hosting provider we cannot discuss the details of another account and its status with others. Because of this message, we were informed that they would be canceling their accounts due to our “unprofessional-ism”. After much continued pushing from these users, we then responded (rather sarcastically I might add) with the following: “Fantastic. Perhaps you can sign up with a hosting provider who doesn’t take privacy seriously then. Enjoy.”
We take privacy very seriously. If your friend has an issue with their account, your friend needs to contact us. Despite being your friend, it does not mean we will discuss their account(s) with you and it does not entitle you to demand information about a specific issue or incident. Your friends account is theirs, and theirs alone.
So, cue more pushing and baiting on Twitter and we then come to the conclusion that this situation is obviously some attempt for these users to attack us for reasons unknown, and we decide to end our business relationship with them. What this effectively means is that we decide to suspend their account(s) and offer them a full backup of their data with us. Of the two users we did this for, one of them was extremely polite and requested a backup of their data, which we provided to them. This user also had domains in their account which they still have full access to, and we even informed them via e-mail that they should transfer them to another provider as soon as possible as we would no longer be providing support to them.
The other posted on Twitter that they were looking for another hosting provider, to which we responded “Best of luck with your new host!”. This was not intended to be a taunt, this was intended to be the closing line to our discussion with them. Our way of saying “OK, best of luck, we consider this matter closed now”. Unfortunately, this user interpreted it to be a taunt or goad. They then responded with direct profanity aimed at us. At this point before the profanity I’d like to state that their account was only suspended. They had full access to a backup of their data and files.
After the profanity (which was completely unnecessary) we terminated the account immediately, no longer wishing to do any form of business or communication with the client. As part of our termination system, any backups we store for an account are automatically removed via an action hook we have deployed. We don’t see any logic in storing data for terminated accounts that we no longer host, so they are removed instantly. Please note; this wasn’t a manual “Oh I’m going to remove your backups because you swore at me!” situation. This was an automated process that occurs immediately after any account on our servers is terminated.
So let’s just recap a little; we have 1 account that is suspended with full access to a backup of their data and their domain names. We have another account that is fully terminated, with all data removed, due to severe breach of our terms.
And then we have the Twitter/Reddit aftermath….
Now, I fully understand how as a customer or potential customer, a hosting provider terminating your account and deleting your data without notice is a bad thing. Hell, if it happened to me I’d be very angry indeed. But what you have to remember is that this isn’t a typical situation, and certainly isn’t a random event. This is the direct result of publically swearing at and abusing your hosting provider, something which is actually covered in our Acceptable Usage Policy and results in instant account termination. Please also remember that before the termination, the customer was able to obtain all of their data in the way of a backup should they have requested it. The moment they decided to cross that line and become abusive in that manner, they made a conscious choice to break our terms and the result is the enforcement of that. The other friend who didn’t decide to abuse us? They still have full access to their data and domains, and are presumably looking for a new host.
I’m not saying we’re right and the users were wrong. I’m not saying that perhaps some other hosting providers would’ve dealt with the suspension(s) and termination differently, to each their own. What you need to discern is that this is an extremely rare situation. Our terms and conditions were broken, something that very rarely happens, but when it does the outcome is always the same. These are our policies and these are how we respond. Many of you won’t know because quite frankly, you’ll never break our terms – which is precisely the issue here. Ridicule us for it if you will.
which is illegal under an internet law I just made up. You could go to jail.
It seemed completely straight-up. "X happened, Y happened, Z happened". Whether or not we agree with their decision, it seems like a good (for us) thing to hear the full sequence of events.
> Before I begin though, I’d like to thank the tens of people who felt the need to e-mail us death threats and general profanity. We have forwarded these on to your ISP’s abuse departments.
If you say something ridiculous and you don't delete it, you are in effect continuing to say it. They aren't pretending they never said it, they are acting like what was said doesn't belong on their website.
I don't think anyone should be responsible for archiving and publishing their own mistakes for all eternity. If you want to archive it, fine. They aren't shooting out takedown notices.
