Why do we ask subscribers to extend the server rental or notify about the refusal until the 20th day of the last paid month
Not so long ago, this important question arose once again:
Today I decided to answer the question publicly, since our existing and potential subscribers do not always understand the reason for this, at first glance, hard rules. Well and, perhaps, to hear criticism, perhaps we are really wrong and there are more effective ways to solve the issue.
First of all, this rule was introduced with the aim of caring for our customers! According to statistics, more than 10% of users forget to arrange for the renewal of the rental service of a dedicated server, and 2-3% may have difficulty with payment on time due to delays in the bank payment system. And imagine a situation when there is no payment on the last day of the paid payment period, the client forgot to pay or the payment did not reach due to some bank delay ... The server is disconnected. Data Center withdraws it.
The client sees that the server has become unavailable, remembers that he did not renew it on time, but the server is gone, there is no data, the client did not back up ... There is essentially nothing to turn on ...
Thus, one of the reasons for which we set the deadline in advance: customers should not lose their data if they forget to pay for the service on time or remember it too late (in fact it will be up to 10 days to remember that the server is all still needed and it needs to be extended).
Of course, the Data Center could store the servers in the warehouse for several days after the expiration of the paid period, which, in principle, is done, but this does not fully resolve the issue. The problem is that, as mentioned earlier, according to our statistics, about 10% of subscribers (and we have 1000+ servers in the lease) may forget to issue an extension during the time or give a warning about the refusal. This would all lead to a huge burden on staff and / or huge costs. Moreover, customers would experience huge delays in resuming the operation of dedicated servers after payment, even when there is something to resume.
The Data Center is physically incapable of withdrawing 100+ servers at the end of each month or keeping them “frozen”, and then installing them in a cabinet when half of the clients would come to their senses. Even a large data center such as EvoSwitch, where we host and in which no more than 50 servers are installed daily - is not able to provide this opportunity. In the Data Center about 100,000 servers, among other things, they also need to be serviced. And installing more servers plan - to increase costs (the number of staff or pay overtime, which is very expensive).
Of course, we solve the problem, but in this case it would have been necessary to allocate a couple of additional employees only for our forgetful clients, which would have led to costs that we would need to take into account in the rental price of servers.
And because the second reason: we believe that it is unfair if customers who pay for services on time will pay for the forgetfulness of their colleagues.
At the same time, we are trying to provide minimum prices for our services for all. Refusal of services is an important factor; monthly, according to statistics, we have an average of about 5% of failures (in peacetime), now this figure changes very much and depends on the economic and political situation.
However, not all customers are honest and not all willing or able to warn of a refusal in advance. And planning and logistics are very important. After all, when 150 servers are drastically released, there is a simple one that needs to be disposed of, both to reduce financial costs and to protect the environment, because 150 servers consume quite a lot of energy.
Thus, the third reason: we do not believe that bona fide clients who warn in time about the refusal of services, which helps to achieve the almost complete absence of idle equipment, must pay for the unconsciousness of their colleagues.
The fourth reason is we are all human. If you have a problem, for some reason you do not have time to extend the service on time - just warn you, we very often go to the meeting and provide a deferment. Again, by setting the deadline in advance, we reduce the cost of this deferral and can provide it to almost all our conscious subscribers, without exception, in addition, this practically does not lead to additional costs and risks, both for us and for our subscribers.
The fifth reason: seeing the refusal in advance, we have time to discuss the reasons with the subscriber, find a way out of the current situation, offer a more suitable solution or even provide services on credit, sometimes due to such actions some projects managed to avoid closure.
So if the client notified us about the refusal in advance, before the 20th day of the last paid month, the server will be disabled on the last day of the month at the end of the paid period. Be sure to be given the opportunity to modify the entire paid period! After that, the server will be formatted and most likely transferred to another client, which reduces downtime and allows renting servers to other subscribers at minimal rates, receiving them almost instantly.
Thanks to this rule, we always carefully plan our reserves and almost always are able to offer dedicated servers of different classes with instant activation at minimal prices, and our subscribers rarely lose their data because they forgot to pay for services on time.
Message from leonid239:
hosting_manager, why do you ask clients to pay for the server until the 20th?
It just became curious from the point of view of accounting servers why such a need arose.
As for me, this is very inconvenient for the client: first, you need to pay in advance (that is, you need to have money), and secondly, you need to decide whether you need a server until the 20th or not.
