Afrihost early termination

[ld13]

Dear @Afrihost @AfriNatic

Why do you guys terminate accounts early? I swear I experienced the same with my ADSL accounts way back when.

Friends down the road set their hosting to cancel at the end of the month, and that is only in ~3 hours, but the site is dead already, was busy transferring data still. What the hell man?

Ticket: WTQ-882-32356

 

[Jade @ Absolute Hosting]

@cavedog can you assist?

Sounds like recovery of data may be required

 

[AfriNatic]

Dear @Afrihost @AfriNatic

Why do you guys terminate accounts early? I swear I experienced the same with my ADSL accounts way back when.

Friends down the road set their hosting to cancel at the end of the month, and that is only in ~3 hours, but the site is dead already, was busy transferring data still. What the hell man?

Ticket: WTQ-882-32356

Morning,

The DNS has been removed but the whole cpanel account is still in tact it has not been graveyarded yet. What backup are you looking for?

 

[AfriNatic]

Dear @Afrihost @AfriNatic

Why do you guys terminate accounts early? I swear I experienced the same with my ADSL accounts way back when.

Friends down the road set their hosting to cancel at the end of the month, and that is only in ~3 hours, but the site is dead already, was busy transferring data still. What the hell man?

Ticket: WTQ-882-32356

I have sent you a message on how you can access the cpanel account to retrieve the data.

 

[ld13]

Thank you for the assistance guys. I had backups, so no issue there. In fact, my backup was parked with you guys, @Jade @ Absolute Hosting - Thank my lucky stars I did that. Currently running from that backup.

This thread is about the principle of the matter, unfortunately.

@AfriNatic I know who you are and I was extremely glad when I heard you got a job at Afrihost. I respect you immensely as a longtime member of the forum and it is great to have someone as knowledgeable as you on here. Kindly note that this is aimed at Afrihost themselves and has no bearing on you at all. Separation of church and state, and all that.

My issue I have here, is that the client paid for the full month, but Afrihost saw no issue in discontinuing service before that month was over. I might be splitting hairs here, but the client paid for the full month, did they not?

 

[cavedog]

Thank you for the assistance guys. I had backups, so no issue there. In fact, my backup was parked with you guys, @Jade @ Absolute Hosting - Thank my lucky stars I did that. Currently running from that backup.

This thread is about the principle of the matter, unfortunately.

@AfriNatic I know who you are and I was extremely glad when I heard you got a job at Afrihost. I respect you immensely as a longtime member of the forum and it is great to have someone as knowledgeable as you on here. Kindly note that this is aimed at Afrihost themselves and has no bearing on you at all. Separation of church and state, and all that.

My issue I have here, is that the client paid for the full month, but Afrihost saw no issue in discontinuing service before that month was over. I might be splitting hairs here, but the client paid for the full month, did they not?

Yes indeed. You have a fair point. The system is programmed for automation. When the cancellation was queued the system executed it that time to prevent billing from happening at midnight. You can imagine the load the system has at midnight on the end of the month when 1000 of packages get migrated, cancelled and upgraded in a short period of time. It needs to action cancellation then bill others. I'm not justifying that you got cut off a few hours early at all so I will have a chat with someone to see if we can fix that.

Sad that you left us.

 

[Jade @ Absolute Hosting]

Thank you for the assistance guys. I had backups, so no issue there. In fact, my backup was parked with you guys, @Jade @ Absolute Hosting - Thank my lucky stars I did that. Currently running from that backup.

Glad its sorted and I was gonna ask if you were moving to our servers. Let me know if you need assistance with the restore?

 

[Johnatan56]

Yes indeed. You have a fair point. The system is programmed for automation. When the cancellation was queued the system executed it that time to prevent billing from happening at midnight. You can imagine the load the system has at midnight on the end of the month when 1000 of packages get migrated, cancelled and upgraded in a short period of time. It needs to action cancellation then bill others. I'm not justifying that you got cut off a few hours early at all so I will have a chat with someone to see if we can fix that.

Sad that you left us.

