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Phoenix VPS suspend my VPS (Payment Problem)
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@jarland - [edited this - nothing to see here... :P]
wtf you think ?
I don't know who this dragon person is. I'm in Birmingham, AL.
@nz2ocasey - you should be all set, sorry for the delay. It's a weekend, and while I wasn't having any fun, I was working on some new software so I've been a bit slow to respond. If you need anything else, you can request it by ticket. Thank you for your patience, have a good night.
Edit: Boooom
@jarland - hold on a second, you're no longer with Catalyst? I haven't been around the forums for a while so please update me...
Tis true my friend. I miss all those clients, but I still get to interact with a lot of great people here and on vpsboard. Here was the official announcement: http://pastebin.com/xWut0zMh
@jarland - then my apologies for my previous comments... I looked at your comments thinking that you where still a provider. Sorry. You know how this job is, and you know how people expect the world from you for $7. I made some major changes, and still working on a few more.
I am not about being all lovey-lovey and kiss-ass with customer (sorry folks), I like to get work done. If you're the kind of customer who's looking to be all pampered and seduced by all sorts of promises then forget it, you might want to look some place else. Not once has anyone been accidentally cancelled or had his or her data lost. Every now and then people get impatient. Even companies that are way more expensive are not very fast to respond to billing issues on weekends. The servers are up and running, the up-time is strong, and for the most part everyone is happy. Amazingly every now and then I get one of the customers that got something like a 1GB SSD Cached Xen or KVM VPS for $7/mo. who makes allot of noise, even though his issue will be fixed and he'll be taken care of.
Anyway brother, sorry for being mean to you and all. I'm looking to move to greener pastures as well in the future, sometimes I feel like all the aggravation is not worth it. Then again I have the bulk of my customers that have been with me for years now that are just awesome people. Amazingly they didn't get their service at a bargain, and they understand when I ask them once to please be patient. Anyway, that's common sense for you. And one more time: I'm not about being all lovey-lovey and kissy-kissy. Maybe I was in the beginning, but now I'd rather get work done and get the customer what he needs.
Back to you @jarland: so, be honest... you guys had a little bit enough of managing your own hosting gig, it's stressful and all, especially when you're in the red sometimes. Been there, done that. How about foul mouthed kids? Man, the level of abusive customers we had at KVMShell... That's why the portal is still closed, every day we get up to 40 ~ 50 fraudulent orders. I guess offering something cheap doesn't pay off in the end.
All good, but you know me, I call people out here when I think they need to be. I'd do it to @Francisco or @Nick_A just as quickly if I thought they needed it.
To be honest, Catalyst was a small business when I left and still is today. Ryan and Don both are incredible people who run a tight ship. I am not being anything less than 100% honest when I say that the clients I dealt with were nothing less than the most incredible and understanding people I have ever dealt with. There was a bad egg here or there and they were dealt with swiftly and powerfully, many times as far as filing complaints with their local law enforcement when they went the extra mile to create a problem, but these I could count on one hand.
The thing about customer service is that it doesn't just benefit clients in some "lovey-dovey" way. When you explain yourself with clarity and kindness, and you are understanding of the fact that cultural and language barriers may require you to repeat yourself in different wording several times, you gain lasting clients who respect you and recommend you to their friends. When they respect you, they trust you. When they trust you, they are less of a problem. That trust has to be earned and it is not earned by uptime alone. I give this advice here for all to see because I feel passionately about it and I feel passionately about the opinion that many providers here need to hear it.
@marcm Catalyst is still running and doing very well. Don and myself are taking care of business
We enjoy it and have a lot of fun. We have always ran Catalyst on the side with full time gigs taking care of us. So not much has really changed for me, just my current main place of employment and state I live in now. I can definitely agree with Jarland, not sure how we have done it, but we have some of the most understanding and incredible clients I have ever worked with. I guess you could say you were right. We don't call them our clients we call them our friends. 
