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What should I make of a provider who has to be reminded of payments?
I have a VPS from a certain European provider which was featured on Lowendbox. In the first few billing cycles, they were very prompt at processing the invoices; I'd usually get a receipt within an hour or two at most.
In the previous payment cycle, I made the payment and my CC was charged, but they wouldn't mark the invoice as paid. After waiting for two days, I raised a ticket, and they apologized for the delay and processed it. Thinking this would be a one time thing, I forgot about it.
In the recent billing cycle, I paid a week before the due date. Again, my CC was charged, but my invoices weren't marked as paid. I waited; they didn't process it past the due date and I received a termination notice. I raised a ticket, and they said they'd already noticed my payment but it was under manual review. This didn't explain the termination notice, so when I asked them, they replied with "CC is not an instant payment" and "we've already processed your payment", and closed the ticket.
Now, the provider isn't bad: their VPS has been servicing me well. However, it really seems strange to have to remind a provider of their payments.
So:
1. Is it something that frequently occurs?
2. If not, should I be concerned about this, and switch away to another provider?
Comments
Too much bother, I would move away if possible.
I would reopen the ticket and asked politely for a full disclosure of the cause, telling them about my concerns of unwilling termination in case of a feature payment they will not be aware of. Also, I would tell them that CC is ONLY an instant payment, even more if the charge has done (only Bank Transfers are not instant).
If the answer was not satisfying or if they ignored me, then, I would drop the provider.
Shouldn't happen, what sort of backend do they use? Your invoice should be marked paid automatically unless they haven't updated their system since the early 2000's
in my personal case i have past this last year with a client in whmcs , until now dont know what was the strange error.
If I were you, I would disable automatic suspension due to payment failure to the client until I could fix the error, to prevent unwilling trouble (not that I know if you did it, just a general suggesting).
i have been luck because the client was verry patcient and every month he opened a tiket durring 1 year every month regarding the payment. Verry cool man and verry understanded.
WHMCS.
This is happening to us lately, had at least some 10 cases in the last month. It appears that if the customer does not click return to website after payment, whmcs does not process it in some cases, we have a few possible leads why it happens.
Also, Hostbill had this issue, so it is not whmcs related, there might be some change in payment processor's inner workings.
In any normal situation, provider should have checked the payment logs first before terminating anyone account. How come their crappy system unable to mark invoice as paid but automatically terminate account, stay away from such provider.
When ThrustVPS (dead) bought GigE VPS (dead) which used to be HostLatch (dead), they screwed up something in the WHMCS and every time i paid an invoice i had to open a ticket with the payment transaction id so they mark the invoice as paid manually.
Well, be lucky that it was just a notice rather than an actual termination. I got that with SSDVPS due to PayPal IPN being jerky -- so WHMCS automatically terminated my VPS. I left that provider, of course.