I think the purpose of this blog post was to try to reclaim this*'s reputation after the incident, but for me it just solidified that i should never, ever use thiswebhost.
what are the alternatives ? that guy seems to be a company owner and the registrant of the domain, ie. basically the guy _is_ the company :)
What I'm unclear on is why Bernardo can't be invited back. Was his account deleted in such a way that it's unrecoverable? If so, they're keeping someone who deleted potentially months of a customer's work and data, and claiming it's within reason over one use of the f-bomb.
What if another client's Twitter account is hacked? This policy sounds like an open invite to malicious third parties.
Apparently so..
I am impressed that the company had the foresight to realize that the people they currently have on suck at CS and need to be replaced with someone better at it.
That is a very self-aware decision.
Also you can't cut your nose off despite your face. Jules is clearly a talented tech lead and you can't boot the only guy out the door that understands the inner workings of such a technical company/service.
I am impressed with how this small company is dealing with this; they are doing the best they possibly can.
The proof will be in the long-term-pudding for sure, but I think these are all sensible moves.
You wouldn't expect a restaurant owner to put up with a rude and insulting customer being a dick to restaurant staff, so why should any other service have to put up with it?
Some customers just aren't worth the hassle they put out PERIOD. I don't give a shit if you're willing to pay me $9.99 a month, if you purposely go out of your way to insult myself or a member of my team, you don't gain the benefit of using our product, end of story.
* Edit * - Just to clarify, I don't see the need for them deleting the previous blog post, if you're going to respond to something in public, you should probably stand behind what you are saying before pushing publish.
By all means, terminate troublesome customers, with whatever advance notice you're comfortable / obligated to give them. Remain courteous and professional no matter what they throw at you.
DON'T get in shouting matches with your (ex-)customers over the Internet, or take vindictive measures. It can't be worth it.
In the original account, the poster says they inquired about a problem, had their account terminated, and then flipped out.
Almost every commenter on HN seems to assume that the account termination happened after the flip-out, but from what I can tell that isn't correct?
It is perfectly acceptable, as you note, for the restaurant to toss me out and to ban me.
What is not acceptable is that if a friend of mine later asks them why they banned me for them to state that it was due to a credit card dispute. They should just say "we do not discuss details related to past or present customers".
In the deleted blog post that's essentially what they admit doing. A friend of the customer asked about the incident, and they responded giving information that they should have not given, instead of just saying "we do not discuss account details of customers with third parties".
If I saw a service I use unreasonably lock someone's account I'd be concerned for my own. The customer was totally justified in asking their questions, ironically merely seeking assurance for their site.
Instead of telling the customer what they could they imply that it's the customer's fault for even asking because it could involve secret data, and they ridicule the customer for caring - as if they should have just known to shut up and hurry away.
> You wouldn't expect a restaurant owner to put up with a rude and insulting customer being a dick to restaurant staff, so why should any other service have to put up with it?
At a minimum I would expect them to provide the food to-go, and at a discount reflecting the changed nature of the service provided, or to refund the purchase price. That the customer's site and backups got irrevocably nuked doesn't fit into the restaurant analogy at all but just goes how "careless" they are with what could be your data.
However, I would like to call attention to this needless concern trolling. A "dirty word" is not a knife, and is actually a reasonable response to PR shit and corporate excuses.
> Some customers just aren't worth the hassle they put out PERIOD. I don't give a shit if you're willing to pay me $9.99 a month, if you purposely go out of your way to insult myself or a member of my team, you don't gain the benefit of using our product, end of story.
This is a service you provide, if you can't be bothered to do it well don't hide behind your fear of rudeness to dodge complaints.
> "Purposefully go out of your way"
Yes, as if the customer scheduled "Go bug a legit company for no reason".
Flagged.
Thanks, but I'll make my own choice.
ok. So how or who performs "the actions of a company" if not the "individuals inside the company"? Especially if these individuals are explicitly given access to official twitter account, etc... of the company.
And after all, said individual did performed actions while wearing his administrator hat. This deffinitely makes him part of the company.
Why do you think Google, Microsoft and all other big companies do not allow Engineers and programmers to make public statements (about the company), unless they specify with uppercase bolds that this is their own opinion.