Most of them are more than happy to approach us in a friendly manner and work with us to resolve issues. I guess you could say we have been really lucky and blessed.
@jarland and @ryanarp - sorry guys, I popped a cap earlier. I mean it's Sunday, the guy's service wasn't going anywhere, neither was it down, he's been chasing me around the net posting everywhere, then he does the TL;DR thing, and now that his issue was taken care of he is quiet as a mouse (probably still reading this). Anyway, I've edited my earlier comments in regards to you guys, let me know if I missed anything.
Uhm yeah, customers: most of my customers are business customers and they don't care about me or anyone that works with me to be all lovey-lovey. Sure they want you to be professional, but that's it. They will never talk bad or be abusive either. You may or may not know this, however 2% of the customers that any business has are trouble. They are never pleased, they have always something to complain about, they are very impatient, and usually then to be either fixated on an issue or have an obsessive-compulsive behavior. They are called the "Two Percenters". Of course there are some ways to avoid them or shed them if you already have them, like I do. I can swear that the same people submit similar or the same tickets periodically. Amongst my favorite are those about their VPS being down when in fact they rebooted Ubuntu and it's stuck at the Grub boot screen (how about setting a timer?), IPN failed and "you took my money and ran away with it", yet his/her service never got suspended, or "if you don't XYZ for me I will post on WHT and LET!". There are a few more, but these are just from the top of my head. Business customers (people who use their hosting service for work & business) usually have normal issues, and there are so few that I can't even recall anything serious.
Anyway, I don't want to do the TL;DR thing here. Keep being polite guys
You're good at it. I might hire someone to be all lovey-lovey for a few customers who need an affectionate touch :P Hold on, that would contradict what I've said earlier about the "Two Percenters". Never mind. Read some Dave Ramsey, get some sound business advice 
All good, same done.
People keep telling me to take his seminars on being better about spending money, but I can't shake the feeling that the first thing he'll say is "Dude you just spent $100 so I could tell you to stop spending money."
@jarland - you're not the only one with a spending problem :P - Just buy the book, it's a good read. Don't worry, it won't cure your spending habits. I also can't listed to the radio show anymore because I know his replies by heart.
I went through financial peace university and listened to his radio show a lot when I worked at the radio station. One of my many interesting jobs.
So I went to dinner to not pass out from low blood sugar just now, and I'm updating the group as promised in the ticket with @marcm...
8.You described the server I have below, and you were completely disrespectful to me as a customer through this whole interaction. I might've been ok with the coming price increase before this, but now I know that this is the kind of behavior you guys will certainly exhibit in the future. I have a feeling the other "complainers" might be on to something with the broken billing system for oh... how long?
The ONLY time I've really bugged you via ticket is when I get those overdue issues, or if the dang thing won't reflect a payment. I didn't deserve ANY of the disrespect you have put forth to me.
You blame paypal, but come on, I've never had this much trouble with any other host's billing side of the house.
I'm going to be working late tonight apparently..... because of your complete disrespect.
@ryanarp that last one "Read some Dave Ramsey..." was actually meant for Jarland :P
I'm just quoting two different people. I have no affiliation to any of the parties.
@marcm & @jarland, you both are good guys, but both of you have the capacity of "Webmasters From Hell". :P
That's my Jarland
That's my marcm
You both better chain those "Dogs From Hell" tight
before they start fighting :P
@vRozenSch00n lol, I was thinking more like "the admins from hell"
Such an interesting thread. The best way to deal with such people as topic starter is to explain once and just ignore. We deal with such clients on the daily basis in Eastern Europe and Asia. The key element with them is that the more information you give to the client the more they confuse themselves. Explain once and stop responding. They will go back again and again to the ticket, read it again and again, and finally get it from the forth or fifth time. There is just this cultural difference and that is how it works with people in eastern europe and asia.
@VDS6, fyi, I'm not Chinese, Asian, nor Eastern European. I'm from Birmingham, AL USA. Thanks...
