biz site & email down
Our business site at www.zzanginc.com is down for a little while, as well as email for that domain. I decided to move the domain to a new registrar & host, and the old host decided to punish me for leaving their service by shutting down my account entirely instead of waiting for the domain registration to transfer, even though I was paid up with them through the end of next month. Bastards! Anyway, I’m hoping it’ll be back, this time under the care of a better hosting company by the middle of next week. Sheesh.
So, just because I can, I’ll say this for the sake of Google and their next potential customer: I highly recommend that you do NOT host a website with Coast Internet Solutions, Inc. (aka Coast, Inc.). Maybe they’ll catch this mention of their company on Google or Technorati and care to comment on why they choose to treat ordinary customers so shabbily, but I won’t hold my breath.
Jack Host | April 11th, 2006 at 2:51 pm
This is by far the most evil company I have ever dealt with. They need to be stopped. Below you will find my communication with them after they suspended my account. The first email is the last email that I sent. As of today (several days after the fact), there has been no response. And, unfortunately, for them, they chose to mess with the wrong person, as I intend to make them really consider what they’re doing, or trying to do. They invoke all manner of obfuscation in order to anonymize themselves. Sadly, there’s only so much of this you can do, while running a business. Somewhere there is a phone and a physical address. Somewhere there is a person with a name. Why would anyone hide if they ran a legitimate business? Don’t ever buy anything from a company that points you to a PO Box, won’t offer up a phone number, or reveals no person’s name within the company. Always, always look for these details on a Website if you are unsure about the credibility of a company. I’ve learned a lesson from this experience. And, I’m going to make sure that they reconsider what they are doing. The pen is mightier than the sword, and mightier still with a distribution network.
Dear QA or Whom It May Concern,
The communication following this email comes from my interaction with
a person on your support staff. My account was suspended because my
credit card was changed by my bank after I changed checking account
types (with no indication that this would happen), and the bank
expired the my old debit card, which led to a situation where your
records had an no-longer-working credit card number. Prior to this
ever becoming an issue I emailed billing@coastinc.com because it was
my intent to change the card you have on record (the text of this
email is included below with headers). I would have done this through
your website, but after looking for a very long time, I could not find
a way to actually change this information, because there is no clear
path or indication to any section of your site that would allow for
such a change.
The links on your homepage are as follows:
Web Hosting | Resellers | Dedicated Servers | Order
Policies | Server Status Page | Contact Us | About Us
After following every single one of these links, I found no
information regarding how to update my account. This is why I emailed
billing@coastinc.com, which seemed like the most appropriate way to
get information about how to update my account.
I not only needed to update my credit card, but also my email account
and phone – as I have since done away with the phone service number
you have on file and because my email account became unaccessible for
reasons that are unknown to me. After contacting Yahoo! about the
email matter, I was not able to regain access, as it appears as though
my account may have been stolen. Nevertheless, there is nothing I can
do about this, even though it presented a problem in that I never got
emails from Coast Inc, which would have led me to the page where I
could perform an update for my account. Moreover, I no longer had
access to any emails from Coast Inc, regarding my account.
Either way, I don’t think that this matters so much, because I did in
fact make an effort to change my account information, without any
alert from your company. I know when my account gets charged every
month, and I intended to keep the account in good status. And, the day
that I figured out that my credit card information in all of my
accounts would need to be updated. That very day, I came to your
website to look for a means to do this.
Alas, I never received a response from the email that sent my inquiry
to. And, after returning to your site to find a way to update my
account, I was still unable to discover the means to do this. When I
first signed up for my account, your company had a 1-800 number that
was available. I looked all over your site time and time again for
this number and I could not find it, even though your site states that
this number is a reason that someone should consider signing up for an
account.
Needless to say, I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out how
to get in contact with someone who could give me directions on how to
update my account. And, this situation was quite frustrating, to say
the least.
It’s possible, I suppose that Coast Inc never received my email.
