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How Much Notice is Reasonable When Discontinuing VPS Service to a Customer?
I have been following a thread on LowEndTalk where GreenValueHost decided to discontinue VPS services for certain customers. The customers were not abusing their VPSs or other shared resources. GreenValueHost decided to change their Acceptable Use Policy. Those customers had businesses and websites that were acceptable before the change, but were in violation of the new AUP.
GreenValueHost gave customers seven days to leave GreenValueHost. Customers were given the option to open a ticket and have their accounts transferred to another provider (HVH). The terms of the transfer (rates, continuation of pre-paid service, etc.) were not described.
I feel that seven days notice is not fair, sufficient, or reasonable to terminate customer VPSs when they are not abusing or impacting other customers. I argued that 60 days would have been a fair and reasonable period after notification. This way, customers would have sufficient time to learn about the policy change, gather information, determine a course of action, implement their choice, and troubleshoot whatever problems might arise as a result.
For reasons that I do not fully understand, the LowEndTalk thread never popped back to the top, even when new posts appeared. Here is a link:
After reading the discussion in the thread above, what do you think? How much time is reasonable notice under similar circumstances?
Comments
Unless stated in a binding agreement like the terms of service, it's entirely subjective.
Realistically with these small 'toy' hosts, you should expect a timeframe like seven days. For a more practical general timeframe, a month.
To be completely honest ...
When we discontinue clients, for real reasons - it is either an instant discontinuation of services (if the customer abuses his service/violates our TOS) or we will discontinue the contract on his next due date.
However, TOS documents should not be changed severely in my opinion. You can't say "hey, host your porn here!" and next month decide you are against it. That should have been said in the beginning.
Therefore, I think 60 days as you said, is not appropriate either. Maybe, 30 days, not much more though.
It really depends on what you put in your TOS. I know our one ensures that we give 14 days for any price changes, and its the minimum I would expect to give you any clients if we had to discontinue a service.
I think you should be treated by the old TOS until there is a new invoice and you implicitly accept the new TOS by paying the new invoice.
Changing the rules for the service you already prepaid for is wrong. A contract is a contract.
I think legacy products should be covered by the old ToS. Sure, that is not practical when the law changes, for example, but, in general, if possible, old customers should be allowed to continue using their products until the billing cycle started before the announcement of the ToS change ends.
@rsk @Maounique @rds100 you guys are assuming OP bought services from an actual provider but he actually did so from a 16 year old schoolboy who plays a game called hosting-hosting with a few servers.
@vpslegend if that is the case and @emg knowingly bought servcice from a minor, he has no legal binding contract as the kid's mom always has precedence over any "contracts" the kid accepts
The service could end at any time, without any warning and without any particular reason.
Well, a kid playing a game is still doing some hosting, here we do not talk about specific cases, but in general, collect some views, get an idea. I put up my opinion, others did the same we will never have a standard, of course, big or small hosts, will weight in the potential damage and the costs to continue to support the legacy customers and decide, the rest is PR.
7 days sounds good - it should be enough time for you to notice the discontinued email and backup your server. If not i'd say you open a ticket and work out a deal with explaination of why you cannot migrate in the given time, any reasonable provider will understand and try to work with you.
Clarification: I have never been a customer of GreenValueHost. I did not know that the owner of GreenValueHost is a minor. I did not know that GreenValueHost was a "toy" provider. I did not know whether they are large or small, and it should not matter with regard to this issue.
I was bothered by several things:
The short amount of notice given to customers in good standing, who had built businesses and websites dependent on GreenValueHost.
GreenValueHost appeared to show no appreciation for the loyalty and business that the affected customers had given them while GreenValueHost was growing, before the change of policy. They rewarded their customers by dumping them with seven days notice.
The apparent hypocrisy of GreenValueHost taking a moral stance regarding their Acceptable Use Policy, yet not showing any concern for the impact of their actions or respect for their own customers. As I said in the original thread, "If you know that someone is bad person who is doing something wrong, you cannot claim moral superiority if you ambush them in a dark corner and attack them with a baseball bat when they are helpless."
The fact that the thread dropped out of sight for no apparent reason. I sent a message to @mpkossen with a request that the thread be allowed to pop up to the top while comments continued, but there was no response.