@VDS6 thank you for the stereotype.
adding new entry on blacklist
Isn't VDS6's Russia/Ukraine server um... Eastern Euro or Mideast at least? Maybe I missed that in geography :: shrugs ::
Hey I'm a poet and didn't know it. Rhyme every time. :P
Edit: P.S. This edit is to say, I don't edit information out of my posts. I only add to them.
Cool, Birmingham is like my second home. What part are you from.
McCalla area, more unincorporated county, with a Bessemer mailing address to scare people with. :P
Update, another payment came out today... (Oh crap) I've cancelled recurring payment and requested refund. I hope the conversation is a little more cordial.
It's funny that their billing system issued another invoice so soon, considering his statement that he issued a few months of credit. Of course since I have it on recurring, it helped itself to another month's of cash, and that part was my fault, but I still see no evidence in here of a credit balance. I don't see the credit anywhere in the client area, which I understand is completely separate from Paypal.
Billing is low-hanging fruit even still.
Plus there's a client area announcement stating that the billing issues are because of the Paypal IPN. They changed their name to "Perfect Hosting Guru." I'm not going to use Paypal with PhoenixVPS, and I've not had confidence enough to use a regular credit card with them, security-wise.
Meanwhile, with my other host, who uses WHMCS, no issues yet. If this is truly a Paypal caused issue, then um... Why is the whole community not affected, and if so, who else as a host is affected? This should be verifiable, and objective.
I'm not asking for free crap. I only asked this whole time for the crap to be done right.
@nz2ocasey We're implementing PayPal Billing Agreements so finally it's Googdbye IPN for good. It's also Goodbye Subscriptions for good. So don't worry about it, no one will be cancelled.
Hey Casey, on second thought why do you spread all this nonsense about my company? If you don't trust us and you don't want to use a credit, which by the way we don't store, Stripe.com does that for us, then why stay just so you can keep posting here? Your service is not affected in any way. Or is it because it's Sunday, and just like the other Sunday, you want something to do? I mean our customers are well informed on this issue.
By reading this thread makes me remember a provider name M(*)H.
It was a awful experience.
stupidest staff I have ever met.
No comment on this thread. Both of you telling stories.
@marcm Sorry to go off-topic here (even though it seems some people have already taken the thread in that direction) but I was just wondering whats the final word of the migration that was done today. Are all customers being permanently migrated away from your Phoenix location at the PhoenixNAP DC to HVH/ColoCrossing in Buffalo?
I really hope this isin't the case and I hope that you guys haven't been bought out or "partnered" with HVH/ColoCrossing or something...
@SnowDay - I would have absolutely no reason to inconvenience a customer, however it was Sunday and he had nothing else to do. If we have an announcement in the client area telling customers to ignore "Overdue Invoice" emails and that we have issues with PayPal IPN then I believe you get the picture. We're working on implementing billing agreements, where payment is initiated and verified from the billing side, so basically we won't be using IPN anymore. That will take care of the problem once and for all. It will also take care of the problem of uncancelled PayPal subscriptions after service was cancelled, something that customers get angry about most of the time... because they forget to cancel them, and we can't cancel them from our side. These are well known issues that most providers face, however I got tired of putting a band-aid on the problem, every time that IPN fails.
@irm - Yes, we are pulling out of Phoenix. No, the company has not been bought and we intend to expand in more locations soon, however in two years since we've been in Phoenix the service has been about as mediocre as it gets. It never stood out, and our customers have noticed that. Add to that that until very recently they have been behind in offering up-to-date hardware, and in some areas they still are. The network is so-so, they are severely understaffed and their support can leave you hanging for hours. So it was time to move on. Once this is taken care of we will expand in other locations as well. ColoCrossing has been great to work with and @jbiloh is a great guy to work with. I read the forums and I know that some people have an axe to grind with him or his company, however he's been extremely friendly and helpful in aiding us to achieve our goals.