How do you handle cancellation requests?

[nibb]

There is something bugging me about Hostbill and I was wondering how you are using the software in this scenario.

First is, do you use the status Cancelled or Terminated when an account is deleted for non payment? I would be interested when you use one and when you use another.

There reason I ask this is because it seems confusing then one should be used or the other.

If a user requests a cancellation, lets say a cpanel account, then you then click cancel it auto cancels the account it uses the status "Terminated" for that account, not cancelled.

But the biggest problem I have, is when someone selects on his cancellation to be done at the end of the billing period.

My other billing systems, which was very simple handled this fine. I could set the account to auto cancel at XX date, or end of period and since it was marked as cancelled the customers was not further billed and the account terminated at the end of the billing period.

Now, in Hostbill I found out the bad way that if you click "Cancel Account" hostbill will terminate the account right away, NOT at the end of the billing period.

So what are the options here really? As far as I know the customer will also receive an invoice again unless your terminated it.

Hostbill does not seems to schedule a task for this like I assumed and updates its status to the customer is not further billed, so how are you guys handling this? Doing it manually? Any tips would be advised. The more I use Hostbill and more I find out its very, very simple, and it cannot even handle basic tasks, my other billing software AWBS was able to handle this fine, so it was able to handle domains redemptions, and prorated addons, etc. Hostbill seems it cannot handle anything at all which is related to daily automation on services, its all about ordering and then it does not do anything after this at all.

[tallship]

I'm personally afraid to use many of the features, such as proration. I know we cold save some money by doing this, and about a year ago someone contributed a free third party module for doing this with paypal (It appears to have made it's way into hostbill now as a hostbill developed module), but proration is something relatively new to hostbill.

It shows that kbkp knew very little about the business before setting out to write the software and even less about quality systems analysis and design, or testing and quality assurance.

People like to say that kbkp is a gifted coder, but he is the of the lousiest calibre of programmers who think they can fix things by "just coding it real quick" - those bozos never seem to learn they break more and more things that weren't broken before when they do things like that and never seem to abandon their malignant narcissism.

[harrison914]

It shows that kbkp knew very little about the business before setting out to write the software and even less about quality systems analysis and design, or testing and quality assurance.

People like to say that kbkp is a gifted coder, but he is the of the lousiest calibre of programmers who think they can fix things by "just coding it real quick" - those bozos never seem to learn they break more and more things that weren't broken before when they do things like that and never seem to abandon their malignant narcissism.

So why do you still use this software or this forum if you feel this way? I'm not sticking up for Kris, but all you do is complain about him and the software.

[nibb]

My concern here is valid, please collaborate here on the use you do on this features, instead of going into another rant about hostbill.

There is no point in having a hostbill forums if all threads are exactly the same. In that case I would suggest Patrick to create a category or posts where all rants go into there.

We know some things do not work, or at least I don´t if they work because I never tested them, so my topic is about those that are using features and how they manage this issues.

[harrison914]

I agree. Every thread I look in Tallship is bashing HostBill or Kris and I for one am tired of seeing it.

Nibb,

When I use the cancellation/termination if the invoice was not paid and the account was cancelled for non payment I leave it as terminated to know the client did not cancel the account if they want to come and reopen the account at a later date.

I agree that the cancellation process in HB is not that useful. Maybe we should suggest it or you can post it in the bug tracker I guess that it doesn't work properly.

[ezpnet]

Really, the cancellation/termination feature is simply a "kill it now" button? So how are we supposed to handle post dated cancellations (please close my account at the end of the month)... google calendar and google docs? Then manually do it?

[tallship]

My concern here is valid, please collaborate here on the use you do on this features, instead of going into another rant about hostbill.

The cancellation doesn't work for me as expected. What happens is that it simply terminates the account, so I adjust the service to $0 dollars and then set up a manual todo on the anniv date.

Yes, an invoice is sent out for zero dollars and then I cancel the account. So far that's the only solution I've come across that doesn't actually terminate a valid account - letting it go past the billing date and then cancelling once the new invoices have been sent out.

On another note, and interestingly enough, this has caused a couple of customers to change their minds, since the next month's invoices are typically issued and sent out either 10 or 7 days in advance. Seeing that their bill for the upcoming month is $0 apparently brings the customer to consider that their service is really going to end, but it's still a mess, with actual service extending past by hours or a day before having to be manually cancelled.

