> 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.
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.
I understand 100%, as I'm a small shop and I turn away bad clients all the time. But if you're not going to provide the service, you return the money, and you _definately don't delete the backups_!
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").
I don't see it stated anywhere that they kept the money. Based upon the fact that a paypal dispute was behind the entire situation, it is very likely the customer simply filed a paypal dispute because he didn't agree with something that happened rather than outright asking for a refund.
As a company that has provided paypal support for products in the past, disputes can be a massive headache and there are certain customers that use the process to their advantage (i.e. using a service for 30 days then filing a paypal dispute claiming the service was broken etc.)
> 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.
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.
Comments
> 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.
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.
I understand 100%, as I'm a small shop and I turn away bad clients all the time. But if you're not going to provide the service, you return the money, and you _definately don't delete the backups_!
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").
I don't see it stated anywhere that they kept the money. Based upon the fact that a paypal dispute was behind the entire situation, it is very likely the customer simply filed a paypal dispute because he didn't agree with something that happened rather than outright asking for a refund.
As a company that has provided paypal support for products in the past, disputes can be a massive headache and there are certain customers that use the process to their advantage (i.e. using a service for 30 days then filing a paypal dispute claiming the service was broken etc.)
> 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.
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.