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.
I'd make a comment about backtracing, but instead--
I don't agree with email-bombing the company with profanity. I do agree with email-bombing the company with well-worded emails about how you're canceling your service over this and/or not planning on doing business with them.
Oh man, I hope everyone reading this understands the consequence of putting a person who doesn't understand public relations or customer service, into a position such as customer service.
Could you elaborate a little on why Jules' blog post was bad?
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.
Elaboration: Jules demonstrates zero willingness to understand the customer's point of view. Even if your position cannot be compromised, as a CS rep you should never leave the customer with the impression that they were ignored, or worse.
First, the tone is so unbelievably petty, it's difficult to believe this company has ever made more than $50. I would conclude from this exchange that it's run by two high school kids in their parents' basement.
Second, the post is chock full of defensive half-truths, or as I call it: bullshit. For example:
We take privacy very seriously.
So seriously that we flip off anyone who sends a tweet about you and your account. It's not about privacy -- if it were, a simple statement to the effect of "we can't comment about accounts publicly" would have sufficed.
...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.
Who honestly believes this? "When I told him to 'get the fuck out of here', I only wanted to let him know that he was welcome to leave."
---
This guy just does not get it. He must be an incredible sys admin, or it must be really hard to find a good one in Hampshire.
The truth -- as I see it -- is simply that this guy was irked by the thought of a customer posting annoying tweets about his company's policies, and he lost his cool. (If he ever knew to keep it in the first place.)
I deal with customer support on a daily basis. In my opinion it wasn't just the blog post that was bad. By then it was way too late.
The account auto-suspension may have been a bit harsh. But what they never should have done was explain it in public. The rest is just downhill from there.
Personally, I'd have responded to the friend's tweet with nothing more than, "Account questions should be directed to [email/url] where we can better assist." That way you take that stuff offline as soon as possible before it has a chance to foment into something nasty. And if it's really something private, there's nothing more you can say.
That aside, the tone in that blog post is all wrong. In paragraph one, "our side of the fence" draws lines and creates an adversarial tone right from the start. It's clear throughout that the author is taking this personally.
Paragraph two is mostly fine, but ends on a self-righteous semi-parenthetical, "We don't, for the record." As if they're going out of their way to be better than everyone else.
From paragraph three, the airing of dirty laundry begins. Beyond this, deleting 80–90% of the post would likely add to its value.
In paragraph five there's even some kind of victim mentality going on. They're being "baited" on Twitter, and "[attacked] for reasons unknown." The analysis is starting to get tedious.
All throughout, the message being communicated is: We did nothing wrong. It's defensive, and what facts are present play a secondary role to the message. Better to be proactive about the facts, leave out anything that hints of defensiveness, and just take your lumps.
Any time you're saying "what I intended," you've already lost.
But, again, a better blog post would not have needed to be written in the first place.
It also should be pointed out that paypal disputes can sometimes be automatically opened by paypal - I had one opened once, and the automatic system didn't even offer an option to comment and say "Yes, I did mean to make this transaction"; I had to call in to get it resolved.
yeah, my customers get maybe 2-3 of those a month (vs, maybe 1-2 actual disputes a year) I mean, I don't know of any of the times that the payment was actually fraudulent; the customer sends me another payment and it'll go through.
Which after seeing the tweets, was better than I expected. The big issues I have with it, as damage control (i. e. not counting the deleting of the backup and previous exchanges), are the lack of a real apology and the lumping of general profanity in with death threats in what supposably got forwarded to ISP abuse departments.
> 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.
Why are people so adamant that nothing ever be deleted or changed?
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.
Comments
This blog post was preceded by a different post by Jules. That post was deleted and this post by Doug took it's place instead.
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.
TL;DR: I deleted all your backups over one swear word. Now I'm justifying it because profanity equals abuse.
> profanity equals abuse
which is illegal under an internet law I just made up. You could go to jail.
