Friday Hosing

Sat Jul 13 09:09:28 UTC 2013

On 7/12/13, Jean-Francois Mezei <jfmezei_nanog at vaxination.ca> wrote:
> On 13-07-12 11:44, Alain Hebert wrote:
> 1- You call to make cancellation on date X. Speak to person 1.
> 2- Wait 20 minutes

In a theoretical ideal world,   that would probably work fine,   but a
request for  "Shut off service effective the 15th" is just asking for
trouble;   with many large providers,  making a request like that is
very likely to be misinterpreted or result in unintended early
shutoff.

Some providers,  even if they understand the request, may choose not
to entertain a request more complicated than "Cancel immediately";
they may agree to cancel at date X,  then things get terminated
immediately,   and their  terms of service probably contains a rule
that the provider   may  end service  at their discretion, without
notice    with the payment for the rest of the  same subscription term
  following date X still being due.

Their account terms also probably specify required binding
arbitration,  and liability limited to hosting fees,   and the
subscription cost -- a few dollars to be recovered for a few days
extra downtime  is not likely to  exceed the filing fees that would be
required for any sort of court actions.

If the  domain contains critical resources,   you  have new hosting
setup,  before you even think about cancelling old hosting.

You make sure the DNS servers point to reliable name service
provider(s)  who will continue to provide DNS hosting,  and you  make
sure the  domain registration is under your full control   with full
access to all settings, and no provider listed as Admin contact..

Best practice would be
Only  after you secured all those things and updated  A records   to
point to new hosting provider,  should  the  original provider be
contacted with a  request to "cancel"  the web hosting  or particular
service cancelled.

This is a case of:   pay significantly  more  (multiple providers a
short time)  in order to greatly reduce risk   ----   whereas,
asking a provider to cancel at date X, and avoiding overlap ---
significantly reduces cost  while greatly increasing risk of  a  24-48
hour outage.

> 3- Call again, speak to person 2, confirm your services will be
> cancelled on date X and that you have already paid for services until
> then. (or that an invoice has already been produced or will be produced.)
--
-JH