Though, there is proof that I sent it. And, I can get that confirmed,
if I need to. And, I can tell you that I undoubtedly never received
any communication from Coast Inc, because it was being sent to an
email address I can’t access. The phone number is another issue, and
I’d like to pose the question to you: why do you or the person with
whom I have been communicating think that I should give you my phone
number, when you don’t give yours? I thought that part of what I was
paying for included the ability to contact someone via phone, if I
desired to do that. And, I never received any indication that this was
no longer an option. The option just disappeared. Imagine not being
able to call your cable company, your power company, or your water
company. Imagine how your reaction to discovering in a time of need
that any one of these services no longer had a phone number available.
Imagine making a great deal of effort to find this out. Sure, they
might offer you an email address to contact. And, maybe you’d be OK
with that. But, as we see here, email sometimes losses its way for
whatever reason. And though, the person with whom I’ve been
communicating says that that there are ample ways to contact your
company, when I go to the contact page, which is, I assume the
appropriate place to look, I do not see many of the communication
channels that are supposed to exist, I only see three email addresses,
only one of which would have been appropriate for my case, a status
link, which is not really what I think of as a way to contact anyone,
and a technical support link, which is not – unless you look on the
other side of the link – a way to contact anyone – as it is a link.
Now, when I followed that link for the first time, was when I noticed
that my sites were not online. When I discovered that it was through
this page that I could update my account information, I did so right
away, of course, not because I was even aware that my account had been
suspended at this point. Your customer support rep, suggests that I
only updated my account only after it was suspended, as if I had never
made an effort to do so prior to this. This indication on part of the
of your support rep couldn’t be further from wrong. If I had known how
to change this information, I would have done so. I have and had no
reason not to do so. What the Hell could I have gained from not
updating my account? For someone to even insinuate that I purposely
let my account get 3 weeks overdue, or that I had even done so
negligently, angers me terribly, as it is not only wrong, it shows no
consideration for your customer and the amount of time and effort I
put into attempting to update my account before it was suspended. The
reality is that when your customers are two pages deep into your site,
and there is not even an ambiguous path to their account, this is
problematic, to say the least, not to mention the fact that I emailed
billing@coastinc.com on March 13th to find out how to update my
account. And, I did read every bit of the rest of your site, before I
happened to follow that one very incoherent link, which is not even so
clear as to be text, but a URL link to a very important, but
well-obscured section of your site, where technical support and
account information and many other things are all thrown together with
no adherence link clearing indicating that all these things are there,
anywhere outside of this one page. Go take a look at your site, and
tell me that these things have a clear path – or that it’s obvious any
point along the way you must navigate, that you are navigating to a
place where your account information can be updated. Moreover,
reading your site led me to your reasons to sign up, that’s how I
discovered that you still claim to have a 1-800 number. Ironic,
wouldn’t do justice. Your site fails to do some very fundamental
things.
So, here we are, I’m being punished after approx 2 years of being a
paying customer, for a problem that is as much a matter of providing a
clear and effective website, as anything. I won’t blame you for the
email problem, because just as I don’t know if my email got to you,
you didn’t know yours weren’t getting to me. Email being like this
sometimes, why would you ever get rid of the phone? And, how could you
get rid of your phone and have the nerve to tell me your failed
attempts to contact me via phone are part of the reason you’ve done
enough to let me know my account was overdue, and attempt to justify
your fees with it? Now we have two failed communication routes. And,
it wasn’t as if I needed anyone to tell me that my account was late
being paid. I already knew that. What I really needed to know was how
to update the friggin account information. I didn’t get what I
needed, and you didn’t get what you wanted because of it. Why did I
not get what I needed and whose fault was it? Or is there fault at
all? Probably not as important as the core elements here, is fault.
The real issue is whether or not what you’re asking for to unsuspend
my account is conscionable, outside of any policy or aggrement to that
policy. And, by most standards it would not be considered fair or
reasonable.