I'd make a comment about backtracing, but instead--
I don't agree with email-bombing the company with profanity. I do agree with email-bombing the company with well-worded emails about how you're canceling your service over this and/or not planning on doing business with them.
Oh man, I hope everyone reading this understands the consequence of putting a person who doesn't understand public relations or customer service, into a position such as customer service.
Could you elaborate a little on why Jules' blog post was bad?
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.
Elaboration: Jules demonstrates zero willingness to understand the customer's point of view. Even if your position cannot be compromised, as a CS rep you should never leave the customer with the impression that they were ignored, or worse.
First, the tone is so unbelievably petty, it's difficult to believe this company has ever made more than $50. I would conclude from this exchange that it's run by two high school kids in their parents' basement.
Second, the post is chock full of defensive half-truths, or as I call it: bullshit. For example:
We take privacy very seriously.
So seriously that we flip off anyone who sends a tweet about you and your account. It's not about privacy -- if it were, a simple statement to the effect of "we can't comment about accounts publicly" would have sufficed.
...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.
Who honestly believes this? "When I told him to 'get the fuck out of here', I only wanted to let him know that he was welcome to leave."
---
This guy just does not get it. He must be an incredible sys admin, or it must be really hard to find a good one in Hampshire.
The truth -- as I see it -- is simply that this guy was irked by the thought of a customer posting annoying tweets about his company's policies, and he lost his cool. (If he ever knew to keep it in the first place.)
I deal with customer support on a daily basis. In my opinion it wasn't just the blog post that was bad. By then it was way too late.
The account auto-suspension may have been a bit harsh. But what they never should have done was explain it in public. The rest is just downhill from there.
Personally, I'd have responded to the friend's tweet with nothing more than, "Account questions should be directed to [email/url] where we can better assist." That way you take that stuff offline as soon as possible before it has a chance to foment into something nasty. And if it's really something private, there's nothing more you can say.
That aside, the tone in that blog post is all wrong. In paragraph one, "our side of the fence" draws lines and creates an adversarial tone right from the start. It's clear throughout that the author is taking this personally.
Paragraph two is mostly fine, but ends on a self-righteous semi-parenthetical, "We don't, for the record." As if they're going out of their way to be better than everyone else.
From paragraph three, the airing of dirty laundry begins. Beyond this, deleting 80–90% of the post would likely add to its value.
In paragraph five there's even some kind of victim mentality going on. They're being "baited" on Twitter, and "[attacked] for reasons unknown." The analysis is starting to get tedious.
All throughout, the message being communicated is: We did nothing wrong. It's defensive, and what facts are present play a secondary role to the message. Better to be proactive about the facts, leave out anything that hints of defensiveness, and just take your lumps.
Any time you're saying "what I intended," you've already lost.
But, again, a better blog post would not have needed to be written in the first place.
Quintessential BOFH behaviour!
It also should be pointed out that paypal disputes can sometimes be automatically opened by paypal - I had one opened once, and the automatic system didn't even offer an option to comment and say "Yes, I did mean to make this transaction"; I had to call in to get it resolved.
yeah, my customers get maybe 2-3 of those a month (vs, maybe 1-2 actual disputes a year) I mean, I don't know of any of the times that the payment was actually fraudulent; the customer sends me another payment and it'll go through.
Which after seeing the tweets, was better than I expected. The big issues I have with it, as damage control (i. e. not counting the deleting of the backup and previous exchanges), are the lack of a real apology and the lumping of general profanity in with death threats in what supposably got forwarded to ISP abuse departments.
> 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.
Why do people (and in this case a "technical" person) think they can delete anything after they post it?
Why are people so adamant that nothing ever be deleted or changed?
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 his point was that you can't delete it even if you wanted to - Google's Cache is fast, and there are other caching/archival services too.
They'd have been much better off plastering a huge notice on top of the old post and then linking to the new one.
It looks like Basil Fawlty has branched out his business into web hosting!
Direct enough. I know never to use their service. Thanks for the heads up.