Web Hosting Dilemmas: Who To Avoid
sofamoolah.com
sofamoolah.com
If you follow tech news, you'll notice that every major cloud based service has experienced some level of down time, so while you should "avoid" shared hosts like HostGator (I think this goes without saying), you shouldn't expect that just because you go with a cloud service like MediaTemple, Amazon, Heroku, etc, you don't need to plan for possible outages. MT also had their fair share of issues back when they were getting started. Amazon has had some well publicized issues. Both of these wouldn't be an issue for those who engineer their systems properly.
It's hard to beat simplicity when it comes to reliability. We don't need the scaling capabilities of cloud services, so we go with simple VPSs. Our primary hosting is straight forward VPS systems hosted with a provider colocated at Colo4 in Dallas. I've had systems with them for 5 years now and I've never experienced a failure. We still maintain redundant services in a Freemont data center just in case.
If you sell an service with 'instant' in the name, it had better be. Let them get started instantly. If you want to do random checks on content, go for it. But don't piss off your customers before they've even started. Especially if they've got any weight in the industry.
I'd imagine they're flagging these orders using a third party risk verification/fraud detection service. Sofa Moolah is registered in Australia, and International orders are a high indication of risk - especially as Australia's region of the world includes Malaysia (huge hotbed of credit card fraud).
Given the very large amount of fraud in web hosting (people ordering using fraudulent credit cards, that can result in $20-50 chargeback fees for that $8 account), it's not unreasonable to ask for verification. Annoying, but not unreasonable.
They could have come to the same end as far as service checks go without pissing him off and losing him as a customer. Not to mention everyone he tells.
If all they are worried about is the chargeback, they should have enabled his account immediately, then started running the checks. If he fails the checks, THEN you disable the account. What would it cost them? Like $.20? Instead, this way cost them at least 1 serious customer.