Billing system should see that the account is flagged as cancelled for the month, that seems like a very bad billing system if it cannot handle that. Should rather let the client have the extra few seconds/minutes over rolling over into the next morning while the accounts are being blocked/locked out before scheduling a full wipe over the next few minutes.

 

[AfriNatic]

Billing system should see that the account is flagged as cancelled for the month, that seems like a very bad billing system if it cannot handle that. Should rather let the client have the extra few seconds/minutes over rolling over into the next morning while the accounts are being blocked/locked out before scheduling a full wipe over the next few minutes.

Hosting packages that cancelled does not get wiped. We graveyard them as courtesy that some clients might need to recover some data. The graveyard is not guaranteed but we try to keep data for at least 6 months.

As mentioned I will see if we can adjust the termination time for hosting packages.

 

[Johnatan56]

Hosting packages that cancelled does not get wiped. We graveyard them as courtesy that some clients might need to recover some data. The graveyard is not guaranteed but we try to keep data for at least 6 months.

As mentioned I will see if we can adjust the termination time for hosting packages.

Then this being an issue is really weird, since you'd just add a flag to the account that it should be cancelled next month and just have the billing system ignore it? Sounds more like this mistake was an advantage and your company left it as it's not an inconvenience to you, and you just bank on the fact that the client is cancelling anyways.

 

[AfriNatic]

Then this being an issue is really weird, since you'd just add a flag to the account that it should be cancelled next month and just have the billing system ignore it? Sounds more like this mistake was an advantage and your company left it as it's not an inconvenience to you, and you just bank on the fact that the client is cancelling anyways.

I can assure you there is no ill intent. Once I have gathered the correct info I will revert back. If this is a mistake on our side we will credit the client for the inconvenience and mistake.

 

[ld13]

Yes indeed. You have a fair point. The system is programmed for automation. When the cancellation was queued the system executed it that time to prevent billing from happening at midnight. You can imagine the load the system has at midnight on the end of the month when 1000 of packages get migrated, cancelled and upgraded in a short period of time.

I was working late on Friday when I was hit with the feeling/realization that Afrihost kills services early. That realization did not come from nowhere. This had to be prior experience. Between signing up everyone I know for Afrihost's R29/gb service 10 years ago, or signing up everyone for the free mifi stint, or signing up everyone for the uncapped stint, I recall instances where the services were killed before the "sensible" cutoff time, from a consumer perspective.

(man, I made some good cash during these stints - needed it, as I was going through difficult times - would recommend Afrihost to one person, they would struggle with the setup or something, I'd quickly help via remote desktop, earn a R100 and they would then recommend a friend and it snowballed a few times)

This in turn bit me in the ass over the years, as the "you touch it you own it" principle kicked in. Any small issue landed on my doorstep and I felt obligated to help etc or even help with an alternative service.

Correct me if I am wrong, but this has been going on for ... since forever? Aka this is the norm, with termination scripts run before midnight?

Yes indeed. You have a fair point. The system is programmed for automation. When the cancellation was queued the system executed it that time to prevent billing from happening at midnight. You can imagine the load the system has at midnight on the end of the month when 1000 of packages get migrated, cancelled and upgraded in a short period of time. It needs to action cancellation then bill others. I'm not justifying that you got cut off a few hours early at all so I will have a chat with someone to see if we can fix that.

Sad that you left us.

While I understand that, if it was programmed to do X, it can be programmed to do X properly, can't it? Of course I am saying this from the viewpoint of a consumer, without having in-depth knowledge of the underlying systems. While I am familiar with WHM, it was always in a manual capacity and never programmatically.

I left Afrihost aeons ago, by the way. This was simply me trying to help someone, as they were having issues and they were being charged for all changes (by a 3rd party) to make changes to their own website. I imported a copy of the site to Absolute Hosting (sorry, Afrihost simply does not have the best track record service-wise anymore) and left them to to play around in wordpress to their hearts content. This way they could figure it all out for themselves, without the danger of breaking their own site.

