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From the archives - wow, what a deadpool
raindog308
Administrator, Veteran
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/archive/index.php/t-861850.html
Guy was dumb the way he went about things but still...ouch.
Comments
Interesting reading from @KuJoe there
Wow, crazy! Seriously, I don't know how I'd deal with thousands in debt like that.
What good timing. Just as I get back into the free web hosting market.
Dang @KuJoe. Respect.
Wow. Excellent read. Really makes me think about what I am about to get into. Though we are starting with our own servers, there is always that possibility that we will outgrow our local DC and have to move our equipment. I wonder how many customers you would actually lose over an IP addressing change; would probably be worth it to leave the servers running at the first place and just add at a new DC.
Well, if it were me, I'd keep the local DC and just expand, not completely move. Leave well enough alone
And if you own your own IPs/AS, there wouldn't be an IP addressing change.
Nice reading.
How do you actually prevent/identify fraudulent credit card uses?
@KuJoe but your business is much better now? not too much taxing on your time?
With ID verification and calling, but still they can use a good photoshopped ID w/ VOIP.
There is usually red flags though, an email address that doesn't match, an IP address that is listed as an open proxy, etc. or a John Smith from Alabama who runs a vietnamese forum.
We lost about 10% of our client base during our transition and we had what I'd almost call a "perfect move". Keep that in mind when/if you transfer clients.
Very interesting read, knowing that this sort of thing can happen is exactly why I took the safe and steady approach.
While some may scoff at mostly leased hardware etc they are usually the ones who either had a huge bank roll to get started or who have never dared try anything outside of the 9-5 life themselves.
I am pleased I took the approach I did, it was safer for me and my customers, it has allowed a solid base to be formed for growth.
It is hard sometimes on a personal level when all you are trying to do is help/fix things/look after people and some people think that paying €6 every 6 months gives them the right to drag you through the dirt and be generally insulting but once you learn to move past that and realise it is just human nature it gets easier.
I have lost a few clients during a DC move of 20 miles but that was out of my control, I also lost a number of clients when a raid card failed and it is hard to take on a personal level but I think the one things that summed it up for me was one of @miTgiB usual one line silencers when he said something along the lines of "Your not paying for enterprise stop pretending you are" during a network issue he was having.
This was a turning point to some degree for me which allowed a bit more balance in my head, in short if you buy a VPS from me I promise I will do my best for you, if you ignore the terms, the AUP, the email that repeats key points, the knowledge base, the SLA and general common sense and assume your £2 p/month buys you a self healing SAN based cloud service with IP fail-over and DDOS protection and then complain when that is not what you get..... I also promise I will not be dedicating much time to appeasing you either. again as @miTgiB said "What makes you think putting the glass of water down in front of someone means they are going to drink it"
Few paraphrased quotes above.
While that might all sound a bit over the top in places the reality is when looking deeper in to it, Only about 10% of all customers ever require support and only a small percentage of that 10% ever cause any real drama without cause but it is that small percent of a small percent that can send you to bed at night with chest pains
and once you realise that things become easier when starting out in this industry and while I may spend a lot of time here not a huge percentage of my customers are from LET/B these days.
@AnthonySmith Nice to read your experience as well
Yes,people make noise in planned maintenance even.
Nice post, @AnthonySmith, so right you are
Also, kudos for @KuJoe posting his story like that (even though it was years back)!
This is a lesson on why to start a limited-liability company before dropping into this sort of deal. If something unexpected happens, you can declare the company bankrupt, without going bankrupt yourself. (assuming you've been running the company correctly)
For details, see here...
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/bankruptcy/20080408-LLC-bankruptcy-a1.asp
In practice that doesn't work because no lender is going to extend credit to a small company with little or no assets, so you end up personally guaranteeing and...
I think you accidentally a verb.
Over half your customers.
Too much caffeine. Fixed.
In practice that doesn't work because no lender is going to extend credit to a small company with little or no assets, so you end up personally guaranteeing and...
Sure. But he would have been only personally responsible for the equipment loan. Likely, his colocation provider / hosting costs would have to deal with a bankrupt company. He'd have to pay back the bank for the equipment lease, but he wouldn't have to finish his lease to his hosting provider.
He could have also gone for much smaller loans (ie: a few servers and a quarter-rack) funded by a much smaller equipment loan. He certainly wasn't gonna get an $80k loan from the bank immediately, but if he built up some business credit first and more slowly built up some business assets, there would have been very little personal risk involved.