Aug 04 2009
Want To Host Elsewhere? Pay Transfer Fee!
I am privileged to have an existing customer happily hosting one of their web sites with me. Recently the boss told his staff to transfer all their domain names and hosting under me.
However, the other hosting provider, actually their outsource web developer, would not budge. He claimed the web sites make use of certain ASP.NET components not normally available on other servers.
Fair enough. I asked for a list of ASP.NET components required. Perhaps they really need to stay with him. But after checking the list, those are just standard components supported on most if not all servers.
Finally, the web developer agreed to let customer go, but not without a “transfer fee” charged for the trouble to transfer their web sites and email accounts to the new server (which I would help do for customer free of charge if given all necessary server login details).
However, after some consideration, the customer decided not to pay the “transfer fee”, not because of money, but because of principle. Maybe. But I suspect another reason being the fact that their web sites are under the control of the developer. They have to rely on the web developer to access and update their web sites.
After all, the web developer has been doing a good job maintaining their web sites. From customer’s point of view, why switch to me if there is not much compelling reason to switch over to me? But from my point of view, it is another typical case of customer web sites and hosting being hijacked by provider.
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totally agree with u. before i concentrating on technicals ( computer and network troubleshooting) im working with web developer company, doing marketing and updatings for customers, its my previous company policies not to disclose full informations of domain and hosting to the clients in returns, all updating and even email account creations is handle by us.. its past tence now.
Everything will become a problem when after 1yr or 2, your designated web developer not performing like as they suppose too or worst case, already out of bussiness…
where shud u go then?…if the billing ( domain and hosting) is on u, u’ll save. if not … buying new domain n hosting laaa..
this is what happens to the company that made me knowing u… im just a freelance, dont have the knowledge to build a websites, yet able to do a simple updating and tweaking if given the right authority.. i thank you for your cooperations regarding this company domain n hosting info.
Thanks Jay for sharing
It maybe common practice for some web design companies to control customers this way. But I’m against the practice.
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This is very normal for malaysia culture. Many company executive lazy to handle all those IT things or may be not willing to learn too or no IT basic to handle all those stuff. So, the designer handle everythings is very common to protect themself too.
Many web designer complete design everythings the client not paying them the balance because the client hold the hosting account. What the web designer can do for that if not collect a full payment with all job done.
Hi Kenny, thanks for comment
Understand the designers need to protect themselves. On the other hand, I also found many cases where designers still hold on to the hosting account and not release to customer, even if full payment has already been made, and the company has technical people to handle, or the company appoint technical people outside to handle (as in the case of this blog post).
Wonder what you think of such situation? The designers still wish to protect themselves for what else?