You can assume, and should probably level to the fact that sometimes
you’re not going to have your customer’s most recent information, and
for reasons that are out of their control, in many cases. And, the
reality is that if you really wanted your customers to more
effectively communicate with you, you might be more clear about how to
do that on your “Contact” page. Companies that do away with phone
communication, for whatever reason, show no interest in offering a
full set of channels for communication. In fact, I would say that
there is no way you could argue that doing away with a phone contact
says anything but, “We really don’t intend to communicate in ways that
we don’t think we have to or in ways that we care not to.” You may
have business reasons, but your business is ultimately your customers,
if I’m to mistaken. Otherwise, you’ve got what – a bunch of unused
machines whirring away in Atlanta?
And, I can tell you that without a doubt, the interaction between
myself and the support person on the other end of the conversation you
will read below, is far and away the most unfit person I have ever had
the displeasure of dealing with. This is the kind of person who may
seek to punish your customers for the “good” of your business, but is
ultimately the kind of communicator who will not resonate graciously
with your customers, and that’s really being quite generous, indeed.
If you intend for such a person to insult your customers, accuse them
of all manner of dishonesty, tell them, “I don’t have the time to
argue this any further,” treat them as though they are trying to steal
or scam webhosting, question their integrity and knowledge, then you
have the right person behind the keyboard. But, I can tell you, that
when I put this communication before the world, it will not fall in
your favor at all. Any person reading this from a customer’s
perspective will be completely in awe of this communication, I can
assure you. And, I have never had an experience that would even come
close in comparison. For the purposes of documenting this dispute, I
would like to know this person’s name, or a way of identifying them
should I need to whilst communicating this to the other parties who
will likely be involved in handling this matter. And, I would like to
know the name of the manager of this person. Please reply with that
information.
What we end with here is a situation where I have done absolutely
nothing wrong. Absolutely nothing. Perhaps, in a really unreasonable
world, you could make the claim that I did not do enough to get my
account updated. But, I did place more than what would be an
appropriate amount of effort into getting my account updated, and I
started doing so before this would have ever been an issue. However,
your company now claims that I owe $150 on top of the monthly service
fees, in order to have my account unsuspended. Why is this exactly?
I’m sure that you or no one you know has ever missed a payment on any
account for any reason, and that because of this, you can really say
that this is a reasonable fee. I’m sure that you’d think it was right
on the mark if your ISP yanked the plug on you after three weeks, and
then told you to get your connection back, you’d need to cough up
$150, or the equivalent of 7.5 months worth of service in cost. Now
imagine that the service we’re talking about is tied to your business,
and to your clients’ businesses. Now imagine that there’s a couple of
things tied to your account that you don’t have copies of locally, and
that to redo that work would cost you a great deal of time. Is this
why someone thought it was a good idea, and decided it was ok to place
a $150 fee in your policy? And, honesly, how do you really justify it
even in cases where people really have been remiss or careless with
payment? It comes out to more than 7 months of the service I was
receiving in cost. And, how long does it take someone to suspended and
unsuspend my account? Is that really $150 worth of effort? I can tell
you it’s not, it takes about how many commands in a shell? Can you
imagine how you would feel if your credit card company charged you
$150 for one late payment? What about your power company, or your
cable company? What if they turned off your power or water after 3
weeks? It would seem a little cut throat wouldn’t it? Would you say
that was fair? Would you accept it, even if it was in their policy?
The reality is that this would never happen. Regulations would halt
anything this exorbitant. And, most service companies are realistic
enough and “forgiving” enough to realize that sometimes things just
get off course. And, when they otherwise wouldn’t be so forgiving,
there is legislation that keeps them from letting their greed run
wild. I invite you to tell me how it is, then, that you can justify
this charge? Is it because you know that people will likely have some
data that they will still want to get access to? Most of those people
would probably be ok with paying you perhaps a small fee and the
regular charge to gain access to their data again. Right?
