OMG.. $500 Hosting Bill?!!

So i should just pay the whopping $500 bill? OMFG.

 

I dont think $1/GB is bad for an overage. Many companies charge much more than that.

You can either pay and learn from this building checks and balance into your business, or not pay and have them hunt you down for the money adding the legal fees.

Even though the charge does seem high, eveyone seems to forget that you used 455GB more than the service you requested. Prorate that and it is less than a lot of charges companies use.

Easy way around this is to setup your accounts to have bandwidth limits on them when you create them in WHM.

 

1$ per GB is prbably like 20+ times the a amount it actually costs them.

Its extortionate.

I would send them an email first and explain that you think its extortionate and unfair. Just say you have no intention of paying and continuing to use there services if they are being brutal about it.

How long have you been with them?

If you have been with them sevral months I am pretty sure they will come to some negotiation.

They stand to make like 440$ from that charge. Its stupid and I wouldnt pay despite your negligence.

 

Honestly speaking,just because of $500usd they are willing to take someone overseas to court?
The legal fees are much more than that

 

The thing is that you would be the one responsible to go where they file. If you dont show up, you automatically default and have a judgement placed on you. They may also just send it to a collection agency. Eitherway it will hit your credit rating if you dont pay.

I suggest contacting them and trying to work out a deal. They most liekly will work with you to lower the charge, to keep your business. Have you tried to talk to them yet?

 

I havnt.Obviously they will say the usual stuff like "please pay your bill or blah blah,legal action will be taken,blah blah"

 

You dont know until you ask. Time to take the initiative on this issue.

 

omg...500$ for hosting ??? i think they're crazy ! so what will you do ? will you pay this bill?

 

The most unhelpful post ever. Read what has previously been posted in this thread.

Anyway, just contact them. I think they will be willing to work somethign out.

Part payment is always a benefit

 

lol.part payment i still have to pay $500.

 

Well, if you used that much bandwidth, that means you have traffic, you must have made a good deal with all that traffic. Just call them...

 

Well I have personally been a Servint customer and they always provided the best service. Why don't you just ask them if you could pay the bill in equal amounts in let's say 5 months. That's $100 or so every month. I am sure you can come to an agreement.

 

I would contact them if you dont ask you dont get. yeah $500 does seem alot i would contact them telling them what you have told us they may just say pay it all they may say something else you wont no unless you ask!

 

Well, typically only a hosted virtual account has the ability to be suspended by the control panel such as Cpanel but a VPS will not have restrictions. Allowing your VPS to consume as much bandwidth as you need allows you not to have the embarrassment of having your clients see that 'suspended for bandwidth usage' message which can be bad for business.

Servint is a fair company and a great one which I had the pleasure to work with. If your sites did not use that much bandwidth, it is possible that either your VPS got hacked or under some kind of attack. Perhaps you could have them recheck your VPS again for vulnerability.

By the way, what are you running on the VPS anyways ?

 

If that's the case, then it sounds like the contact e-mail for that account should have been notified and the account suspended when it hit the limit, because that's the way WHM usually works.

You can tell them that you set the transfer limit and it didn't work to see if they'll have pity. But even if you set it right, you're still responsible for what happens on the VPS, so buggy software is probably still your problem.

$1/GB is not unreasonable. Obviously it's more than they pay, and more than you'd pay if you had a higher-capacity plan, but every host does that.

 

Since I run a dedicated hosting company, I probably have a unique perspective on situations like this, and I do have a few comments.

First, I'm sure you agreed to the bandwidth overage fees when you signed up for service. I'm sure it's in their ToS. I have seen prices between $0.25 - $3.00 per GB on overage, so I really don't think that $1 per GB is all that bad, especially considering the quality of ServInt's network. We charge between $0.50 - $1.00 on overage, depending on the type of service the customer has, which we have found is about the industry average.

Second, you could have prevented the entire situation - all you have to do is check your bandwidth graphs once or twice a week - it would take all of 5 minutes and you could have prevented this entire situation.

Third, you are wondering why they didn't just "shut you down" when you hit your cap - if I shut my dedicated/vps type customers down for hitting their bandwidth limit, they would go through the roof and cancel service. Most people who see enough value in their website to host on a VPS or dedicated server rely on that site for income, and when the machine gets shut off, they make no money. People ask me all the time why they should spend more to host their site on a dedicated server or VPS. I tell them every time to figure out how much money they would lose if their site went down for couple of days, then spend about that amount on a hosting solution. If you site makes $100 a day, it's not unreasonable to spend $300 a month to get a hosting solution that will ensure your site stays up 99.9% of the time.

Fourth, bandwidth overages are very expensive for webhosts. When you are negotiating a commercial contract with an ISP for big-time connectivity, you usually have a committed bandwidth rate ($xx per Mbps) and an overage bandwidth rate ($yy per Mpbs). In my experience, your overage rate will be 25-50% higher than your committed rate. Although I'm sure your 500GB of overage didn't by itself push them over their committed rate, if they had 100 customers do that, it almost certainly would. That's why it's cheaper to buy the bandwidth BEFORE you use it - your provider can then adjust their commit with their providers accordingly, and everyone is happy. When you just use it as overage, it's more expensive for them, so the price is higher both to cover their likely higher costs and to encourage users to commit to a proper amount of bandwidth beforehand, which is the way they are forced to do it.

Finally, if you stiff them for the bill they will likely send you to collections. Plus, although these laws are rarely enforced, due to the high amount of the bill (over $500) you may be guilty of several crimes depending on the state in which ServInt chooses to pursue you in (i.e. larceny, grand larceny, theft by deception, among others). Not to mention the fact that it's a dishonest act to effectively steal service, which is what you not paying the bill is tantamount to. For me, being a small operation, if someone stiffs me on a $500 bill, they are effectively taking $500 worth of food out of the mouths of my family. It might not be quite the same with ServInt since they are a larger company than we are, but still they provided you service in good faith that you would pay them - the honest and right thing to do it so follow through on your end of the contract as well.

I can't speak for ServInt, but we have in the past been willing to work with customers when they have gone over their bandwidth allocations. Generally, we will allow them to upgrade their bandwidth allowance retroactively for 1 month as long as they agree to keep it at that rate for at least 3 months. Other customers will upgrade from shared hosting / VPS to dedicated, and we'll make them a deal on the overage as part of the upgrade. My point is, ask them to work with you, but realize it's going to be a give and take situation.

 

if I ran a hosting company and someone stiffed me $500, I would take all the info on the websites that I was hosting for them and auction it off to cover the costs,

 

oh, and $1 for overage BW is not expensive, I have been looking at VPS and it averages that, and not many say they will alert you when you are nearing your overage

 

pay it to avoid trouble, its not worth the fight trust me.

 

You should pay this bill. They can create a lot of grief for you if you try to bail and move your site somewhere else. You will have extreme difficulty finding hosting for your domain until the issue is resolved.

I note that servint offers a VPSpro Deuce produict, which gives you the bandwidth you need. Perhaps you could negotiate an upgrade and get some relief on the amount due.

However, since you are using that much bandwidth, already using a VPS, and probably earning some sort of revenue from the site, I would investigate dedicated server options. There are several very good companies and the monthly bill could be less. They do charge for extra bandwidth and you should just pay those bills if you want to run a bandwidth intensive site. It is the cost of playing the game.

With a dedicated server, you could probably manage the move before you run into overages. However, you probably need to give servint some kind of notice to get out of the contract, in which case the account upgarde makes the most sense. Then find a new company to deal with if you remain unhappy with servint.