Friday Hosing

Fri Jul 12 16:04:56 UTC 2013

The biggest grievance I have is in regards to carriers with automatic contract renewals. Combined with the fact that these carriers either refused to allow month to month billing or will allow it at double / triple current rates, coordinating disconnection of older services while turning up new services with a different carrier in the same time frame can be a real challenge.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that one does not simply resolve carrier billing issues - I've had multiple incidents which took almost a year to resolve.

I personally think that the automatic renewal of a three year term should be criminal. The same goes for price increases while I'm under a contract rate - Apparently as long as there is a provision in the small print (which is able to be changed at will, due to the small print referencing a document on the carrier's website), be ready to pay more whenever the carrier dictates, regardless of what your contract says.

Typing this was somewhat therapeutic.

-----Original Message-----
From: Alain Hebert [mailto:ahebert at pubnix.net] 
Sent: Friday, July 12, 2013 10:45 AM
To: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Friday Hosing

Is it me or the bigger a corporation gets the more vindictive (a b-word
intended) they are to customers leaving them?

------

One of my *new* customer was caught by the local "monopole" into moving their domain/site/emails/phone/oxygen supply/etc to them.

But when the usual grace period stopped and they started receiving invoices that would make a loan shark go: "are you insane?!?", they decided to move.

After a somewhat pleasant call to the "monopole" informing them that they are planning to divorce them in 30 days, and that it was clearly stated that since they are paying for those additional 30 days that their services wont be cut off...

 15 minutes later.  Boom.  No domain, no site, no emails...

 After a rather stern call, they get their domain up, no site...

 After another rather stern call, they get their site up, no emails...

 After another rather stern call, they get... no emails.

 "Oh its 17:01, our support is closed for day.  Is there anything else I can help you with?"

On top of it that "monopole" has for their procedure to let the 5 days "AUTO-ACK" expire when they are asked to transfer a domain away from them.
( They are a reseller of tucows, and PS: it is not Tucows fault.  That 5 days 'AUTO-ACK" process is there because of corporation acting like that "monopole" )

Good thing I was able to get back into their account earlier this morning and recreate their emails...

Now lets hope they don't do this again until my customer get his domain back in its hands.

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Alain Hebert                                ahebert at pubnix.net   
PubNIX Inc.        
50 boul. St-Charles
P.O. Box 26770     Beaconsfield, Quebec     H9W 6G7
Tel: 514-990-5911  http://www.pubnix.net    Fax: 514-990-9443