Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
1. We have to charge him to upgrade his e-commerce site, which is 4 years old. It simply doesn't work on newer OS with new php and mysql.
2. He is demanding that we give him 90 days to find new hosting. We don't want to keep running an old server for ONE site for 90 more days!
There's nothing in our inadequate hosting agreement that says we have a right to terminate without notice (or with notice, for that matter). I can see giving him 30 days to find other hosting, but 90 is ridiculous!
Does anyone want a new hosting customer? I think this is an OSCommerce site. :)
Beth
I'd say 90 days is certainly unreasonable- 30 days should be sufficient.
If he wants 90 days, then charge him a lot extra for thsose extra 60 days. Explain that his site is the only one on the server, so he will be responsible for the FULL cost of maintaining it for the extra 60 days.
Now he is put in a position where he has to move or pay to have his site upgraded because you need to upgrade not him.
I would look at it from his perspective and pay for the changes to his site. (Assuming they are not astronomical.) You have gotten revenue from him for 4 years and probably would get this revenue indefinitely if you appeased him. Certainly this must be enough to pay for the cost of his upgrade. If it isn't, then I would eat some of the cost and try to persuade him to pay a part too.
Remember, customer service like advertising doesn't cost it pays.
Sorry if this is not what you wanted to hear.
How do big hosting companies deal with stuff like this when they have to make upgrades for security/stability reasons? What if we had 500 sites on this machine? Yikes! I guess they have a giant staff of linux engineers and programmers.
We don't put more than 150 sites on each server, and the newer ones are kept up to date. In the olden days, we had to be so careful about doing anything that might break the hosting appliance (Ensim or Plesk). This is one of those older machines. Upgrade php and poof! Instant misery.
our inadequate hosting agreement
As you probably know, that is the source of your potential problem.
It should at least have the standard "vary without notice" part.
The hosting company I use has in the past two years upgraded to PHP5 and (separately) MySQL5 and gave customers plenty of warning - the fact is that some old scripts will break.
But it should not be the hosts responsibility to fix them, and as PHP4 is end-of-life and no
longer supported with security updates it would have been negligent of them not to upgrade.
I found that the required script changes were (in my case) very minor, you might insist on 30 days and offer to help amend the customer's outdated code.
Threats to sue are often hot air - but not always.
...
Upgrade php and poof! Instant misery
As you mentioned Ensim, I can tell you that the host I use found a way to run PHP4 and PHP5 side by side with that control panel - customers were told how to switch between them with a simple .htaccess directive for testing their scripts.
This was not possible with the MySQL upgrade, though.
...
He won't have a clue it is on a different server as long as he is treated right.
For example in my country its like this: If no termination period is agreed on in a lease contract, it is calculated by the due dates of the payments. For example if the customer pays monthly you can terminate the contract with a notice one month in advance. If he pays quartely the termination period is 3 month, if he only pays once a year - the termination period is a year.
I bet there is a regulation for this issue in your country too. If you have not made provisions for this in your contracts in the past you should get some legal advice, because this issue will surely come up again.
How do big hosting companies deal with stuff like this when they have to make upgrades for security/stability reasons?
From my experience its
flip the switch....change open source answering program to..."we are currently experiencing a high volume of calls..etc".
Then they go for lunch.
The hosting agreement definitely needs worked on.
I would agree. I would say at a minimum you need to include a termination clause that is clear and no more than 30 days long. I would also suggest a clause that says something to the effect that you aren't responsible for old code or scripts not working any longer after an upgrade. After all if you buy a new computer and it has a new OS that no longer supports an older piece of software you own you can't sue the company that wrote the original software or the company that built the new computer, you have to upgrade. This shouldn't be any different, but you should spell that contingency out.
I still see it differently. The clients pages have run without a problem for 4 years. The customer did nothing to change his pages.
uncobeth wanted to/needed to upgrade his computer. That upgrade caused this problem. It seems to me, that it would be uncobeth's self-interest to fix the software and to retain the client.
The computer which is uncobeth;s responsibility is what is worn out not the client's code. I suspect that uncobeth could resolve this for the client for very little money.
How is any of his clients to feel secure? Certainly this will not be the only upgrade uncobeth's company will ever do.
Who is the next client to have a problem like this?
Would you stay with uncobeth's company knowing how he treating this client?
It seems like a poor way to do business, but I'm in software and not in hardware.
Look at the TOS for most hosting services, even those loaded with Perl, PHP, etc. They don't guarantee those softwares will work if they are added as a perk to the package. If you are a provider you are providing space and bandwidth, not software. Whatever the customer adds is their lookout, not yours.
In the instant case it is a bit unhappy things were not spelled out early, but INDUSTRY STANDARDS is a recognized legal term and that is how you will deal with the customer should it go that far.
Problem solved.
