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Overdue Payments and Service Suspension
jaimedelano
Member
I am currently utilizing the services of a prominent provider here at LowEndTalk, who has demonstrated consistent reliability and quality service.
But for the last couple months, I've been paying my invoices a day after they're due.
As a result, I was accused of being abusive and I had two servers suspended on the due date, not the day after.
I know I'm wrong in this case, so I won't mention the name of the company.
I'm just wondering how usual it is to suspend a client's server on the due date?
I have the feeling that I'm not welcome anymore.
Comments
some providers have it others dont, just pay your bills
What’s the issue with paying on time? Just imagine if your employer delayed your paycheck by a couple of weeks - would that be acceptable to you?
It depends on the company and the client, but at the end of the day, hardware, bandwidth, and services all cost money - there’s no such thing as a free ride, despite what some clients might believe.
When you run a small business without financing and rely solely on the profits from your business, problems like these can arise.
I'm talking about suspending the service on the due date, not the next day, as you might expect.
They should just charge late payment fees (that could be waived the first time if it was just an oversight).
Some companies do that, not just small companies, some other types of service providers do that too, IP providers licences ect.
I always find it best to pay 48 hours before when possible, then if you have an issue such as your payment is processed and fails to register on your account, your card issuer flags it and holds the payment until you talk with them you have time to resolve it.
According to your timezone or their system timezone?
did you notify ahead of time that there will be delay in payment?
did you work/discuss on potentially moving the due date to make it easier for you?
or did you only open a ticket AFTER the due date?
As far as I know and I could be wrong, I think the general time to suspend is between 1 day to 3 days post due date. Which is understandable in most situations.
Doing it multiple times might be going a bit too far, you should talk to your provider and explain the situation.
Make sure to backup your data always if you think you are going to be in these situations.
To suspend on the due date, in my opinion, is wrong.
If the service is a day or two overdue, and the customer makes no attempt to contact said provider to see if they can help (sometimes, people need a few extra days to arrange funds - it happens), then fair enough - a suspension is the right thing to do.
A lot of providers are we know have some form of buffer. Like suspension after 3-5 days over due and termination 3-5 days after that…
I am unsure of your locale or your providers locale but keep in mind time zones are a thing. What is for you “due date” might be your providers “overdue”.
Hey,
Some companies give you extra time, some don't. I personally give about 2 days for people to renew as life gets in the way and people forget, but some don't like any delay and suspend it on the due date. However I believe that if it happened to you multiple times (having your service suspended on due date multiple times), I believe it becomes your responsibility to renew it at least a day before due date so that something doesn't come up in your daily life which ends up making you forget to renew it on due date.
About the part of feeling not welcomed anymore, it might depend really. Some companies don't care if you pay on time so maybe try that for a while and see if anything changes.
We give our clients 5days of grace after the due date before we suspend. I think that is pretty standard. Things happen people get busy and forget.
Thanks,
Ryan
I think every provider I managed to forgot pay a bill over the years is suspending at the end (theirs time) of a due day.
We deactivate servers 12 hours after the due date. That said, we give customers a 3-day grace period to pay the invoice — and once it’s paid, the VPS is automatically reactivated without any extra steps.
In my opinion that’s a good way to do it, but I can also understand hosts that directly suspend a Server at the due date.
I always set up auto pay or just add some balance to my service, it's a safer option. All of the hostings I use suspend my services at then end of the due day if I don't pay it. And if don't pay it in 3 days, they delete the data and prevent me from renewing them
As a result, I was accused of being abusive and I had two servers suspended on the due date, not the day after.
What is their actual policy? Calling it abusive is eyeroll-tier though.
Pay your bills on time, and move out.
The service due date is April 4th and it was suspended this very day, around 9pm UTC.
I had planned to do it two days earlier, but I ended up forgetting.
Then the servers were suspended on the due date, before I could do it.
Maybe they're short on cash, just like me, and wants to move the servers to another client ASAP.
I get it, and I'll make sure it doesn't happen again.
Their policy is a bit vague.
The terms of use don't mention suspension or cancellation due to late payment.
If you're consistently 1-2 days late with paying your invoice, why haven't you just submitted a billing ticket to ask for the recurring due date to be pushed back another 2 days?
I've done this multiple times with a handful providers and they've always been happy to help (occasionally creating an extra invoice to pay for covering the days between). With WHMCS it seems to be fairly simple to do at least, considering I've never had a provider tell me "no".
I only know of one provider that suspends on the due date, but they were fine with changing my due date to one day later on all future invoices after a quick ticket.
I don't know if it was us but in any case we also act this way maybe even “worse,” if the customer does not pay the bill by the due date the next day at 00:01 the service is automatically suspended.
It is important to pay one's bills on time and perhaps set up an automatic payment method so that one has more peace of mind.
How many days before the due date do you get your invoice? How many reminders do you get between the invoice sending date and the due date?
Not normal for sure. Usually it's just late fees or 3-5 days grace.
We used to allow 5 days, we found people would then hammer bandwidth in that 5 days, then ignore the late invoice, order a new service and start the process again, never respecting the due dates, late fees just abuse it as much as they could, if you question it they then dispute payments with Paypal/card claiming not as described to get all money back then they are off to target another peovider
I expect no more than 24 hours, but I've been lucky once when a payment method expired and the host sent me a late reminder 2 days after due.
But I also pay occasionally in crypto, which obviously has no auto payments so I've become more vigilant and started putting renewals in a calendar.
If you have been doing it again and again, then you deserve to get booted. Have backups.