Welcome back to the crazy world of running a small hosting business. This time I am referring back to my column from the end of December.
http://www.webhostingresourcekit.com/121.htmlI am totally stunned how some people are doing business. This one customer of mine had not paid a single bill on time for the whole year. I finally gave him the boot and canceled his account with 9 days of notice. Two days after I had send out the cancellation I received a check from this customer but I did not wanted to go back to this whole mess. I returned the letter to him next business day and also send him an email. I did not hear from the customer. I monitored the DNS server settings for his domain but nothing changed. At 6.00 AM the second last day of my deadline I send him a reminder email about the coming account cancellation. Tuesday – December 21, 2004. My deadline would expire at 6.00 PM that day. At 2.00 PM that afternoon I received an email from a web designer asking for an extension. He asked for 4 more days. He seemed to be hired at the last minute (poor guy). I declined and let him know that I am not going to be able to do this.
5.20 PM – my phone rang off the hook. My customer was on the line but I let it go into voicemail. He called 2 more times but never left a message. Later that evening I removed the website from my server (after making two backups). Finally. This customer from hell was off my back. Well, so I thought. I got contacted 3 times by the web designer asking for stuff and helped him out. Then I received an email asking if I would have a backup of the email Inbox. The customer had always left his email on the server (he had been advised several times that the server is not a safe place to store the email). I was stunned. Can you believe that a business man knowing that his hosting account will be turned off leaves his email on the server the account is on? I could not believe it. I emailed him the backup file that contained the Inbox and haven’t heard back since then.
Anyway – this experience really made me think. There are plenty of great business people out there. They can be specialists in their field. But many fail to realize that there is a reason that we have car mechanics, plumbers and electricians for a reason. They pick up where the average Joe has to let go. And being a web host or web designer is being a specialist in this field. If the customer decides he knows things better, he might have to pay the bill for it one day.
Until next time ….
Best regards,
Christoph Puetz
Owner Webhostingresourcekit.com
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