What you are doing here, is overstepping boundaries that you would not
even dare overstep, if you were in fact regulated. And, there is
absolutely no denying this. You are likely taking advantage of a
situation where you are able to hijack data and hold some person’s or
business’ web documents hostage for a ransome and this is simply born
of greed. And, if that is not your intent, you are no better off,
because greed without motivation is simply greed. And, if you could
say that you’d want all services having the same policy in place, then
you can’t then exempt yourself. If you wouldn’t want to universalize
your own policy, then what does that say about your policy? If all
services have the same policy, how much would it have cost you over
time? And, would you want the same potential to even loom over your
relationships, where you’re the customer? If you’re ever 3 weeks off,
no matter what the reason, your getting the boot and can only get back
in by paying 7.5 times your normal monthly charges? “That comes to
$862.52 Mr. Webhost, unless you don’t want your electricity turned
back on. 3 weeks is far too long. You should thank us because we let
you keep heating your house in the middle of winter. And, no, we don’t
care how long you’ve been a customer. We don’t care what this means
for your business or family, unless of course you pay us $862.52 to
flip the switch and last month’s bill, and next months bill, too. Then
you’re all good, and we’ll start pretending to care again, but you
won’t be able to call us anymore. We only accept emails now, or some
other means of virtual communication that you might have a hard time
finding, if you need to update your payment method again. The phone
became too troublesome. Plus, we don’t like to do things in a
face-to-face, humanized way, as we need to stay anonymous to keep
charging people this unsuspension fee. You know it ain’t that easy
when it’s not the middle of winter. People aren’t as apt to accept it.
We like it when you’re freezing to death. You’ll do what we want,
then.”
I have paid for my account for 2 years, and I have done everything I
could to remain within the policy you have set forth. And, I have been
patient with several issues I’ve had along the way. But, this is way
beyond my ability to accept matters. What is happening here is simply
wrong. And, just because you think you can do something or set forth
your policy as you have, it doesn’t justify, nor will it give you the
right to continue doing so, or doing so in my particular case.
I have spent quite a bit of time trying to get this resolved. I have
already undoubtedly cost your company more than $150 in the process of
doing so. And, if this matter is not resolved appropriately, I will
continue on the path of making sure that it is. As time goes on, $150
is going to look rather insignificant, should this matter remain in
dispute. However, I assure you that I will stop at nothing to
accomplish this. So, you can decide now to be just and fair, or you
can by virtue decide not to be just and fair, which will come at an
increasing expense, and may ultimately come at a substantial cost to
your business, which is not unlikely at all considering the very
nature of this dispute, and the common law that it will follow.
I am prepared to protect my rights, as I have protections against
unfair business practices afforded to me by all segments of law. And,
it is my duty to stand against that which is not just, so as to pave
the path to justice for others. Do not doubt that I will fulfill my
duty. I am not going away until this is treated correctly.
I hope you can see my point of view and relinquish this insistance
that what I have been told so far is “right”. It is simply not.
Please reply to me with the names and contact information for your
management. Please also respond with your name and contact
information. I also want to know to whom I have been communicating
with in your support department, and the name of their manager. I am
quite tired of dealing with people hiding behind machines. You know my
name, I want to know yours.
Thank you for your consideration.
XXxxx XXxxx
Email I sent after account was suspended:
My domain is XXxxx.org. My name is XXxxx XXxxx. My account was
suspended, or so it seems. I updated my credit card information.
Please see to it that my account is reactivated immediately. The
reason my credit card wasn’t updated is because of your staff failing
to answer my inquiry about how I should go about updating that
information. If you can’t respond to such questions, you have no
business trying to run a webhosting company. You also make the claim
in your webhosting literature that you provide a 1-800 number. If you
do, you certainly don’t make it obvious what that number might be.
It’s also not obvious how one should update any changes to their
account. There should be a link on your homepage that explicitly
allows your customers to access their account information. It’s
absolutely ridiculous that this is not the case. And, if you have a
1-800, please send me that number. If you don’t, you’re falsely
advertising that you do provide such a number. I want to know one way
or the other, so please respond to this question: do you have a 1-800
number?
Also the next time I fail to get a response to an email I send to
Coast Inc regarding any aspect of my account, I will terminate my
service. It is fully unacceptable to have no communication with
someone who is paying you money. I’ll give my money to someone else,
if it’s not a priority of Coast Inc to respond to questions. And,
again, please get my account back online ASAP, or I’m gone.
Sincerely,
XXxxx XXxxx
Coast Internet Solutions, Inc.