When the customer cancels, it's not a problem because the customer knows they want to at that time. I wish they could choose to cancel at the end  of a billing cycle in advance of it actually happening though, and I'm sure they would too.

The big problem here isn't so much that an account must be added to a todo list and manually cancelled following the anniversary date, but that adjustments must be  made if we don't do it by zeroing it out first (It will mess up the balance they owe for other services they have). I figure that if a provider charges late fees by default, then this will mess them up even more - we don't do that, and if a customer waits until their billing date and cancels a day or two after their invoice is actually due, then it's best for us just to make those adjustments for them on our end manually so it doesn't affect their other services.

Not especially elegant, but then again, we don't have thousands of customers on HostBill.

One thing that seems to work a little better, is to simply tell the customer they need to cancel their own service prior to the dute date on their invoice. This puts the responsibility back on them, which makes them responsible for ending that particular service before another month of service is due. I suppose that if they miss the date you could be a stickler and say they owe for the new month, but if they have other services with you it's prolly best to just zero everything out on that one service account.

I hope that helps

Kindest regards, 

[nibb]

I agree. Every thread I look in Tallship is bashing HostBill or Kris and I for one am tired of seeing it.

Nibb,

When I use the cancellation/termination if the invoice was not paid and the account was cancelled for non payment I leave it as terminated to know the client did not cancel the account if they want to come and reopen the account at a later date.

I agree that the cancellation process in HB is not that useful. Maybe we should suggest it or you can post it in the bug tracker I guess that it doesn't work properly.

That was exactly how I did used, except for the following.

When a customer opens a cancellation request, and he does not have due invoices, and you process the cancellation, Hostbill uses the Terminated status.

So I had a problem there.

I used it the same way you did.

Customers requesting cancellation in a proper way, I used "Cancelled"

Customers terminated for non payment, I left the invoices due and open I used "Terminated"

You see what  happens?

Customers using the cancellation form, Hostbill uses "Terminated" so there was no way to difference between correct cancellation and people that where terminated because they had due invoices.

The idea of having a different status between accounts is to able to located accounts easily, in one case, cancellated because end of agreement, etc, or terminated for non payment.

But since Hostbill uses Terminate, it was mixed up. So for what exactly is the "Cancellated" state I have no idea.

Of course you could use it the other way around and use "Canceled" for due invoices, but that makes even less sense.

[nibb]

Really, the cancellation/termination feature is simply a "kill it now" button? So how are we supposed to handle post dated cancellations (please close my account at the end of the month)... google calendar and google docs? Then manually do it?

That is right. Its basically a Kill button. It will not handle post dated cancellations.

I tried that, and it terminated the account right away.

So the cancellation request is pretty much pointless because it should handle post cancellations. This:

1. Remind you on the date or
2. Cancel it (schedule a task) on that day.

Right now, as far as I see, you need to remind yourself of the date.

One idea I came up, maybe some can use this is the following:

Ones cancellations request comes in, change the services manually to Cancelated. Assuming you use "Terminated" for everything else.

So you don´t actually cancel the account yet. This way accounts showing as Canceled needs to processed eventually. This of course does negate the fact you still need to remind yourself to check this every day and see matching accounts which needs to be terminated on that date.

To be honest, I think this is a bug. Why in the world does Hostbill let the user choose Cancel on due date, if it will do nothing?

I mean the option is correct, otherwise you don´t even need it and just let customers open a ticket and you terminated it right away. My point is that if you let users choose "Now" or on due date, then Hostbill should do something with that.

[nibb]

The cancellation doesn't work for me as expected. What happens is that it simply terminates the account, so I adjust the service to $0 dollars and then set up a manual todo on the anniv date.

Yes, an invoice is sent out for zero dollars and then I cancel the account. So far that's the only solution I've come across that doesn't actually terminate a valid account - letting it go past the billing date and then cancelling once the new invoices have been sent out.

On another note, and interestingly enough, this has caused a couple of customers to change their minds, since the next month's invoices are typically issued and sent out either 10 or 7 days in advance. Seeing that their bill for the upcoming month is $0 apparently brings the customer to consider that their service is really going to end, but it's still a mess, with actual service extending past by hours or a day before having to be manually cancelled.

