Hey,
I have a user that has a limit of 10gb for his account (I stopped the account from being suspended if he went over as sometimes he went over by a little and I didn't mind, also let him know this)

Today I noticed his usage was 168gb this month (only 20 days so far) and I thought it was a mistake in cPanel.

Checked it out and it was true, there was a file over 200mb (Legal and legit) that was downloaded a lot.

According to my TOS this would be $316 in charges but I wouldn't want to charge anyone that, even if they did use a lot of resources.
It is just far too open, I would end up losing the customer and I doubt it would be paid anyway.

I need some advice on what to do about this...
Is is a lot of bandwidth but I don't want to go overboard....

Why don't you contact him and tell him to upgrade his account, if he doesn't want to... Just tell him that his file has exceeded his account bandwith usage and if he does this next month you will cancel him or something...

Time for a personalised email with details of your new special offer for high bandwidth customers

Well yeah, you are going to have to contact him via email, or whatever way you do contact him.. let him know and from there discuss options, whether it be removing some files or upgrading his account, or whatever..

Hmm very tricky,

Does this client always pay on time?

If so then sendthe client an email with an offer that the client could not possibly refuse. There is no point in loosing the client if it's a good client because the client has used too much bandwidth.

Also is this client actually aware that an overage has occured this month?

A suggestion for future if not already implemented a page to be automatically displayed once the account goes over say 10% over the limit?

post edited to remove gender specific grammar

I have something in place where if a client exceeds their bandwidth allowance more than three months running, I ask them to upgrade their account.

How long have they "slightly exceeded" their bandwidth allowance? It sounds like this is happening quite a lot. Would it be possible for you to create a special plan for them that covers their usual overages but doesn't carry a huge increase in price?

On the current issue: explain to them how much bandwidth they've used. Would you be amenable to spreading their payments out over several months, so as not to hit them with the charges all at once?

Either that, or: depending on what plans you have available and how large a gap there is between their current plan and the next one up, offer to cancel half the charges for this month if they upgrade to the next available plan. The next available plan should have enough bandwidth that their regular overages are covered with a little bit of room to spare, and shouldn't be too huge a price jump.

I try to keep an eye on client accounts that are regularly huge bandwidth users. If their usage goes over halfway through the month, I notify them and ask if they prefer that their site be suspended for the remainder of the month, if they wish to pay the overage charges at month's end, or if they want to remove whatever file is causing the bandwidth jump (or put image hotlinking protection in place.)

He has removed the file from his site and his bandwidth has gone back to normal (Well excluding the few days of it jumping up that *little bit )

I haven't charged him as it was a mistake and I understand and believe that he didn't know that he was using so much.
It was only used over 2 days really but it was just such a jump because the file was so large and other sites linked to it (even though it was meant to be in a member only section).

I have learned to check bandwidth usage more often anyway

He is a good customer though and has been with me a while.

Sorry was posting my message when Lesli replied..

They don't do it often, most of the time they are a good bit below the limit and they have the 10gb for the times when they go go up around it, that's why I don't mind it so much, because they did buy a larger account even though their normal usage is well below 10gb.

I know this won't be happening again, partly because the customer won't be putting files on his account for download again, and partly because I changed some settings.
So I am happy enough, it hasn't effected others and I don't think it will be effecting me.

If I do get charged for extra bandwidth this month, I will pass my costs on though.

John I would still charge him something extra. IF you are too leaniant the word gets out and this might happen more often. Enable quotas again to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Sounds like you handled it well John, sometimes customers do things without realizing the effects. I got in the habit of checking bandwidth twice daily, one when I read the logs and then right before bed I run through it. Most of the ones I catch are reseller customers that get close so I always shoot them a quick email.

Yes better to keep a good customer as what you can lose in replacing them sometimes isn't worth it.

It seems you handled it very well John.


However, I'm with FatalSw1tch on this one I'm afraid. As he says, you should be too lenient. It wasn't your fault, it was his - and if he is a good client, maybe don't charge him everything, but just a little.

For example, one of my employees forgot to invoice a client - it wasn't the client's fault, so I'm not going to charge him for his two months usage; however had it been his fault he would have paid. However of course now I've employeed more people to actually go through each and every account each month making sure they are all up to date with payments, since all my web based clients pay monthly.

You need to really look at the situation, analyse it, look at the available options and then choose the best one for both you and the client.

However you did pretty well with this.
Hopefully it doesn't happen again, as otherwise you certainly should charge the client some of it.

:gun: It's time to fight fire with fire John :gun:

If I were in your shoes... sure I would wave 1gb here and there on overage. But 168gb... someones forking out some cash for that. I would calculate the percentage of bandwidth he used from your servers month quota. Then take the cost of your server and find out what that percentage of cost that is, and pass it on to him.

For example. I have a server that is $89 a month and I get 1000GB of transfer. So 168GB of bw is 16.8% of my monthly allowance. So the guy would owe me $14.97 ($89 x 0.168) for overage fees. Tell him you are giving him a deal since it was a mistake, and tell him that there is a useful tool in cPanel to monitor his bandwidth so it wouldnt happen again. That way he thinks you are being understanding, and he learns something new. There is no reason that you should eat the cost of that 168GB of bandwith being used.

You could also offer him a larger bandwidth allowance for a few bucks more. You did mention he has been going over on a few months, so maybe it would appeal to him.

Still think you should have hit him with a bill, 168 gig on a 10 gig account is taking the pee. He must have know - or he's not bothering to monitor his own account. Which is a prerequisite for anyone wanting a hosting account.

I will charge him if it costs me anything, I think it would be better to not charge him if I don't get charged and it could help with word of mouth.
If this happens again though, with any customer, I will be charging a fee.

Decked, the bandwidth was only used over 2-3 days because there was a large file in his account and someone got past the cpanel hotlink protection and a membership area (It was also password protected for members only).

I know I don't monitor the bandwidth on my accounts every few days, HR would be the only site I go into the control panel most days, for my others, I really don't check them often unless there is something I need to do in the control panel.

Jon, I think your suggestion is very good about charging depending on my bandwidth costs.

I think someone mentioned about offering more bandwidth (A bigger account) but most of the time his account uses nowhere near his limit, it is just when he does have a file for members that it would go close to his limit.
I don't think he will be going close to the limit anymore though as he isn't going to be offering any files on his site anymore.