Posted on 06 Apr 2006 05:27 PM
________________________________
Your account is past due on payment for about 3 weeks. We’ve sent you
an email at least once per day from our automatic billing system, in
addition to the ones manually sent by our billing department. We’ve
also made attempts to call you but the phone number on file was not
valid.
You said “It is fully unacceptable to have no communication with
someone who is paying you money.” and I agree, but you are NOT paying
us money, that is why your account was suspended!
Although we used to offer phone support, we have not in since about 2
years ago. You were not under any contract to stay with us, you were
free to leave at anytime, so do NOT use that as an excuse as to why
you didn’t pay now. We still have plenty of methods to contact us,
email, helpdesk, web livechat, aol instant message, and phone
callback. Our records indicate you NEVER made any contact through any
of those methods since you were past due on payment.
We could’ve resolved this matter professionally, but instead you
choose to go the immature route and do nothing but blame us for your
mistake of not paying! If you would like your account unsuspended, the
past due amount is due, plus at least 1 more month’s payment is due,
plus a $150 unsuspension fee. Please email billing@coastinc.com if you
would like to proceed.
Coast Internet Solutions, Inc.
Posted on 06 Apr 2006 05:28 PM
________________________________
Hi,
We have escalated your reqeust to the concerned department. You
will be updated as soon as possible.
XXxxx XXxxx
Posted on 06 Apr 2006 06:33 PM
________________________________
Your response will be an unfortunate one for your business, being
that I will be sharing it with as many people as possible, so as to
keep them from making a mistake by subjecting themselves to such
unbelievable customer service. I would forward you the email I sent
regarding this matter, but why bother? I am right, even if I am wrong,
because I am the customer (was the customer, to be more precise).
Hopefully you have management above you, and they are wise enough to
monitor your communications and realize that the kind of response I
have been given is the worst possible thing you could be doing for
your company, as it is better for you not to respond at all as opposed
to making a complete mockery of your ability to deal with customers.
Your records can now indicate that I am terminating my service.
Hopefully your records will indicate that due to the nature of your
response to my support ticket, you later realized that your response
had a potential influence on those who would have bought your service
and provoked me to the level of draggin Coast Inc into litigation.
Given that I had already given you the means to alleviate the issue, I
think that anyone would agree that foolishness is adrift. It is quite
clear that I intended to pay for my service despite the circumstances.
And, all of the particulars you mention are all related to the fact
that it is not immediately clear how one should update their account
information, by way of your site. This is why I sent the email prior
to the time when this would have become a problem. I, can and will
substantiate the fact that your company was the reason my credit card
information was not updated when it should have been, as I have the
means to substantiate this and find protection in laws that govern
such matters. Given that, you need to open up access to my files on
your server, so that I can copy them, or I will proceed with legal
action. I will not be paying $150 for a problem that was, in fact,
brought about by lack of communication on the part of your company.
And, should I need to take further action I will also make a point of
persuing any and all false inducements on your Web site, especially
those which related to my account. If you do not see already that you
are at a loss, you will be no less than clear on the matter should I
have to waste my time, exposing you to the legal realities of
business. It would certainly be in your best interest to be gracious
henceforth, so as to diminish the impact of your mistakes.
Coast Internet Solutions, Inc.
Posted on 06 Apr 2006 07:08 PM
________________________________
I was not out of line in any way at all. Our Policies clearly state
exactly what I said:
http://www.coastinc.com/policies.html
Non-Payment:
Payment for services must be received no later than 3 days after the
first day of the renewal cycle. (For example, if your renewal date is
on the 1st of each month, payment must be received no later than the
4th of each month.) If payment is not received within this timeframe,
services may be suspended. If payment is not received within 7 days
after the first day of the renewal cycle, services will be irrevocably
terminated and all data will be irrevocably removed. An unsuspension
fee of $150.00 may be added to unsuspend services.
We left your sites on for about 3 WEEKS after nonpayment, I don’t
know why you aren’t thanking us for leaving it on for so long past
payment due date.
