Of the little amount of college I went to I actually really enjoyed my business classes. Anyway from one of them a saying has always stuck in my mind. “It was not what happened but its how they made you feel that you remember”. This is soooo true. For instance ThePlanet web hosting recently screwed up and not only did not deliver on time but really seemed to be over there head configuring our servers. Now bad stuff happens….. but the fact they never called us mixed with the fact when I called for updates I could never get passed tier 1 people really made me feel uncomfortable and basically like I was screwed.
I canceled all the servers that we had ordered and instead we got our own mini data center now and purchased our own hardware. Now a few days ago one of the managers called my cellphone and basically left a pretty nasty message about me canceling after they went wayyyyy out of there way to accommodate us and crap. This really made me feel pissed off.
So now because of the way Theplanet Hosting made me feel they will be loosing about 150K/year in hosting fees. BUT meantime even with purchasing all our own servers and paying for top quality tier 1 bandwidth we will save a TON of money and are set going forward.
This leaves me with something I will be covering in the next few days (autopost cause i will be traveling) called “Be careful giving users a reason to swtich”
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2689 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Jeremy "ShoeMoney" Schoemaker is the founder & CEO of the ShoeMoney Blog, Elite Retreat Internet Conference, & the PAR Program. In 2013 Jeremy released his #1 Amazon Best selling Autobiography titled "Nothing's Changed But My Change" - The ShoeMoney Story. Jeremy currently lives in Lincoln Nebraska with his wife and 2 daughters.
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{ 48 comments… read them below or add one }
Boy that’s a loss for them. Not only are they losing your $150K, but also are getting one heck of a black eye over the deal. Not how I would have handled the situation if I were in their shoes.
Excellent post Shoe! It’s a great reminder about how brands are built and how they ultimately survive. Not only are they losing $150k a year in your cancelled business, but they’re also losing future business you would have generated for them through word-of-mouth. They would be well served to revisit their customer service methodology and processes going forward.
Thor summed it pretty well. ThePlanet REALLY screwed up on this one. Hosting companies can be so fickle. It’s either heaven or hell on earth with ‘em (all).
So true. Big accounts need to be handled carefully by these businesses. They are the “bread-and-butter” that they can brag about when trying to attract other customers. Big loss and stupid decision for The Planet.
I’ve also had less than wonderful service experiences with ThePlanet in the past. On the flip side, there is another host, that although a bit heavier on price, bent over backwards with service and kept my business for the past 6 years.
Service is everything (almost).
150k loss per-year and they couldn’t have given a shit about you, that’s terrible. Glad to know they don’t just treat us smaller clients crappy equal opportunity losers I guess.
SoftLayer has been AWESOME!
I recall how you recommended them on your “recs” page. I agree with the posts above, given how popular your blog is and how well your opinion is respected, they stand to lose more than the $150k per year.
I too heard this in college & was reminded of it by Seth Godin the other day:
“How’s this for a 98% rule: By a factor of three, what you do is not nearly as important as how it makes people feel.” – http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/04/the_most_import.html
Hopefully that manager at ThePlanet will get a chance to read your post.
I dont understand why they did this to you? The Customer is always the Boss.
Is $150k a big account in America? In the UK thats not a huge account although I appreciate US hosting is a lot cheaper.
Interesting about the nasty message, why not turn the screw further by publishing the voicemail
How many servers do you need Shoe?
$12,500/mo. hosting seems quite expensive to me. Considering I run a website with 80-100k uniques per day with 20mbps and other sites for $600/mo.
I imagine AuctionAds on it’s own already needs 3-4 servers if not more (not counting backup).
This cant be good for ThePlanet Hosting. My oh my.
It’s probably for auctionads which will require pretty much 100% guaranteed uptime while serving millions of impressions per day.
Oh man, some people.
I TOTALLY agree with what you posted. And guess what..
You just saved yourself a world of hassle down the track too.
Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and go with common sense. Never easy in scenarios like this, but hey, sounds like a solid decision.
The trick now is ensuring you have the talent on board to oversee the brix and boxes.
Gutsy move, I hope you’ll publish both the good and bad
You spend 150/K a year on hosting fees!!!
