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I think any money they might have saved by not keeping a backup may now have been negated single handedly by this HN discussion.

by jules 16y ago

e1ven 16y ago
I really can't agree. How long should they keep a backup of every user's virtual machines, after they stop paying? 20 days is reasonable, a month would have been better (If only since it's more predictable) but they really didn't do anything unreasonable. Keep in mind, even if it's only $2/month (After redundant backus, etc), if you have had 10,000 customers, that really adds up! Keeping files forever "Just in case" isn't a sustainable business strategy.
- jules 16y ago
  How many of the customers stop paying? Probably not many. How much disk space are these customers using? Probably not much. How much disk space do they have sitting on their servers unused? Probably a whole lot.
  - nl 16y ago
    Credit Cards expire every 2 years. I would guess that a very large percentage of them don't preemptively re-verify their credit card until a billing fails.
    - cdr 16y ago
      There's no reason a merchant has to stop billing a customer after an otherwise perfectly good card expires. Having your billing process fail on that is pretty dumb.
petercooper 16y ago
I doubt it. Most people who would be good customers for them would realize the complaint was far fetched. They don't need customers who whine about things that far off the gamut. People have suggested that 37signals would suffer from their attitudes towards implementing new features or crap like Gantt charts in BaseCamp, but I don't see them suffering for it, despite the ongoing rants and raves by "high maintenance" potential customers.
- jules 16y ago
  For me at least the problem is the attitude toward customer data. I would definitely try to be a good customer but there are all kinds of reasons why I might miss a payment. Even if the chance of that happening is 1% it would still be a reason to reconsider competitors even though Linodes specs are better.

I think any money they might have saved by not keeping a backup may now have been negated single handedly by this HN discussion.

by jules 16y ago

I think any money they might have saved by not keeping a backup may now have been negated single handedly by this HN discussion.

e1ven 16y ago

I really can't agree. How long should they keep a backup of every user's virtual machines, after they stop paying? 20 days is reasonable, a month would have been better (If only since it's more predictable) but they really didn't do anything unreasonable. Keep in mind, even if it's only $2/month (After redundant backus, etc), if you have had 10,000 customers, that really adds up! Keeping files forever "Just in case" isn't a sustainable business strategy.

jules 16y ago
How many of the customers stop paying? Probably not many. How much disk space are these customers using? Probably not much. How much disk space do they have sitting on their servers unused? Probably a whole lot.
- nl 16y ago
  Credit Cards expire every 2 years. I would guess that a very large percentage of them don't preemptively re-verify their credit card until a billing fails.
  - cdr 16y ago
    There's no reason a merchant has to stop billing a customer after an otherwise perfectly good card expires. Having your billing process fail on that is pretty dumb.

petercooper 16y ago

I doubt it. Most people who would be good customers for them would realize the complaint was far fetched. They don't need customers who whine about things that far off the gamut. People have suggested that 37signals would suffer from their attitudes towards implementing new features or crap like Gantt charts in BaseCamp, but I don't see them suffering for it, despite the ongoing rants and raves by "high maintenance" potential customers.

jules 16y ago
For me at least the problem is the attitude toward customer data. I would definitely try to be a good customer but there are all kinds of reasons why I might miss a payment. Even if the chance of that happening is 1% it would still be a reason to reconsider competitors even though Linodes specs are better.