We didn’t do anything wrong or illegal. You owe us money, and as per
our policies, we reserve the right to suspend your account as soon as
3 days after no payment has been received, and it even says mentions
the suspension fee I told you. I didn’t make anything up at the last
minute. That wording has been on our web site, and when you first
signed up, you accepted and therefore are legally bound to agree and
accept our policies. I don’t know what standing you think you have to
even threaten a lawsuit, other than thinking it will scare us.
What should we have done, left your sites on forever at our expense
until you decide to pay? We sent you about 30 emails (combination from
our automated system and manually sent to you) asking you to update
your credit card and even tried to call you! We can prove that, and
that constitutes more than sufficient diligent attempts to get in
touch with you.
It is a fact that you did not pay the amount you owe us, so I don’t
know why all you are doing is yelling at us and telling us that we
made the mistake. There is one mistake, you did not pay us when you
were supposed to, that’s clear cut. This is why I said you are
handling this immaturely, that was my opinion.
I don’t have the time to argue this any further. You can pay the
amount that you owe us if you want and we will unsuspend the account
rightaway. Or you can file a lawsuit if you want, I can’t stop you.
But we did absolutely nothing wrong or illegal at all. You agreed to
our policies and used our service, and all our actions we took were
100% legal and 100% in accordance with our policies.
XXxxx XXxxx
Posted on 06 Apr 2006 10:26 PM
________________________________
Let me spell this out for you:
1. I have a documented good faith effort to contact you in advance of
this becoming an issue. It doesn’t matter how many channels of contact
you offer, as I indeed did genuinely attempt to contact Coast Inc. I
scoured your site for a way to update my account information more than
once. Whilst doing this, I discovered and have documented a claim on
your site that you offer a 1-800 number for support. After reading
this, I again looked all over your site for the number and the means
to change my account information, which includes my email address,
phone number and credit card information, all of which needed to be
changed in order for you to contact me and/or get the money due to you
for my account (and it is not uncommon for such information to change
over time, nor does it constitute any form of negligence on my part,
if I have attempted to change this information). Had someone responded
to my email and/or had I been able to contact Coast Inc via an
existing phone line, all of this would have not been an issue. Your
failure to respond to a good faith effort to alleviate this problem
will not easily be discredited.
2. This fact makes your suspension of my account unjustifiable and
unconscionable, and as such you are willfully interfering with my
business.
3. You are doing so in a situation involving a fraudulent inducement
to utilize your service, by stating that it is possible to contact you
via a 1-800 that does not exist. Your previous response coupled with
the fact that I have a snapshot of the page that makes this statement,
is undeniable proof of fraud. Hence, it is quite clear that Coast Inc
has issues with communicating honestly and effectively.
Fraud is litigated under a tort system which means that if I provide
a substantive enough case to receive hard damages, I can then be
awarded punitive damages in this matter. Because you are willfully
interfering with my business it is quite likely that you will not only
pay for this loss to me, but you will pay my legal counsel’s fees and
punitive damages awarded by the court.
I have no problem paying for 3 weeks of service, as it has never been
my intent to steal from anyone, even though you act as if I’m a
criminal, guarding as you do what was never really even a loss to your
business, and even more ironic an issue brought about by Coast Inc.
You are your own enemy here.
Do note though, that I will not pay $150 for a problem that I did not
bring about, and more to the contrary a problem I in good faith made
efforts to do away with, whilst conversely receiving no response to my
attempt to do so.
And, just so you know, it doesn’t matter what your policy states, as
your policy does not overshadow the law. And, the law does not allow
for fraudulent inducement to initiate service, nor does it allow for
willful and malicious interference with business.
You believe that there is only mistake, but be aware that there is
more than one mistake at hand and it is in your best interest to take
steps to mitigate that now, because it is going to be much less of a
burden for you. Coast Inc is in no way without fault here. Should you
continue to think so, you are not being sensible.
You may take a month’s charge from my credit card, as I finally
managed to find the means to update this information after several
hours of searching for it (which by the way is not a reasonable thing
to expect of anyone and is moot because I sought to contact Coast Inc
through two channels of communication), and you now have my updated
credit card number. This means that you need to leave my account
active for another week.
