IT Support Worker Shut Down A Client’s Email Servers After The Co-Owner Refused To Pay Overdue Charges, But All Services Were Restored Because The Other Owner Panicked And Paid The Entire Bill

Heather Hall

2 days ago

Woman in suit trying to make business decisions that she doesn't understand

Pexels/Reddit

Some people assume that because they don’t understand the service, there’s no point in paying for it, but this thinking usually doesn’t end well.

So, what would you do if a longtime client suddenly refused to pay for services they claimed they never used, even though they used them every day without knowing it? Would you try to explain the situation better? Or would you just let her hang up?

In the following story, an IT employee finds himself in this predicament and teaches the client a lesson in technology. Here’s what he did.

I never use those, I won’t pay for it!

I work for a small IT company that provides website hosting, email servers, and web software.

Here are the main characters:

$Me: Yours dearest. $Boss: Boss of the client company. $Mom: Co-Boss of the client company and also $Boss’s Mother.

He called to see if there was an issue.

After a few years of collaboration with $Client, our accountant came to me to say that $Client hadn’t paid the monthly fee for their website and mail server.

Sometimes clients forget to set up automatic transfer when they change banks or their accountant goes on vacation and forgets to tell someone to do it. So, I call them to let them know what happened:

$Me: Hi, it’s $Me from $IT we havent received your transfer from last month. Is there a problem?

She had no idea how important the service was.

$Mom: I don’t know what those fees are. I won’t pay for it.

$Me: These fees cover your website and mail server.

$Mom: We don’t use it. I don’t want it. I won’t pay for it.

And she hangs up. I was like, Okay! You do not have to be this rude.

Then, the main boss called.

So we sent a registered letter with recorded delivery saying that if they do not pay by the end of next month, we will have to shut down all their services.

After a month and a little bit, still no transfer, we shut off everything. Sure thing, 30 minutes later we received a call from $Boss.

$Boss: My emails stopped working. You have to fix this, please.

$Me: Yes, we shut off your server because you haven’t paid your monthly fees for the last two months.

Needless to say, they paid very quickly.

$Boss: What? But $Mom is in charge of all the suppliers, she should have paid you.

$Me: No, she told us that you did not need our services and did not want to pay for them.

$Boss: She is crazy! We take care of all our invoices and contracts by email. Without them, we may as well close the company. I will take care of paying you personally from now on. But please start the server back on.

So we did, and 20 min later, one of his employees was at our door with a check for the last two months and the upcoming one. And from this point, he always paid us on time.

Wow! She really had to learn the hard way on that one.

Let’s check out what the people over at Reddit think about this story.

This person’s dad is like that.