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This post is long, so I’m breaking it into pieces; follow the “read more” link to see the whole thing. Short version: we know that PayPal is having issues, and we’re not shutting off any PayPal customers who aren’t able to pay. You’re all covered. No worries. We’ve actually got some pretty strong feelings about the issue, though, so if you want to see how this particular ISP reacts to situations like these, read on.
We are aware that PayPal is in the middle of a massive service outage. To those customers of ours who are paying through PayPal, we extend the promise that we will not terminate service during this outage condition due to systemic failure. We will, of course, make contact and try to bill you some other way, but if we can’t reach you, we’ll just wait until PayPal is working again and invoice you. One of my friends who isn’t (yet) hosting with me just got the beat-down over this; his hosting provider is running automated billing.
GuaranteedVPS is not running automated billing; we do not believe that it is safe.
Sure, our invoices go out automatically, the system charges people automatically, and so on. That said, if something bounces, the system fires off an email. Software doesn’t have the common sense to make these decisions, and a human needs to check each and every time there’s a billing blip, in case it’s just a one-time thing like this service problem, or even a transitory issue. Once in a great while, we’ll see a credit card provider require new information, or deny a good transfer because of delays, or whatever.
GuaranteedVPS knows that its customers need one thing above all else: reliability. If that means we pay for some account to run two or three days longer than it should have once in a while, so be it; the alternative is making mistakes like the one that just happened to my friend, and that’s not something we’re willing to do.
Did your provider screw you during the PayPal outage? Well, give them some leeway: the PayPal system reflected the outage in a very surprising way, and several automated billing systems reacted in undesirable ways. Honestly, it isn’t really their fault. This is only the second major outage that PayPal has ever had, and the last one was almost six years ago, before many ISPs (including us) existed. But, if your provider didn’t handle it the good neighbor way once they knew what was going on, well, you just think it over. It’s one thing to get caught by surprise, and there are a lot of good ISPs out there turning their customers on right away with an apology, some extra service credit and a pat on the back.
My buddy’s ISP didn’t react that way. They hung up on him in anger twice before investigating. I’m not going to name that ISP; it’s not appropriate for me, as their competition. But, the way you find out a good vendor is how they react in crisis. Hardware fails; billing processors fail; the internet fails; power stations fail; life just isn’t 100%, and even the big cats in the server industry who brag about their bulletproofness take a good solid whack every now and again (Berea Street knows exactly what I’m talking about.) There’s nothing anyone can do to change this; it’s just the nature of the world.
When your provider is in a crisis, look at how they react. Is their first issue:
- To get you back up and running?
- To figure out what happened?
- To bill you and then turn you back on?
- To explain why it wasn’t their fault?
- To get you off their back?
If it’s #1, you’re at a good host. If it’s #2, you’re probably still at a good host; that’s something new support people do a lot, is to try to get their bearings (sometimes new support people don’t realize that every 30 seconds might be a lost customer.) #3, well, that’s a little worrisome; all things equal it doesn’t really make a difference if they get their money 10 minutes late, but it does make a difference to you - maybe a huge one - and especially in bill processor failure situations, getting the new bill through may take a long time. Still, that’s their privilege.
Now, #4, that’s an indicator of a serious problem. Maybe you’re just talking to the least helpful support person ever; even good ISPs do occasionally hire the wrong phone staff. That said, if that ISP isn’t carefully training its staff to prevent that from happening, then they’re probably not ready for this industry. An ISP’s customers don’t care whose fault an outage was until the outage is over. Priorities are serious business. And, well, I’d like to say that #5 doesn’t happen often, but the sad truth is that about 20% of my customers are refugees from ISPs that behave in that fashion (in fact, I’m expecting a new one because of the issue discussed here in the next week or so.)
There are a lot of good, reliable hosting companies out there. I’m not saying we’re the only people you can go to, and indeed the kind of service we sell doesn’t appeal to most hosting customers; we serve a technical crowd with high resource demands, and most people just don’t need the service quality level we provide. Most of the ISPs that I dealt with before I started one were the kind of places that’d handle this well. I have nothing but good things to say about Pair Networks, for example, or OpenReaction. Rob at Pair and Matt at OpenReaction are some of the most upright and diligent people I’ve dealt with.
All I’m saying is, well, take a minute and see how your ISP reacts. Sooner or later, a crisis will hit you; that’s life. You need to know you have an ISP that will do everything they can to get you back in business as soon as possible. My buddy just found out the hard way how important that this can be. (His host’s byline is “reliable hosting solutions,” natch.)
Long and short of it? Anyone - myself included - can talk a convincing spiel about reliability. Take the time to find out. The last thing you want is to see your business growing, then to watch your internet presence crumble because your infrastructure did little more than to talk a good game. The real-world cost of keeping someone up and running for a few extra days while you try to resolve something is in the single dollars, and 90+ % of the time you still get paid. The idea of shutting people off to make a point is anathema to us. We understand why people do it: it’s them holding data hostage to ensure you stay their customer. My buddy’s in the middle of paying for one last month so he can get his files and run. If his host had treated him well, he wouldn’t be moving at all. It’s not just being a bad neighbor; it’s bad business. Most hosts recognize that. Unfortunately, not all of them.
Here at GuaranteedVPS, we’d rather lose one month from someone already about to leave, to make sure that our customers who are just at the mercy of a poor situation don’t take the brunt of the problem. I mean, really, I lost like sixty cents in bank interest by keeping my customers going. That’s a can of soda. People not doing that? I think it’s shameful.
We aren’t putting your needs first because it’s a good sales line. We aren’t putting your needs first because it’s a way to get our happy customers to bring over their friends in situations like this. We aren’t putting your needs first to keep our reputation up. We aren’t even putting your needs first because it’s the right thing to do. Those are all good things, and we’re happy about those things, but they aren’t why we do it.
We put your needs first because we’re a host for people who can’t afford to have problems. We’re the infrastructure built to weather the storm, and part of that is trusting our customers to be adults, and keeping their business open even though they’re a day late with the rent. Check who’s keeping your front doors open. Make sure they’ve got your interests at mind, for whatever reason. A landlord doesn’t kick people out on the street. We don’t think hosts should either.
We want to be clear: we still believe that PayPal is a good way to pay. Their outages may be more public, but if you count the hours, PayPal has a better uptime record than any other payment processing system we do business with. Nobody gets that worried when a particular bank’s VISA system goes down for half a day, and these things do in fact happen.
All we’re saying is, nobody’s perfect, and that includes PayPal. We believe our customers shouldn’t have to pay the price on those rare occasions that PayPal has issues.
That car insurance guy with the crazy deep voice - he’s got a good line. “Blah blah blah, that’s what Allstate believes. Are you in good hands?”
Our customers are.
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