I have a small Internet business, and in early January a customer wrote to let me know that the site's catalog and shopping cart were down. I hadn't touched the code or the database, so I contacted the tech support department of my service provider, Jumpline, to ask if they had made any changes to my account. They replied that they hadn't, but after a lot of digging I discovered that they had upgraded my database software to a version that was incompatible with my shopping cart software (the backend admin stuff still worked, which is why I hadn't noticed a problem). When I contacted tech support again, they verified that they had indeed done that, at the beginning of December.
Since they hadn't sent out any notification that they were doing a major upgrade, and then neglected to inform me of the upgrade when I asked them specifically if they'd changed anything, they cost me an entire month's worth of sales (including all holiday sales).
When I complained about this, they brushed me off without even an apology. This wasn't the first problem I'd had with their IT staff, so I found another host and canceled my Jumpline account.
I contacted them in March to ask why they hadn't yet refunded the balance of my last payment (I was paid up through July), and they sent me this excerpt from their Terms of Service:
"1.1. G. JUMPLINE.com does not offer a prorated refund based on the early cancellation of your services. If you are on a multi-month payment interval and wish to cancel a service prior to the end of the term, you will forfeit any money paid for the services. Once money has been received on an account, this account will be considered under contract for the service provided by JUMPLINE.com for the term of agreement. This policy is in effect for all accounts at JUMPLINE.com."
I don't recall that phrase from the Terms of Service I agreed to, but it's been several years since I first signed up and sadly G*e Cache doesn't go back that far. So I'll assume I simply missed that in the mass of fine print.
However, it seems to me that since they accepted my account cancellation and cut off my access, they are no longer providing the service I paid for. If they had said, "Sorry, we'll be keeping your account active until July, " I'd have been angry but would have kept the service until then. Since they've taken my money and aren't providing any service in return, I believe they may have broken their end of the contract.
I have contacted a lawyer about the matter, but I wanted to warn others who might use their service. Their downtime is much more frequent than they claim, their IT staff is unhelpful, and they apparently feel they can do as they please because they won't refund your money if you cancel.
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