2.) Customer informed and appropriate action taken for unpaid accounts (suspend account for non-payment)
3.) Customer's friend makes a public complaint on Twitter
4.) Web host responds badly (but perhaps with some justification, outside parties getting involved in disputes, where a simple pay-the-outstanding-invoice would have resolved the situation)
5.) Non-payee gets abusive
6.) Web host deletes the account for abusive behaviour.
Apart from point 3, everything else seems in order. The customer's friend was provoking a reaction in public. What did he want, the webhost to publicly state that his friend's account had been suspended for non-payment? That seems worse than a firm private message to butt out of a contractual matter.
Suspending the customer's friend does seem harsh, but taken from the view that he's complaining publicly about a problem that doesn't involve him, it might be a long term justification of ejecting bad customers instead of just tolerating them (perhaps there's more to the story). That sort of approach is recommended by things like The 4-hour work week, firing your worst customers.
The guy should have paid his bill, either on time, or as soon as justified. There was no reason for his friend to escalate matters, there was no reason for the non-payee to escalate matters. You pay for the service, you get the service. You don't pay, then you get no service. Yes, the web host can be more lenient, but it's not something you should feel entitled to.
There are a number of extenuating circumstances that can warrant or could result in one or more of these points being appropriate responses.
And look at it, it's a cpanel / shared-hosting reseller - those margins are razor thin to non-existent, even loss-leading. If you're not paying at least $7 a month for a cpanel account, then expecting the host to be lenient for non-payment and subsequent abuse from the non-payee is unjustified.
(worth noting that two dudes had their stuff deleted - on paid on time, and the other hand paid for most of his services, but due to a PayPal error was unable to pay for all of them.)
Entity theory dictates a separation of business and owner (or person, to be less specific) so as to protect one entity from the actions of the other.
Personally getting pissed off for someone for being a dick? That's fine. Using the business to basically get revenge on them for being a dick? Not fine. You're not there to punish customers for being pissed off.
Guys aren't gonna get very far if they have a paddy with every irate customer that comes along. And everyone who's been in a customer-facing job knows they far outnumber the pleasant folk.
And you know what? I bet the dispute wouldn't even have occurred if the CS rep just said something like 'sorry, we cannot discuss the details of other clients' accounts'.
Generally speaking, it's a bad idea to harm people to stoke your ego, too.
Let's say I flip out in my local bank branch. They're perfectly justified in calling the police, because it is a bad idea to yell at people at the bank - but they would not be justified in closing my account and keeping the money to "teach me a lesson", and that is essentially what happened here.
I find it a shocking lapse of professionalism to do anything like this, and I find it incomprehensible that an adult could think it was justified. Seriously. You just don't act like this in the real world and hope to stay in business - sooner or later this attitude will kill you. Customers do flip out and tell you to fuck off, they just do. You either learn to act like an adult about it - maybe step away from Twitter for a while - or you quit, and get a job that doesn't involve interaction with customers. Or co-workers. Or anybody else that might harsh your fragile calm.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to justify it in any way. Both sides acted completely against their own self-interests.
Anyone working in a professional setting needs to grow a thick skin and deal with situations like this much, much better. Out of self-interest. However, if a customer mistakes this for a license for consequence-free abuse, and is then shocked when someone on the other end snaps and does something stupid, I fail to conjure up too much sympathy or moral outrage, for either party.
Odd, from what I've read all the accounts were paid up to date -- but paypal had taken a particular payment back for some new service (a domain name or something to that effect).
#6a) Hosting provider deletes the backups as well.
So if you ever happen to complain about your Comcast service or your phone service, you're fine with the company cutting you off if they ever see that? Right.
While I may be wrong, reading through the comments on Reddit it seems like 5) happened after 6), not before, and was followed by 7), deletion of all backups.
I'd guess that they tried every other possibility to recover their money before pulling that stunt, rather than just flying off the handle and trashing stuff because the other guy said a bad word.
2.) Customer informed and appropriate action taken for unpaid accounts (suspend account for non-payment)
3.) Customer's friend makes a public complaint on Twitter
4.) Web host responds badly (but perhaps with some justification, outside parties getting involved in disputes, where a simple pay-the-outstanding-invoice would have resolved the situation)
5.) Non-payee gets abusive
6.) Web host deletes the account for abusive behaviour.
Apart from point 3, everything else seems in order. The customer's friend was provoking a reaction in public. What did he want, the webhost to publicly state that his friend's account had been suspended for non-payment? That seems worse than a firm private message to butt out of a contractual matter.
Suspending the customer's friend does seem harsh, but taken from the view that he's complaining publicly about a problem that doesn't involve him, it might be a long term justification of ejecting bad customers instead of just tolerating them (perhaps there's more to the story). That sort of approach is recommended by things like The 4-hour work week, firing your worst customers.
The guy should have paid his bill, either on time, or as soon as justified. There was no reason for his friend to escalate matters, there was no reason for the non-payee to escalate matters. You pay for the service, you get the service. You don't pay, then you get no service. Yes, the web host can be more lenient, but it's not something you should feel entitled to.
There are a number of extenuating circumstances that can warrant or could result in one or more of these points being appropriate responses.
And look at it, it's a cpanel / shared-hosting reseller - those margins are razor thin to non-existent, even loss-leading. If you're not paying at least $7 a month for a cpanel account, then expecting the host to be lenient for non-payment and subsequent abuse from the non-payee is unjustified.