Damn that’s some serious business you got going on there. No wonder the guy at theplanet was pissed. Well serves him right.
The true color of a businessman comes out in the losses he makes, not the profits.
That is so true.. It is all about the experience. Good Job!
Wow, that’s a big move. So you’re hosting your own servers now?
Shoe, so you are hosting with ipHouse in MN now? How’d you find those guys – never heard of them before?
Sounds like their loss is your gain…. but honestly since you have a lot of people reading your blog i am sure they will lose more business or not gain more…
At the very least you have to call a guy and let him know that you’re having problems. The hosting I use, where I pay $25/mo, calls me whenever there’s a problem and that’s for $25/mo!
Plus think of all the people who would move to ThePlanet if Shoe wrote about good experiences with them. Not many folks can push the traffic he can and if ThePlanet can handle it, it can handle a much smaller site.
It happens, I owned my own webhosting company a long time ago and the server place ended up not updating their billing and wiped out over 250 clients information i lost it all
When you absolutely always have to be up…. you need that level of redundancy. While $150k/yr seems like a lot, it’s not when you make multiples of that in profit… you know?
That is really harsh. Its a risk with server companies. Its great to host your own but in the beginning unless you doing a lot of business it gets pricey.
While it sucks to have to do something outside your own schedule, I think running your own servers is the best next step and something you probably wanted to do, but were putting off, in the near future anyway.
Well said Thor, it is there own fault. You don’t treat customers like that, ESPECIALLY big customers, screw um!
Godaddy calls for me $7 domains that are coming up for renewal, I’d think $150K got somebodies attention. At this price, you can hire somebody to monitor this situation and call Shoe every hour to give updates.
Question to Jeremy – are you guys co-locating with Auctionads now? If so, how is it cheaper to buy all of your own hardware and rent space at a DC over say renting equipment at the planet, savvis, or databank?
Cant believe you are getting a mini data center, stick it to the big man and save your money!
Ya I’d imagine the person who called Shoe all pissed off will either be looking for a new job or not getting an early promotion.. Then again the company may just not care..
Kinda hard to give updates when your report is uhhh noone here knows how to setup the servers the way you asked ummm.. so ya…. *click*
I think they are just to big for their own britches really.. ahh well easy come easy go I suppose
Ya I would actually be interested in getting a few laughs out of that one, who knows it might go viral :p
Honestly they probably won’t really feel it, down the road Im sure they will regret it but its not really going to ruin their company either
OUCH.. what did you do ?
Probably less middle men .. If a company pays out 10k in expenses they have to make a good profit margin so they may charge 12k or even 20k for the same service… Likely Shoe is spending more upfront with less costs down the line
This is a good reminder to always treat the customer well. Sometimes clients can be hard to manage, this is a good example of the always think of the client first.
Nice post.
It’s all about relationships, no matter what. My Dad owns his own engineering practice, and even if he barely knows a guy that calls him he talks to him for like 30 minutes and builds a relationship. He says that is why he is so successfull; is because the relationship he builds with people
HA! im actually shopping for a dedicated server right now…
That is horrible.
Couldn’t agree more.
A friend of mine is having some trouble with his web-host at the moment.
He’s getting a 412 error in his HTTP headers – which means Google isn’t indexing one of his clients’ web-sites
To make things worse (or funnier – you choose) he can’t get past Tier 1 Tech Support.
Here’s a quote from their “Live Help”
Tech Support “OK. What goes after the ‘/’ ?”
Client “Nothing! The problem’s on the HOMEPAGE!”
lol
very true. might not be the best service, but if they make you feel good you’ll stick with them over asshats
…and not to take ANYTHING for granted.
Good for you. That’s what you should do. If they suck, take your business elsewhere. After all, you are the one paying them.
As weird as this may sound, I’ve always felt that I’d rather get screwed but think I was getting a good deal than get a good deal and feel like I was getting screwed.
I know of another site that just dropped thePlanet because they sent him an outragous bill.
I was wondering what is the biggest adsense check you have received to date…I think john should do the google whores post and update it for 2007…ran into some sites I know are making good money off of google adsense.