Time is not really relevant with GVH, whether you like it or not Jonny does not run a business, a trusted service or does he follow his own Terms. He operates to his own rules and changes them to suit his situation/problems.
No it's not right however that's the way it is. However hard it may be you need to move on and leave them and any thoughts about them behind you.
Good advice. I would have done that if I had not invested time in writing my original comments. I was frustrated that the thread dropped out of sight, without giving my comments their fair chance to be seen and read.
Now that I have been able to pop this issue to the top of the list, and have been given a chance where other members may take notice if they so choose, I will let it go. Others are free to comment, and I will respond where appropriate, but I have no need to beat it into the ground.
Why are they in such a hurry?
I certainly would not want to host my stuff with a company that gives a 7 days notice about a change of terms and tries to tell me what is immoral. Especially the latter is unacceptable.
30-60 days or end of billing term sound ok.
IMO the notice period should be what ever the minimum purchase term is i.e. 1 month, anyone that has paid for service beyond that should be entitled to a refund for the remaining part there of.
30 days is more than enough time for anyone to find and migrate to an alternate host and with the refund of the remaining time given on application prior to the termination date the fund to move as well, if you are on rolling monthly then that is a moot point.
That's what I think anyway.
That is very generous, and yes, I believe there should be a win-win solution between customers and providers in such a situation as you stated above.
This way the majority of customers remain happy, and the provider keep his good standing.
I think 15 days is the perfect amount of time. Half a month is more than enough to find a new provider and migrate.
Problem is a lot of DC's are finding adult content to be increasingly bad for business. I don't really have any issues with adult content as long as it's legal. I host a few legal adult websites and don't have any issues with it.
@emg Do your research before running your mouth please. Jon doesn't own GreenValueHost, he just has a large role in managing it. He's a minor, yes, however he's very open about it. GreenValueHost is a registered Illinois-based corporation owned by Lance Jessurun, our currently active and serving CEO. Jon does not have any ownership in the company.
Check the Illinois public database of corporations & LLCs and search for our name.
We're not a "toy" provider. We've been open for more than two years and serve thousands of customers.
We haven't gotten rid of anyone's data that has violated the policy. At most, they've been suspended and have been given a chance to back up their data and move it elsewhere. If they happen to choose to migrate to HVH, we cover that and its done for free.
You've been educated many times on the truth of the matter that Jon doesn't own the company and that the company is registered, yet you continue attempts at spreading lies. This leads me to believe that you are mentally unfit to be a part of society and require assistance. (My personal opinion, not the company's)
It is the opinion of the company that 7 days is sufficient as at least 75% of our clients with pornographic content on our servers have dedicated servers with us. Their entire account can be transferred to HVH and no migration would be needed. As for the rest of our client base using VMs, they can be transferred within 12 hours of them ticketing into our helpdesk. The sooner the better, and most of all its free and easy.
Fuck off
I gladly will if you'd stop spreading lies. Just because Jon isn't part of this forum anymore doesn't mean there won't be anyone that takes a hard stance on stomping out false information. I actually get paid bonuses to do so.
Blah blah blah blah. We know you're actually Jon. Stop with the bullcrap.
Fair enough. Your corrections are noted, but not particularly relevant to this discussion. If you read my statement carefully, I stated simply that I was unaware of the "facts" asserted by others, and repeated those erroneous "facts". The essential question is:
**What does that have to do with how GreenValueHost treated the customers who were affected by GreenValueHost's policy change?
**
Okay, you have not destroyed your customers' data, but you did cut off their operations on seven days notice.
GreenValueHost has not explained why the rush? Not once have you addressed that question, which is the whole point of this thread.
What was so important that you could not give your customers a modicum of respect and offer them a fair and reasonable period of time to deal with the change of policy?
Whats the discussion here? Contract is contract, if you prepaid it the Tos change is simply invalid (at least in Europe, i doubt that this differs much in the US)
I'd expect 30 days, thus 1 month. 60 is too much, 15- is not enough.
Exactly. If your host tells you something is immoral... leave. Quickly.
I'm ready to bet this is Jon himself, the pathetic liar & well known scammer
As much as possible, failing that whatever you outlined in your ToS/SLA.
Agree 100% .. this is the only right answer in this thread.
@Nekki , come on man..