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As a responsible company, BizPartner is your ethical hosting provider. We stand by our values – Integrity, Service, Accountability.

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As such, I often refer them to other IT service providers.  However, the experience has not been very positive.  To be fair, some partner companies do their job very well.  But some really provide a lousy service.

To a company whom I have stopped referring businesses to you a few months ago, please stop telling others excuses why you no longer get projects from me.  You are new and need to learn more on servicing customers.

Integrity - You didn’t deliver what you agree to customers.  You didn’t keep your promises.  You appeared very kind in front of customers but talked bad about them behind.  Your words and actions were not one.

Service - Your product standard and customer service was not consistent enough.  No doubt sometimes you did very good job. But at other times you were nowhere to be found.  I would rather like you to have average quality than inconsistent one.

Accountability - You were not accountable for you were requested to do.  I gave you a lead to call but the customer never heard from you.  People called you or sent SMS message to you but you didn’t reply until much later. Worse, you didn’t even tell me when you found a prospect was not right for you.

Do you know that returning calls and SMSes is basic good manner, especially in business? I really can’t risk people’s trust on me by referring businesses like you to them any more.

The problem is, who to trust and what to entrust them with? This comes with experience. My observation in business is that, we should be shrewd as snakes (know the workings of the devil), but be innocent as doves (be like angel believing the world can get better)

No doubt we are living in a distrustful world. There are some people who just can’t be trusted. But I guess most people are innocent like you and me, basically good people but just hesitate to trust others.

I suppose the world maintains itself based on trust, without which it will just break down. We trust our engineers have done good job that our roof won’t fall down to hit our head. We trust our banker with our money that it won’t get lost.

Managing people needs trust. We must trust our employees for certain things, or we will end up doing all the job ourselves.  Expanding business network needs trust. We must trust our partners that they will do their part, or we will end up being lone ranger in business.

There is a Chinese saying that if we use the service of people, trust them. Otherwise, do not hire him (用人不疑，疑人不用). Especially true in managing people who work for us.

Correct me if I’m wrong, the world needs more trust.  As we extend our trust to people more, good and innocent people like you and me will reciprocate their trust to us.

Between trusting people and distrusting people, I would rather choose to trust than distrust. The world needs more trust and we can do our part to make it a better world. Not only for the world, but for the advantage of ours and people around us too.

The problem is, who to trust and what to entrust them with? This comes with experience. My observation in business is that, we should be shrewd as snakes (know the workings of the devil), but be innocent as doves (be like angel believing the world can get better)

Why not? Businesses, banks, legal firms and government agencies have been known to conduct background check on people using CTOS, CCRIS and other means.

After all, foreknowledge on people, companies and markets we are dealing with will be much useful to ensure higher success for us.

Sun Tzu even says, “Thus, what enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge” (故明君賢將，所以動而勝人，成功出于眾者，先知也)

So, why can’t employers check on job candidates before hiring them? One justification is that, hiring the wrong employee is not only costly to the company, but also detrimental to the employee who comes into the wrong job.

But are you aware of the dangers of doing such online background check?  Feel free to comment on my presentation done in December 2009 below or on SlideShare.net.

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.

However, this web design company insisted the customer use their web hosting service.  Web hosting was part of their web development package for the customer.  Not being a technical person and not having been briefed clearly, the customer unknowingly agreed to the deal.

Later the web design company called me up to get my “cooperation” to transfer hosting to their server.  I sought clarification from customer but he said he never wanted to switch hosting provider.  He still wanted to host with me.

But the web design company was very adamant that the customer must host with them.  They claimed that they had set up everything about customer’s web site and database on their own in-house server, and so it was very troublesome to move their work to my server.  They said it was “easier” for them to develop the web site by hosting on their server.

Luck was on my side, though.  Customer insisted to host with me and gave them official notification to the web design company to host their works on my server.  Long story cut short, the customer is still happily hosting with me until now.

By some discovery later on, I found out that the web design company was actually using hosting from third-party hosting provider.  So they had not been very honest by saying the customer must host on their own “in-house server”.

From my experience, it is generally not true that you must host your web site with your web design company.  No matter where you host, as long as they get hold of the details on how to log on to the server, they can do their work.

It is also generally not true that it’s “easier” for them to develop your web site on their server.  No matter where you host, they work on your web site using pretty much the same ways – uploading and downloading by FTP, web-based administration using cPanel and PhpMyAdmin, and so on.

But I know of some cases where a customer’s web site makes use of special features available only on the web designer’s server.  Then in such cases, you have no choice but host with them.  But these cases are rare.

