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Admin fee
Saw this at Inception Hosting while submitting a ticket:
I agree to pay an admin if I have tickets the above confirmation box then report a network issue without fully following the network issues knowledge base article
Are there any more providers doing something like that? And, does it actually work? (Do people read the article/do the thing they checkmark)
Comments
I suspect people will tick anyway and ignore. Then they will say ARGH @#%@#_* what's the payment about!?
Not doing this and not going to do this.
Especially when selling something on the Internet, it's hard to strictly say everyone has a full grasp of English and understand all the knowledgebase articles. It it was multi-lingual then sure.
I've seen people make me select a checkbox that says I agree to pay admin fees if it's not their fault (solusvm)
We do something like that. We invoice $5 for non-emergencies that as marked as an emergency and performing tasks the clients can do. People actually pay us $5 to click the reboot button in SolusVM.
So people actually get charged for "stupid questions"?
I always thought that this is there just to scare off people and make atleast portion of them to check FAQ and announcements before they ask "needless" questions and that way unburden support department, not that actually someone pays unless there's some individual agreement on a case by case basis.
For me it's a sign to quickly find a replacement.
As an unmanaged provider, you'd be very surprised how many people purchase a VPS without any intention of ever logging into it. We've had clients that expected us to run their whole hosting company for them (adding domains, FTP accounts, configuring webmin, etc...).
It got to the point where I HAD to start billing people if they want me to login to SolusVM and click buttons for them because I was spending to much time doing simple tasks that clients are able to do themselves just because the client was to lazy to login and do it (funny enough, it takes less clicks to reboot a VPS than to open a support ticket). And don't think I just invoice them and laugh all the way to the bank. I provide them a step-by-step tutorial first, then try to convince them to do it themselves by explaining how easy it is to do, but in the end I cry a little bit inside that somebody paying less than $1/month for a VPS is willing to spend $5 for me to click the reboot button or click the "Forgot password" link for them.
Now of course, if the reboot button isn't working or there is a genuine error that they cannot fix themselves then I do not invoice them. But it's gotten to the point where "unmanaged" doesn't register for people when they sign up and expect 24x7 fully managed support for $0.50/month. These support fees help weed out those types of people and have been working great!
Here's our "Submit a Ticket" page: https://my.securedragon.net/submitticket.php
It's cut down on the amount of worthless tickets and "stupid questions" a bit but we still get the "where are your servers???" tickets every week which drives me insane.
@KuJoe I'm not currently a client of yours. I checked your ticket page and I do find it quite appropriate.
"... not guaranteed and may incur an Advanced Technical Support Fee (upon the clients approval). "
But I don't like providers who force me to tick a checkbox "I agree to pay admin fees" before/at ticket submission. Why would I "agree" to pay for something that is not even discussed yet? And sometimes it is not very clear whether or not the problem/question is within the boundary of "basic support".
@DalComp, Very true. The only time we invoice a client for a ticket without discussing it first is our "Emergency Support". This because we specifically outline what is, and is not an emergency. If I am waking up at 2AM because you forgot your root password or because you ran "rm -rf *" in the wrong directory, you can expect a $5 invoice .
Here is the wording we use:
@KuJoe, it's fair treatment for emergencies. When I say something is very urgent, I always be prepared to pay for timely resolution on the issue.
Do you get to bill a lot of $5?
Not so much any more luckily. While I love making an easy $5 (I
Fiverr.com), it takes away from other things I could be working on.
If I were non-technical user, it could be more economical to get unmanaged VPS, and just pay for such Admin, rather than get a managed VPS. Specially if things are stable
Got a better one. VirtPanel doesn't provision until they login and pick an OS. When they purchase It and it stays in the list as waiting for them to confirm, I love it. Gonna start sending thank you letters for their donations.
But anyway, if I've given them the tools and they refuse to use them, I just file the ticket away and when I've got time I'll do it. Sometimes I'll respond and let them know, I'm busy but I'll get to it when I can. So something like a reboot of the vps, haven't been asked yet, but I'd be glad to put them at the end of my queue for the day
Obviously I'd act differently if I thought there was a communication issue.
That's true. We do offer advanced tech support for $25/hour but most people decline it when I provide a quote.
That is cheap
The tick box is present for the reasons outlined by kujoe.
I can only think of 1 occasion that it has been fully enforced with disagreement.
Clients have the option to pay for a semi managed service during check out. If you dont take it then open a ticket and flag it as critical for a reboot or os reload then you will be charged and I would not change that.
The same apllies to network issues, I had one customer that just opened ticket after ticket with the word "down"
After telling him his vps was up he said "net down"
Anyway in the end it turned out he was opening 1 - 2 word tickets because he kept going offline at home.......... but the vps was unreachable at the same time.
So the network kb was made and I stand by it, if your going to open a ticket for what is going to take an hour of my time on a self managed service, taking 5 minutes to check the basics is not a big ask as without them things can take longer.
If someone see's a request to apply common sense as a reason to move hosts then I have to agree with that move as they are probably part of the need for the request to begin with.
Anthony.
Isn't that listed on your website? The location of the servers?
I'd guessed it would stop stupid tickets...
What does putting water in front of someone have to do with quenching thirst?
I remember one the unmanaged VPS provider (but they've offered a payed services) I've used had a whole bunch of support tickets categories. From casual free billing/presale cats and including one free technical cat for a questions related directly to VDS services. I.e. unworking services or problems from the provider side.
And a few cats related to a payed services, like script installation, service optimization, etc. And the price was marked right near the category, depending on it (fixed fee for a one-time job or a per-hour fee for others).
If the customer picked the free category instead of payed they've changed the category and asked if the user would like to proceed to pay for the services. As an alternative they also suggested to ask on the community forums if they were seeking for a free support which are not covered by unmanaged VPS.
We do charge customers for late payments, as invoice is generated 20 days before due date and if customer still late by 3 or 5 days of due payment date, I believe the customers had plenty of notice time to pay the invoice!
Not only is it on our website, if you type the words "where" or "locate" in a support ticket it will show you the KB article mentioning the locations before they click the submit button.
Here's a screenshot illustrating that:
Still the most frequently asked question.
Not worth the hassle, people who buy LEBs buy them because they're on a budget, and not going to hand money over willnilly... you can only wish... :-[
I only charged things like unneeded IP changes, if people ask for various actions they can do themselves, i point them to the faq/board and at times even post pictures with the buttons he needs to press highlighted
I dont do the action because this will be asked again next time, so better teach them how to fish.
I wish it was that easy.