Having to disable comments on your conciliatory blog post is a sign that you should go back and make it more conciliatory.
(I also agree with your earlier post that if you're selling web hosting for $3/month you'll have to deal with quite a few difficult customers. Often the people who pay the least are the hardest to deal with.)
Only very rarely have I seen more benefit actively defending myself from a customer's accusation rather than apologizing and taking responsibility, even if it was only partly my fault.
(Or would my post be received better if I just said "Well, yes"? :))
I mean, the second is usually the case; but as a business, you are expected to be 'the bigger person' and, you know, not delete people's personal data because they are being dicks to you.
Defending your actions, in some minds, makes it sound more likely that you'd do it again in the same situation.
So criticism is still not tolerated it sounds to me that these guys still dont get it.
I think people calling for Jules' head are flat our wrong. To the best of my knowledge, he isn't a repeat offender, and now this* has made it unlikely that he will be, without having to fire him (and coincidentally, allowing him to do what this* considers him good at).
I'm generally not crazy about "off-with-his-head" mentality.
I'd had a glance at the last couple weeks worth of tweets and they seemed generally more "the customer's never right, good riddance" than most official twitter accounts.
Smelled like burned out admin to me.
I think the company has taken appropriate steps and I for one would like them NOT to fire (but give him a strike on top of what they already have done) the poor nerd why got so frustrated that he used a totally inappropriate tone with clients.
And then canceled the accounts of paying clients, who had done nothing wrong, and deleted all of their information.
From what I understand, from doing some research, this is not necessarily the case. Threatening someone would be illegal, harassment as well - but profanity for the most part is not illegal in most places (though there are certain states and countries that do have profanity laws). Additionally, "abusive" is a term that can be quite broad, and in certain cases it could definitely be a judgement call on how one person might see it compared to someone else. I'm not saying people should go cursing out any one they have a complaint with, but at the same time if you are dealing with customer support, you need to have thick skin and patience - and if necessary then cancel the business relationship with the customer, but don't go pulling the legal card on an unhappy customer in every case.
This post comes off as smug, half-hearted, and insulting. Why are they joking and making light of the technical director's unprofessional conduct? Why are they trying to parse how the customer's twitter comeback wasn't justified? Why are they separating the latter part of the post as the "more serious note," thus implying the first half isn't serious? This is serious for the company, whether they know it or not.
After reading this post, I come away thinking the company doesn't take this situation seriously, they don't take their customers seriously, and they wouldn't handle my problems seriously if I were a customer. They should have 1) Made a direct, unmitigated apology; 2) Clarified what their company stands for regarding terminating accounts with specific policy improvements, not a promise to review the policy; 3) Left the excuses for Jules out of it; 4) Left out the legal threats to people e-mailing the company (the blog post isn't about the company's problems, it's about the customers' problems); 5) Titled it "An Apology" or "A New Direction" or basically anything besides "Moving On..." which sounds like a command being issued in conjunction with an exaggerated eye roll.
Why don't these firms just hire a pr/crisis consultant to help? If they suspect the crisis could cost the company more than a few thousand dollars if not handled correctly, it's a no-brainer. The best-case scenario is that they lose a few thousand dollars improving their public image; the alternative could be losing a chunk of their user base.
On the other hand, at $3/mo, I'd say "this" could've gone ahead and terminated the hosting of the "painful" customers (keeping backups,) but only doing so at later date and with notice when everyone wasn't so fired up.
IMO their "technical director" also needs to be let go. Maybe not today, but after they've had a chance to get a new person trained but more importantly get their domains and accounts transferred into the company's (or its owner's) name. The TD has demonstrated that he's over-reactive. If kept with the company, there's the risk that he further damages the company in the future (even with him being isolated away from customers). If he's let go, there's the risk of overreacting and damaging the company in other ways.
A website is a source of income and just cannot be joked with. As gfunk stated, the fact that it became personal for a company is ridiculous.
You always will have unsatisfied customers and yes sometimes they will curse at your company, but there can be NO reason to terminate a source of income.
and only buy hosting from extremely reputable companies