')
Well, disconnect the server if the client did not pay the bill or did not refuse the server - as for me it is not very good: the service is paid, but you block it. That is, in this case, you leave yourself 1/3 of the payment per month ...
I saw a similar implementation only in hetzner, but there is postpay and you just have to abandon the server in advance. And in your case, the reason for this has become interesting ...
Today I decided to answer the question publicly, since our existing and potential subscribers do not always understand the reason for this, at first glance, hard rules. Well and, perhaps, to hear criticism, perhaps we are really wrong and there are more effective ways to solve the issue.
First of all, this rule was introduced with the aim of caring for our customers! According to statistics, more than 10% of users forget to arrange for the renewal of the rental service of a dedicated server, and 2-3% may have difficulty with payment on time due to delays in the bank payment system. And imagine a situation when there is no payment on the last day of the paid payment period, the client forgot to pay or the payment did not reach due to some bank delay ... The server is disconnected. Data Center withdraws it.
The client sees that the server has become unavailable, remembers that he did not renew it on time, but the server is gone, there is no data, the client did not back up ... There is essentially nothing to turn on ...
Thus, one of the reasons for which we set the deadline in advance: customers should not lose their data if they forget to pay for the service on time or remember it too late (in fact it will be up to 10 days to remember that the server is all still needed and it needs to be extended).
Of course, the Data Center could store the servers in the warehouse for several days after the expiration of the paid period, which, in principle, is done, but this does not fully resolve the issue. The problem is that, as mentioned earlier, according to our statistics, about 10% of subscribers (and we have 1000+ servers in the lease) may forget to issue an extension during the time or give a warning about the refusal. This would all lead to a huge burden on staff and / or huge costs. Moreover, customers would experience huge delays in resuming the operation of dedicated servers after payment, even when there is something to resume.
The Data Center is physically incapable of withdrawing 100+ servers at the end of each month or keeping them “frozen”, and then installing them in a cabinet when half of the clients would come to their senses. Even a large data center such as EvoSwitch, where we host and in which no more than 50 servers are installed daily - is not able to provide this opportunity. In the Data Center about 100,000 servers, among other things, they also need to be serviced. And installing more servers plan - to increase costs (the number of staff or pay overtime, which is very expensive).
Of course, we solve the problem, but in this case it would have been necessary to allocate a couple of additional employees only for our forgetful clients, which would have led to costs that we would need to take into account in the rental price of servers.
And because the second reason: we believe that it is unfair if customers who pay for services on time will pay for the forgetfulness of their colleagues.
At the same time, we are trying to provide minimum prices for our services for all. Refusal of services is an important factor; monthly, according to statistics, we have an average of about 5% of failures (in peacetime), now this figure changes very much and depends on the economic and political situation.
However, not all customers are honest and not all willing or able to warn of a refusal in advance. And planning and logistics are very important. After all, when 150 servers are drastically released, there is a simple one that needs to be disposed of, both to reduce financial costs and to protect the environment, because 150 servers consume quite a lot of energy.
Thus, the third reason: we do not believe that bona fide clients who warn in time about the refusal of services, which helps to achieve the almost complete absence of idle equipment, must pay for the unconsciousness of their colleagues.
The fourth reason is we are all human. If you have a problem, for some reason you do not have time to extend the service on time - just warn you, we very often go to the meeting and provide a deferment. Again, by setting the deadline in advance, we reduce the cost of this deferral and can provide it to almost all our conscious subscribers, without exception, in addition, this practically does not lead to additional costs and risks, both for us and for our subscribers.
The fifth reason: seeing the refusal in advance, we have time to discuss the reasons with the subscriber, find a way out of the current situation, offer a more suitable solution or even provide services on credit, sometimes due to such actions some projects managed to avoid closure.
So if the client notified us about the refusal in advance, before the 20th day of the last paid month, the server will be disabled on the last day of the month at the end of the paid period. Be sure to be given the opportunity to modify the entire paid period! After that, the server will be formatted and most likely transferred to another client, which reduces downtime and allows renting servers to other subscribers at minimal rates, receiving them almost instantly.
Thanks to this rule, we always carefully plan our reserves and almost always are able to offer dedicated servers of different classes with instant activation at minimal prices, and our subscribers rarely lose their data because they forgot to pay for services on time.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/292494/
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