I can assure you there is no ill intent. Once I have gathered the correct info I will revert back. If this is a mistake on our side we will credit the client for the inconvenience and mistake.

I did not suspect any ill intent.

In any case. I rushed back home on Friday, and managed to download a fresh copy of the database/emails and a full account backup. Then, while I was busy doing a remote server import of their wordpress via softaculous on the backup server, the transfer failed. It took me a while to figure out what was going on. A ping finally revealed that the Afrihost DNS had stopped serving the domain, well before midnight, and thus the errors. So while this issue did not really cause the client any inconvenience, it caused me a lot of inconvenience since I then had to faff around to sort things out in the end.

What you could check/explain to me, if you have a moment, is the dedicated IP the client was billed for since 2019-04-24 though. I am interested to check what dedicated IP were assigned to them for the duration that it was billed for. Was it 154.0.171.xx?

 

[AfriNatic]

I was working late on Friday when I was hit with the feeling/realization that Afrihost kills services early. That realization did not come from nowhere. This had to be prior experience. Between signing up everyone I know for Afrihost's R29/gb service 10 years ago, or signing up everyone for the free mifi stint, or signing up everyone for the uncapped stint, I recall instances where the services were killed before the "sensible" cutoff time, from a consumer perspective.

(man, I made some good cash during these stints - needed it, as I was going through difficult times - would recommend Afrihost to one person, they would struggle with the setup or something, I'd quickly help via remote desktop, earn a R100 and they would then recommend a friend and it snowballed a few times)

This in turn bit me in the ass over the years, as the "you touch it you own it" principle kicked in. Any small issue landed on my doorstep and I felt obligated to help etc or even help with an alternative service.

Correct me if I am wrong, but this has been going on for ... since forever? Aka this is the norm, with termination scripts run before midnight?



While I understand that, if it was programmed to do X, it can be programmed to do X properly, can't it? Of course I am saying this from the viewpoint of a consumer, without having in-depth knowledge of the underlying systems. While I am familiar with WHM, it was always in a manual capacity and never programmatically.

I left Afrihost aeons ago, by the way. This was simply me trying to help someone, as they were having issues and they were being charged for all changes (by a 3rd party) to make changes to their own website. I imported a copy of the site to Absolute Hosting (sorry, Afrihost simply does not have the best track record service-wise anymore) and left them to to play around in wordpress to their hearts content. This way they could figure it all out for themselves, without the danger of breaking their own site.



I did not suspect any ill intent.

In any case. I rushed back home on Friday, and managed to download a fresh copy of the database/emails and a full account backup. Then, while I was busy doing a remote server import of their wordpress via softaculous on the backup server, the transfer failed. It took me a while to figure out what was going on. A ping finally revealed that the Afrihost DNS had stopped serving the domain, well before midnight, and thus the errors. So while this issue did not really cause the client any inconvenience, it caused me a lot of inconvenience since I then had to faff around to sort things out in the end.

What you could check/explain to me, if you have a moment, is the dedicated IP the client was billed for since 2019-04-24 though. I am interested to check what dedicated IP were assigned to them for the duration that it was billed for. Was it 154.0.171.xx?

154.0.171.x was the shared ip of the server. The IP that was added was 154.0.170.onefiveone

 

[ld13]

154.0.171.x was the shared ip of the server. The IP that was added was 154.0.170.onefiveone

N00b question(s):
The IP is assigned on the backend side, right?
What does it get used for in the end? A records as a start? Is email also sent from this IP?

 

[AfriNatic]

N00b question(s):
The IP is assigned on the backend side, right?
What does it get used for in the end? A records as a start? Is email also sent from this IP?

It's actually added as an additional IP. Clients might want to do this if their website requires a unique IP for whatever website they want to run.

Emails that are sent from the account does not use this additional IP or the shared IP at all. We have a separate system to combat spam and to control the IP reputation so outgoing mails go via this separate system.

An additional ip for a shared hosting package is not as useful as an additional ip on a cloud or dedicated server for example but we do give the option for clients that might want one.