Once again, you are NOT to charge $150 under any circumstances. If
you continue to make this a requirement to access my account, it will
cost you multiples of that amount, if I have to pursue this on a
formal basis.
Should you choose not to cooperate with this reasonable offer, your
policies are not going to provide ample cause for your actions, as the
circumstances will render you policy nonbinding and the law will usurp
the rest. To reiterate my earlier point, policies do not replace the
determination of what is wrong or right. That’s why we have a
judiciary branch of government. Otherwise, any policy would be able to
masquerade as law.
You can take my word for it, or you can continue to stubbornly
promote your misconceptions about who is at fault and why you think
you need to punish your customers for situations you’ve spawned. This
will be your last chance to deal with this without great expense. You
don’t have to make time to argue, but you should seriously consider
making this situation amicable or I will retaliate with all means
available to me.
Coast Internet Solutions, Inc.
Posted on 06 Apr 2006 11:34 PM
________________________________
1) Yes we did offer phone support up until about 1 1/2 years ago,
but have not offered it since then. We sent an email to all customers
at that time out as soon as this change was made around Jan 2005.
Yet you still remained a customer since then. That was your decision
to stay, we did not force you and you were under no contract to stay.
Plus we still have 6 other means of communicating with us, so common
sense would say obviously we are not hiding from anyone.
2) I don’t know what proof you have that you contacted us. We’ve sent
you over 30 emails over the past ~3 weeks and never got 1 response
back from you. If we are emailing you over and over again asking you
to update the credit card information, why would we not respond if we
heard back from you??
EVERY email sent to you gives you the direct link to update the
credit card on our online form. Additionally, our server status page
even has a link directly to the billing credit card update form as
well.
The even more ridiculous part about your claim is that as soon as
your account was suspended, you seem to have all of a sudden decided
to try to contact us through another method of communication (ie, this
helpdesk). Why not do that before?? and then you all of a sudden found
the link to our credit card update form….
3) I don’t see any where on our site that still says that we offer
toll free support, but if it is still on there, it was a leftover
typo, not intended to defraud anyone. It’s not like we can pretend to
have phone support if we don’t.
We did offer phone support for about 8 YEARS prior to 1 1/2 years
ago, and as soon as we stopped offering phone support, we removed all
references to it on our site, but it’s possible to be left in a spot
accidentally. That’s obviously a typo IF it is still there. I looked
again over the entire site and still don’t see it anywhere, but if I
find it or you let me know where it is, I’ll be sure to have it
removed immediately.
I agree that someone’s policies cannot usurp the law, and our’s do
not. Our policies have been reviewed by 2 different lawyers, one most
recently reviewed it about two months ago.
There is no law that says how much time we must keep service online
before suspending for nonpayment.
All companies, whether it be a hosting company or a phone company,
will suspend service if payment is not received in what they consider
a timely fashion and as predetermined and stated in their policies
which their customers must agree to before using their service. If you
did not intend to agree to our policies, then you lied on our signup
form; and if you did intend to agree to our policies, then you are
breaking the agreement now; either way it is your fault.
We feel that 3 days past the due date is a reasonable amount of time
before suspending service, but we still left it on for about 3 weeks
after the past due date.
The amount due is $190, which is
$20 the past due month
$20 for the upcoming month
$150 unsuspension fee
That is the only amount that we will accept to unsuspend service.
I’ve removed your credit card from our system since you did not
approve this amount.
You have clearly threatened us with legal action and revengeful
retaliatory action several times and I will not tolerate it, therefore
this is my final response on this matter.
If you know so much about the law, you should know threats of any
kind under any circumstance are illegal, and the last thing you should
be doing, especially when this all started over you not paying the
amount you owe us.
If you decide to approve the above amount, let me know, otherwise
send any further correspondences if you would like to our mailing
address listed on our web site’s contact us page.
XXxxx XXxxx
Posted on 08 Apr 2006 02:13 AM
________________________________
Here’s a little something for you to indicate in your records — You
might also indicate that no one responded to me, and that I wasted a
great deal of time trying to figure out how to update my account.
