Hoster not fulfilling contract: how to get money back?
- by plua
For several years, we have as a small webdesign company rented a dedicated server at a large hosting provider. They had several support levels. When we signed up for this, we had very limited in-house knowledge about server maintenance, and were very worried about the security of our server. We therefore took one of the more expensive support packages. An important aspect in this were these claims:
[PROVIDER] verifies the availability
of the latest security updates and
sends you a notification to see if
you are interested to have them
installed
[PROVIDER] verifies the availability
of the latest supported software
updates and sends you a notification
to see if you are interested to have
them installed
These items were clearly stated on their website as being part of the advantage of this package.;
With not enough knowledge about installing and updating such software on a Linux server, we decided to go for this package. We paid a premium of $50 per month over the maintenance package that is next in line ($100 vs $50). Over the years, we have paid several thousand dollars for this service.
Then came the moment that I learned more and more about server management. And I found out step by step that our server was horrendously outdated! We had an OS that was hardly updated, our anti-virus was not working because it needed certain more recent packages on the OS, and in general there were a whole bunch of security vulnerabilities and fixes that were lacking.
Shocked, I wrote the provider. Turns out, they decided unilaterally that they would not send out any notifications to clients because clients would get too many e-mails. This is a quote from their explanation:
[...] We have decided not to spam its
clients with OS and security updates
and only install them whenever asked
by the client
I was shocked! They had never mentioned that they would drop this service, and in fact the claims about updating their clients through e-mail was still on their website, after they apparently stopped doing this years ago!
Upon finding this out, I requested they refund all that we have paid as a premium over the other package, and make it available as future credit with their own company. I thought this was a very reasonable request.
However, they said they would only go back one year and provide credit for this one year. Mails went back and forth, but they were not willing to give credit for the whole period, which I felt I was entitled to. So ultimately I left the hosting company, and filed a complaint with the BBB a while ago.
Now, I am not the kind of person who runs to a lawyer for any minor thing, but in this case I am really considering taking action. I have been paying for years for a service I did not receive (the premium package had a few other pluses, but we took it primarily for these two points, and I can prove that we did not use the other benefits). For our small company the hosting costs were a very large part of our budget, and I feel it is very unfair how this large provider just does not care about not fulfilling its obligations. So my question is: what action should I take? Is a lawyer the only next step, or are there other suggestions? And am I right here to claim this money, or are they right that there is some sort of statue of limitations on such claims? Any feedback is appreciated.
