Stop a customer from ordering new services ?

[Si]

Might seem like a strange one, but I've been searching the forums and the add ons area to see if someone else had already had need of this.

 

Scenario:

I have a customer who has 'repeatedly' failed to update his site (wordpress) and repeatedly his site has been hacked and has sent out spam, causing the mail server IP to be blacklisted - and on one occasion his site placed an enormous load on the server causing db connections to fail etc.

 

So, I have eventually terminated his hosting account. (He is ignoring support tickets as well).

 

Tonight, I find, he has now ordered up another hosting account on another server setup for the same domain. So, right now, I want to stop him from ordering any hosting accounts. I can't just close his account, because he has domain names registered through us and so he will need access to manage these.

 

Anyone come across this before and have a solution / thoughts?

 

Thanks in advance.

[sentq]

It is possible, I can think of many ways to apply this

[Sliffer21]

As mentioned before it is possible but then you run in to the issue of him opening multiple accounts and you are back to manually managing his orders.

 

Have you considered suspending his email privileges? For example create a similar package without email accounts and move him to that package. Since he is responsible for the spam it would be acceptable if you have a spam policy section in your TOS prohibiting SPAM (That is more of a legal issue though than technical).

[yggdrasil]

I agree with Sliffer21 here.

 

In a previous system before WHMCS I had something similar. I basically wanted for users with outstanding invoices for a long time to be forced to pay their dues before ordering something new. What they did was just to open a new account with no pending invoices. This is exactly what they are going to do and probably even fake their registrations details on the new account. And even lie and when you say it's the same person because the IP is the same saying things like its someone else on his family or in the building they work and they are not the same person. I just saw it all...

 

While I agree this feature could be handy for some cases, in your case the solution is even easier than you think. First of all, you terminated his account, so he ordered a new one correct? Well, that would be a violation of what ever terms of services you have (or should have at least). So why not suspend or terminate the new account as well?

 

If he is not responding tickets either, to be honest, do you want to keep those type of customers aboard? Probably not. The only thing that works for abusive accounts is to punish them where it hurts, their pockets.

 

In my case I did exactly what.

 

What I did, when users opened a new account and ordered a new services. I didn't actually activated the service, but left it pending. This will force them to contact you, in particular if they paid and are not receiving the welcome details. After they contact you, deal with them. You can force them this way to contact you.

 

With really abusive users, what I did was even more strict. Some ordered a new hosting account while having several suspended accounts without payment, so instead of activating his new account, I used the payment of his new account to pay one of his due invoices. Some complained saying the payment was for another account but this is absolutely ridiculous, no company has to keep providing new services to a person that owes that company money.

 

Believe it or not, what happen is that those users paid after that all their invoices, since they figured out ordering a new account will not work until they had paid all the other due invoices. Some invoices where open for months...

 

If you put artificial limits, they will get around them. The only thing that works here, is letting them know that you are watching and there is a real person behind the approval process of each account. People only think about cheating a setup process if they think its completely automated and nobody is looking.

[zomex]

This is a interesting question, you to contact the customer more maybe even look for a different email by searching WHOIS.

 

As someone mentioned suspending the hosting account is likely going to be the best route as it'll ensure your server is safe and motivate the customer to contact you.

 

I'd also recommend looking closely at their payments as this type of customer is typical of someone who's making fraudulent payments.

 

Jack