Downtime?
Yesterday I realized that I will not be able to pay for monthly renewal fee to my web host in time. For almost two years my hosting account has had the 7th of every month as the renewal deadline. When I upgraded my hosting account a month ago, I expected the date to remain the same. I made arrangements to pay the monthly fee on January 5th, which is a bit ironic since I thought "I will rather pay two days early this time than challenging destiny by waiting to the last day"…
However, the upgrade was made on December 3rd, so the renewal date was changed. The four last days of my previous hosting solution (the Elite VPS service from SiteGround) had been lost along with the money I had already paid for those days. Now, I don't really care about that. It was just not what I expected.
I contacted SiteGround immediately when I discovered the changed date and asked if I could make the renewal on Monday the 5th instead, while keeping the site online in the meantime. With the lost days in mind - and given the fact that the customer support is usually great - I don't think there will be any downtime this weekend. But just in case the site would go down for some time, please be aware that it is only temporary.
Updated January 3rd: There will be no downtime. The excellent tech support at SiteGround moved the renewal date to January 7th. Problem solved, and I can move on with the suiting up!
Comments can be only posted for 14 days after the post date. If you have comments about an older post such as this one, feel free to send me an e-mail!
Comment from Andreas
Time: January 3, 2009, 12:47
Yes, I would. I have got those extra days to make renewal payments every time I have asked for it in the past, so I would be both surprised and disappointed if I wouldn't get it this time. But I have also seen my site go down once because of one such delayed payment, when automated tools pulled the site down before the host could put it back manually.
I still haven't got any reply to the message I sent to the host, but I did get an automatic renewal failure notice saying that I have to pay within 48 hours or I'm out and all material on the server is lost. But I'm not worried. Yet. :)
Comment from Francesca
Time: January 3, 2009, 14:33
I'm glad to hear that the tech support at your web host decided to cooperate and you were able . This is how it should be, though it is not to be taken for granted that a long-standing, reliable customer is showered with attentions. My brother had been with a web host for years and had his site pulled down because he paid the bill one day later than it was due.
In a sense, I'm happy I pay for the domain names and web space yearly instead of monthly and that my web hosts starts notifying me about when payment is due 3 months in advance.
Comment from Roger
Time: January 3, 2009, 11:34
Well, wouldn't you expect to be treated like a reliable trustworthy customer and be more than surprised if a long-standing business partner simply terminated its services once payment is just a second late?
I'd surely would, and I'd take action accordingly then.