Web design and web hosting are two different services.  These two services can be separated and provided by different providers. But a web design company often bundle web hosting in their service, and this is perfectly good strategy.  But it is not good when they are not being honest and transparent with you.

Is there is a seed of evil in us? Is it why we need laws, rules and ethics to “regulate” us so that we don’t do evil? Otherwise we can just go amok and the world becomes upside down as everyone is free to do anything that satisfies his or her own selfish desires.

There are businesses who “do evil” by shortchanging customers and employ unethical means to compete in the market. There are business people who think “touching on the borderline of the law” is perfectly OK. After all, we are all in business. You want to be nice to everyone? Don’t be in business!

What some may not realize is that businesses who don’t believe in having good ethics may not be a sustainable business in long run. They may win something today but their evil conduct can hit them back later, perhaps even hit them so hard that it costs their very existence.

There are proper ways to compete and win over customers in the market. Those who have good corporate ethics like Google are well respected. Not like those who act evil today and think they can repair their image tomorrow.

This does not apply to businesses only, but also to individuals, non-profit organizations, government agencies and yes, even political parties. What’s good in it to win a battle now only to lose a war later? And in politics, what’s good to win a state now only to lose the entire nation later?

So businesses, don’t be short-sighted. Justice will prevail. The customers will decide…

Upon some checking, I found others in the hosting industry know about their practice too. Sometimes the company even unknowingly call up hosting providers and resellers.

A contact told me this company “hijacks” other companies’ customers. We may accuse them of “stealing” customers from competitors. But they could claim it’s their marketing strategy.

Legally speaking, they don’t do anything wrong, unless they mislead customers into thinking they are their domain name or hosting provider, which I guess is possible since many customers are not so IT-savvy on domain and hosting stuff.

There is no such thing as a “hosting industry association” in Malaysia. No organization for us to appeal to. We can’t complain against them. They also didn’t break any law, unless we can get the proof of their misrepresenting other companies.

For now they maybe able to “steal” many customers from others. But their name is notorious in the industry for what they do. This does not translate into good business for them in the long run. At the end the customers will know their plot also.

One interesting question is that, where do they get the list of expiring domain names? They told a “mystery shopper” that they check your domain name from the domain name search service (WHOIS) provided on the Internet. But without first knowing your domain name, how do they do a search on your domain name?

The company admitted they have such a list of expiring domain names but refused to reveal the source citing confidentiality. As I understand, domain name registrars like MYNIC, Webnic.cc and others do not share the list of expiring domain names to their partners and resellers.

A possible solution is to register customers’ domains under our own contact details. But for me this would be breaking my promises to customers. Another solution is subscribe for private WHOIS service, where customers’ details will not be available online. But it costs money and add to customers’ expenses.

For me, I think those companies who rely on “stealing” customers from others are desperate short-term businesses who choose to compete in the red ocean and have no unique business strategy for themselves. For them, I think they can choose to gain customers for today and lose their reputation for tomorrow.

What do you think?

Sorry but you should not be too excited about the numbers above – the large space and lots of bandwidth as promised. You will never use that much.

Firstly, an average web site will not use so much space. All but one of my own sites are below 50MB each. Check this out.

Secondly, you will not use so much bandwidth. Almost all my customers’ web sites use less than 2GB per month!

Thirdly, I’m wrong. Your web site is another The Star or MalaysiaKini. You indeed need lots of space and bandwidth. But in such case, your site will have consumed too much so-called “server CPU resources” that we will have to ban your site because it has used too much space and bandwidth compared to others! Read the fine print, you have violated the hosting policy!

Fairness is a virtue in shared hosting. No site is allowed to take up too much resources at the expense of other sites shared on the same server. Is your web site having more than 1000 visitors per day? Chances are your traffic is too high compared to others that your site will be banned for monopolizing the server resources!

So even if you have access to 100GB server space and 1000GB bandwidth, you will not get to use it. Better go for dedicated hosting – one whole server just for you.

This is an “overselling” kind of business model. Let’s say a server has 100GB hard disk space. One can dare to offer 10GB hosting to 100 customers! Does the extra space of 900GB come from the air? Because, statistically speaking, we know an average customer will not use even 1GB!

If that’s the case, I can also claim to offer you 1000GB space and 5000GB bandwidth per month for the price of 1GB only. Overselling is over promising! But this seems to be how some of us compete in hosting industry

So by claiming to offer unbelievable tons of space and bandwidth to customers, are we actually deceiving people?