When the customer cancels, it's not a problem because the customer knows they want to at that time. I wish they could choose to cancel at the end  of a billing cycle in advance of it actually happening though, and I'm sure they would too.

The big problem here isn't so much that an account must be added to a todo list and manually cancelled following the anniversary date, but that adjustments must be  made if we don't do it by zeroing it out first (It will mess up the balance they owe for other services they have). I figure that if a provider charges late fees by default, then this will mess them up even more - we don't do that, and if a customer waits until their billing date and cancels a day or two after their invoice is actually due, then it's best for us just to make those adjustments for them on our end manually so it doesn't affect their other services.

Not especially elegant, but then again, we don't have thousands of customers on HostBill.

One thing that seems to work a little better, is to simply tell the customer they need to cancel their own service prior to the dute date on their invoice. This puts the responsibility back on them, which makes them responsible for ending that particular service before another month of service is due. I suppose that if they miss the date you could be a stickler and say they owe for the new month, but if they have other services with you it's prolly best to just zero everything out on that one service account.

I hope that helps

Kindest regards,

Would what I posted before work?

If you change an account manually the state to "Cancellated" my guess (I hope so) that Hostbill will actually not send an invoice out. This leaves you the choice to cancel it when you want.

Right now, I just want to avoid exactly what you said, a customers receiving an invoice then send me a nasty email on why he is being charged if he already requested cancellation.

I think that could work, setting the state manually to something else that is not "Active"

How do you set the task on the anniversary date? It just takes me to the product order configuration page when I create on create Schedule new task under a service.

I assume that option was to actually create a related task regarding that service and this is not the case in my installation.

[tallship]

Would what I posted before work?

If you change an account manually the state to "Cancellated" my guess (I hope so) that Hostbill will actually not send an invoice out. This leaves you the choice to cancel it when you want.

I'll test this out with a dummy account. It's a kludge, but a fix is a fix I suppose

Right now, I just want to avoid exactly what you said, a customers receiving an invoice then send me a nasty email on why he is being charged if he already requested cancellation.

Yes they have a tendency to get really pissed when that happens lol.

I think that could work, setting the state manually to something else that is not "Active"

How do you set the task on the anniversary date? It just takes me to the product order configuration page when I create on create Schedule new task under a service.

What I actually do is go to:

Manage Clients ==> Client (num or name is the same) ==> Services ==> Account #

I then set the Registration Date and the Next Due Date fields to match the anniversary dates I want. This will adjust the invoice price. Then I add the addon to that service.

You can mark the service as pending or active until you're done - if active, and the invoice is overdue, it might gen an invoice on the next cron run so be careful that everything is as it should be - the system will tell you when it is going to send out invoices/reminders.

Next, I go to the invoices  or recurring invoices for that client (if you actually created an order page with the service it should be under invoices) and set the reg date and next billing date too.

It's important to remember not to set the registration dates any further back than the previous billing cycle, because I think it will bill them for the addon all the way back to that date - not sure, and I'm writing this from memory too.

And be careful, with the autosuspend features too for that customer's service too or you might suspend and/or terminate their service - I turn off the auto-suspend for them until they pay for the new addon in their next bill, then turn it back on now that everything has sync'd.

Yes I agree, it's a complete mess.

[tallship]

So why do you still use this software or this forum if you feel this way? I'm not sticking up for Kris, but all you do is complain about him and the software.

I love Socratic reasoning. And I think that's a fair question: Here's a fair answer, posted by Nibb

Perhaps the crux of the matter is contained in the last paragraph of his post, related to stupidity. Stupidity as it relates to me, him, and perhaps even you, no offense. Just pointing out the genesis for the obvious anger and disgust at being naive enough to believe and getting swindled because of it.

Kindest regards,

[nibb]

I love Socratic reasoning. And I think that's a fair question: Here's a fair answer, posted by Nibb

Perhaps the crux of the matter is contained in the last paragraph of his post, related to stupidity. Stupidity as it relates to me, him, and perhaps even you, no offense. Just pointing out the genesis for the obvious anger and disgust at being naive enough to believe and getting swindled because of it.

Kindest regards,

Actually I bought Hostbill on a night where I did not sleep enough. I was affected by my fair judgement, when I saw Poland as my company. I almost clicked away, because I knew the best reputation Poland has is that all cars and bicycles sold in Europe, mostly Germany, end up in Poland.