This fiasco is costing me money every day that it lingers, and I
would be foolish not to take this matter to the extremes to have a
just resolution.
If you want me to pay $150 for you to not hijack my data, you
couldn’t be more out of line.
Now do the right thing:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q55+marrieta+street+atlanta+ga&tk&hlen
X-Gmail-Received: 6c716a15e26fa3d5e22429344fd67be874b59fc9
Received: by 10.64.149.10 with HTTP; Mon, 13 Mar 2006 14:03:22 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID:
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006 14:03:22 -0800
From: “XXxxx XXxxx”
To: billing@coastinc.com
Subject: account question
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary”—-_Part_10024_8327006.1142287402258″
Delivered-To: XXxxx.XXxxx@gmail.com
——_Part_10024_8327006.1142287402258
Content-Type: text/plain; charsetISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Disposition: inline
Hi –
I need to change the credit card on my account, and I would like to change my email address, as well. Is there a number I can call to do this? There’s not a number listed on the site, which really kind of sucks. It’s actually faster to deal with problems via the phone. And, you have to pay someone to type, just as you would to talk. So, I can’t imagine how it makes any sense whatsoever to limit the ways your customers can access your staff. The absence of a phone number, in either case, is no benefit to the credibility of your company, nor does it speak to the intelligence of whomever budgeted the phone out of your ledger. How many of your employees can type as fast as they can talk?
It is also a bit irksome that I can’t log in to my account information to
change these details. Now there’s an idea. Maybe you could afford a phone,
then.
Please let me know.
Thanks,
XXxx XXxxx
——_Part_10024_8327006.1142287402258
Content-Type: text/html; charsetISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Disposition: inline
Coast Internet Solutions, Inc.
Posted on 08 Apr 2006 03:47 AM
________________________________
We did not receive that email you pasted here. I just checked again
through our entire mailbox for Billing and it is definitely not there.
We keep our emails from several months, so if we received it, it would
still be there.
But assuming you did actually send what you pasted here, that does
not in any way prove that we received it. Unless you got some type of
response from us, you have no proof that we received it. To claim in a
lawsuit that we ignored you, you must prove that we received your
email, which you cannot prove simply because we never received it.
Common sense, we’d have absolutely nothing at all to gain by ignoring
it if we did received it, so I don’t know why you think we are lieing.
And again assuming you did send what you pasted, there could be
numerous reasons why it wasn’t received, such as automatically being
deleted by our spam filter. There’s no way to prove or disprove that
theory…. but I do know as a fact that we never received it.
And lastly, let’s assume you did send it to us, but we never received
it, still, what should we have done? just left your sites on forever
without payment? 3 weeks of service without payment is plenty fair.
You still keep ignoring in every one of your responses, why you never
responded to ~30 of our past due payment emails we sent you, why you
never updated your phone number with us and kept a bad phone number on
file as a contact phone number, why you agreed to abide by our
policies when you really aren’t, and why you never followed the credit
card update link in the 30 emails we sent you or the link to our
credit card update link on our server status page!
And if you say you never received our ~30 emails, why should we
believe that since you won’t believe we didn’t receive your 1 email??
And if you did receive our ~30 emails, the credit card update link
would’ve been right on there each and every one!
We did not receive your email, period.
Your account was past due, period.
We are legally allowed to suspend service for nonpayment when payment
is not received, period.
Nobody is hijacking your data, payment is due, and your account will
be unsuspended as soon as payment is received, period.
We are losing money every day on this, the amount you owe us plus my
time discussing this. I don’t know what makes you think a court will
say you are excempt from policies you agreed to, or that we were wrong
for suspending you for nonpayment after 3 weeks, unless you think it’s
illegal to suspend for nonpayment after 3 weeks, which it is not.
By the way, I have no idea what you were trying to prove by pasting a
link to a map here.
This is my final response here, I don’t have to be subjected to your
belittlement. I refuse to continue this discussion here.
If you decide to approve the amount you owe, let me know, otherwise
send any further correspondences if you would like to our mailing
address listed on our web site’s contact us page.