Wow charging to edit Wordpress config. That Is sad

dragonballz2k

I was browseing around on some free webhosting forum http://www.zymic.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=27452 it is sad charging for that

it is an old thread though

AsadHaider

Zymic? I thought that sh*thole died years ago. I guess he doesn't know Wordpress has an installer..

Overcharging in the I.T. industry isn't surprising, friend of mine yesterday got billed £35/$60 by his IT contractor to create a new email account for his site which is hosted with Fasthosts.

David_P

It is from 2011.. but still is funny lol. Zymic.. :P

@AsadHaider said: £35/$60

dang.. did he pay for it? or leave them?

Taz

Well, it is free hosting. People need to make money somehow.

dragonballz2k

they could just put like a simple banner on every web page. I can't believe people would charge to edit wp config atleast give him a link to help him.

nunim

What's the issue? No one is stopping him from setting it up himself, if you want someone to do it for you, you should pay. He's only asking for $5. I've charged people to essentially run my script and setup LXDE + NX on their VPS because they were technically challenged.

dragonballz2k

Thats different come on just editing wp config. its only like a one minute work.

nunim

@dragonballz2k said: Thats different come on just editing wp config. its only like a one minute work.

So? A random person on the internet is not required to provide you with free tech support, neither is any unmanaged provider. If you can't be bothered to take the time and figure it out, you should pay for someone who does know what to do.

proteus

LOL, once someone at Stablehost tried to bill me for an hour's worth (apparently they get $75 an hour) of work to pipe the output of ps -aux to a file every 5 minutes.

If you want us to write a script to do a ps aux every 5 minutes for you, we can do that but it will fall under our managed services, which is $75/hour, won't take more then an hour though so you're only looking at $75. >

I'd do it myself except I cannot run scripts using CRON on a shared box. I guess I should write "ps -aux" in a bash script file and give it to them :-)

KuJoe

That's actually a good deal, we charge $25/hour (minimum 1 hour) for tech support. We do only charge $5 if they want us to reboot their VPS though.

Jack

@KuJoe said: We do only charge $5 if they want us to reboot their VPS though.

Wow now I know why you guys don't need to advertise.

Hehe!

KuJoe

@Jack said: Wow now I know why you guys don't need to advertise.

LoL, I implemented the new fee for if we need to do anything that a client can do in WHMCS or SolusVM, then we invoice them $5 if they really want to be lazy and have us do it. For an unmanaged provider, we get entirely to many tickets asking for reboots, rDNS updates, and re-installs because clients don't want to do a password recovery or don't like logging into SolusVM (keeping in mind that we'll assist with password recovery and login problems for free).

Surprisingly enough, some clients would rather pay us $5 than to reboot their VPS in WHMCS where they are opening the ticket in the first place. So with the same amount of clicks and no typing required, they could have hit the reboot button in WHMCS but instead they take the time to open the ticket, pay the invoice in Paypal, and then wait for us to click the reboot button for them.

Also keep in mind, $5 is more than 1 month of hosting on the majority of our services.

Jack

@KuJoe said: LoL, I implemented the new fee for if we need to do anything that a client can do in WHMCS or SolusVM, then we invoice them $5 if they really want to be lazy and have us do it. For an unmanaged provider, we get entirely to many tickets asking for reboots, rDNS updates, and re-installs because clients don't want to do a password recovery or don't like logging into SolusVM (keeping in mind that we'll assist with password recovery and login problems for free).

Surprisingly enough, some clients would rather pay us $5 than to reboot their VPS in WHMCS where they are opening the ticket in the first place. So with the same amount of clicks and no typing required, they could have hit the reboot button in WHMCS but instead they take the time to open the ticket, pay the invoice in Paypal, and then wait for us to click the reboot button for them.

Also keep in mind, $5 is more than 1 month of hosting on the majority of our services.

Haha , It's not lazy maybe they don't know you can reboot it from there?

KuJoe

@Jack said: Haha , It's not lazy maybe they don't know you can reboot it from there?

I wish that were the case but I provide a walk-through with step-by-step instructions before I even mention the $5 invoice. I am tempted to start making flash videos with instructions just in case there's a language barrier or misunderstanding somewhere.

Which reminds me, I need to start adding these instructions to our KB.

craigb

I think its reasonable for an unmanaged provider to charge for management work the customer is empowered to perform.

vedran

Having a minimum charge is pretty standard. What should he do, charge $1? Right, and do that 500 times today, it just doesn't work that way.

Or are you suggesting he should do things like this for free? Do that and you'll end up doing nothing but free stuff. You need to draw the line somewhere.

Spirit

@KuJoe said: For an unmanaged provider, we get entirely to many tickets asking for reboots, rDNS updates

rDNS update over solusVM is relatively new thing and not so long ago was (or in many cases still is) industry standard to request rDNS update over support ticket. It's not lazyness, it's just the way how rDNS change was always done. Automated process is advantage for both sides, host and end client, however it may take some time before majority will get used to it. (I don't disagree with anything said above, I am just explaining why so many rDNS request tickets where they aren't really needed).

gsrdgrdghd

@dragonballz2k said: Thats different come on just editing wp config. its only like a one minute work.

Billing isn't based solely on how much time it takes to do a certain task, but also on how long/hard it is to know how to perform the task.

KuJoe

@Spirit said: It's not lazyness, it's just the way how rDNS change was always done.

I didn't mean to imply that everybody opening a ticket is lazy, I meant that when faced with the option to follow my step-by-step tutorial or pay $5, some people opt to pay the $5 which doesn't make sense to me. I'm not complaining either, I guess if we get enough $5 invoices we can hire a level 1 tech to do the work. :)

Randy

@KuJoe said: $5 if they want us to reboot their VPS though.

what if the solusvm fails to restart?

KuJoe

@Randy said: what if the solusvm fails to restart?

If there is a software error then of course we'll fix it for them and do a reboot for free, but we have yet to run into such a problem (knock on wood).

Ishaq

Certain customers expect a fully managed service and us doing what they ask for the peanuts they pay.