I always had bad experiences with countries not being first world, not sure why, I was being a racist to be honest. And I almost clicked away because I did not wanted to deal with a company from Poland and I also read before on WHT some people said they never purchased it based on the owner decisions.

The last minute I decided to be a good person and let my feelings not cloud my judgement, so I said, I will give it a chance. (how bad can it be I said to myself....) And saw my PayPal account minus dollars.

Oh, boy was I wrong. My feelings never betrayed me before and I should had listen to them like I always did. Now I have to pay for my mistakes and stupidity.

To be honest, we were all fooled here. Shame on me.

[tallship]

I always had bad experiences with countries not being first world, not sure why, I was being a racist to be honest.

Well a bit OT but if you're trolling I'll bite

I've seen this come up in another thread. I wasn't able to tell exactly what the words used were, so I didn't have the context in that thread.

What you're describing isn't racism - it's ethnocentricity yes, and the result of nationalism perhaps; that thing that the so-called armchair-anthropologists of the previous two centuries first popularized and develped; that Napolean almost single-handledly created and exacerbated (Napolean is often credited as the father of Statistics for demanding a modern and accurate census, modern medicine for the promotion of surgeons during the revolution, and nationalism in the wake of his rise to power); and evtentually culminating into what caused people to think they would be home by Christmas after the communications lines went down and prevented the trains full of troops from being recalled at the spark of WWI.

For example, to be a Pol is not a race - it is a nationality. When I owned my gun store a guy wanted to purchase and register a handgun and I could only choose his nationality/place of birth from a drop down list of countries. He almost went balistic when I chose Czech republic, because he said he was not born there, but rather, born in Czechoslovakia. A man without a home nation.

There is a generation of ethnic and non-ethnic Jews (ethnic Jews are considered a race I think), that were born in what used to be the Palestine under British rule - that country no longer exists, because it is now called Israel, for the most part, I think. I can't remember the term for that generation of jews born in a state that no longer exists, but the point is, that being an Israeli does not define your race.

Being Persian, or Irani, doesn't either, and generally speaking, Persians are not Arabs, they are Indo-Europeans. Persia was a country, and being Persian or Irani is a statement of nationality, not race.

Brits like to call Americans *Yanks*, that's about the only nationality of folks that can call me that to my face where I dont' consider it fighting words, because I know they dont' know the difference between me and a blue bellied yankee - but that is still a function of the Nationalism that Napolean popularized based on ethnocentricity from lines drawn on a map, as opposed to race, because being descended from the Southern Confederacy in origin is not a race (Although we are superior to yankees LOL) - My race is Native American Cherokee, but my nationality is American. I just ain't no Damn Yankee (but if you're a brit you can call me a yank I suppose).

So no, Nibb, it wasn't racial when you harbored doubts about doing business with someone in Poland - it was prejudcial, yet, stemming from your own ethnocentricity and the false pride of Nationalism. Blame it all on old man Bonaparte if you like, all the sociologists and cultural anthropologists do

A hundred and more years ago, French people think they were evolutionarily superior to Germans because of their winderufl wines and their great music composers, while German people thought the French inferior because of their totally awesome beer, and Beethoven, when all the whole time they were the same race, for the most part - a kind of prejudice that is uniquely applied to linguistic and political boundaries and philosophies, not genetic diversity.

I get that way too. I am very cautious of New Yorkers until I get to know them, with their Vinnie Barbarino / Joey Buttafuco accents and mannerisms - people from all races live and thrive in New York, but in my ignorance I tend to lump them all together as "New Yorkers" - Heck, they even call their dang Baseball team, "The Yankees" LOL

BTW, much of what I said above was tongue in cheek. I don't actually harbor any ill feelings toward those blue bellied yankee northerners, although I generally do have an affinity for things southern in nature, and I actually feel sorry for all the poor souls who endure those Minnesota winters decade in and decade out - while I'm actually quite the Southern Californian, an evolutionarily advanced race of people who are comprised of all creeds and colors and philosophies, and if that's not enough to convince you of our racial superiority, we've actually got beaches where you can go surfing in the morning followed by mountains you can drive to for snowboarding in the afternoon and be right back at the beach for an evening BBQ.

Kindest regards,