Cancellations Difficult?

Here at Hawk Host we’ve noticed the art of canceling a service you’re paying for is a forgotten art.  With the introduction if Paypal as a common payment method for many services such as web hosting users are not seeing a reason to official cancel their service.  With web hosting for the host it is not worth the effort to go after the few dollars the customer owed for not canceling the service.  Paypal has provided a great service, but this is the one issue with it is the users now choose when to pay and can cancel a subscription whenever they wish.

At Hawk Host every month we deal with a three types of cancellations.

1)  The user logs into the client area and selects to cancel their package.  These are the former customers we like.  They have the etiquette to cancel the service.  As a result once the account is terminated we can easily fill the void with a new customer in no time.

2. The user does not cancel and moves their site to a new provider.  In these cases we let our automated system suspend their account then within a month the account is terminated from our servers.  This is absolutely the worst case scenario we can have.  We have a non paying user using space on one of our servers with no intention of coming back as far as we know.  We do not terminate the account instantly due to the work involved in doing so.  We let our automated systems handle it and we have a close to 30 day waiting period for the 3rd cancellation scenario.

3. The user does not cancel their service, however they continue to have their websites pointed at our servers.  These ones are especially tough to deal with since the user has not move their site they have simply failed to pay their invoice.  We give them 30 days and a few will actually eventually pay, but most will have their accounts terminated and in some cases these could be reseller accounts with 30+ accounts.  These are the cases where we wished the user choose credit card or a method we can automatically charge them.

I thought this was worth sharing since I know several people visit our blog.  So remember if you are using a service that has a recurring fee remember to be polite and cancel the service!  Don’t just run away without paying.  You never know there may be a company who will go after you for the funds then you could be in big trouble.