Rai

Surpass offers you the ability to cancel all of your subscriptions yourself, independant of cancelling your hosting account. It's not recommended, at all, but if for some reason your account is not cancelled in a timely manner, then you can prevent your card from being debited again. However, the only time of Surpass ever continuing to charge for an account that I have heard of is because the individual does not cancel the account properly. If the cancellation occured after you've been billed again, (within a reasonable period) you will get a full refund. This happened to me when I upgraded my account to a reseller, and my shared account got cancelled.

I personally have had many positive experiences with automated billing. I have had more problems with manual billing, and heard more problems with manual billing, mainly because people are unreliable. Me almost forgetting to pay my credit card bill on time is no one's problem but my own, but my roommate forgotting to pay the hydro bill creates a massive inconvience. Now, maybe it's my fault for not picking a better roommate, but humans are not infallible. They forget, and in the system of web hosting, if you forget to pay, your website will get shut down. That makes one cranky customer, who, while at fault, wishes to blame the company for having the audacity to shut their site down. I've seen this many times at other hosting companies, and even here in a recent dedicated server situation, where someone did cancel their subscription.

Surpass has thousands, or even tens of thousands of individual customers. They do not have the billing system in place to handle manual billing. They can't do it because they do not have the infrastructure in place. That may change in the future, but the system they currently have works for them (and all their current customers and the new ones that come every day).

As far as not liking Paypal, that's your choice. You are severly limiting your choices, because a lot of the internet uses Paypal. My own personal dislike of them is they like to try to force you to attach a credit card and a bank account to your account. Frustrated me before I had a credit card of my own. Otherwise, I think the "horror stories" get so much attention because, as Kayla made the point earlier, people like unsavory stories. They're drawn to criticism. No one cares about the millions of transactions that occur every day without a hitch. They want to know all about the one (or few) error that Paypal made that day. I'm not claiming that Paypal is perfect, but I do not believe you should refuse any of your clients the option to use Paypal to complete what they want done. And if you paint a completely biased, negative picture of Paypal, you are not being honest about what benefits they may find with using it. As cowboy stated, his association has had a positive experience with the system.

I believe debit cards and digital checks are not the future, they are the current reality. Almost any tech savvy individual will pay their bills online, and as my generation grows up and starts having more bills, this becomes more common. The issue is, not many small corporations have the infrastructure to handle their own banking entirely. There are many security risks of providing your own credit card and debit card processing, particularly when your system has problems (such as the one you encountered). Which is why companies such as Surpass has to rely on outside processors (2co and Paypal) to function. I have heard a rumor of Surpass developing a new billing system, but that was one comment in thousands of posts I've read here. Whether that is the near future, I can't tell you. Their first priority is always to keep the current system running smoothly.

Yes, you may have had bad experiences in the past. The reality of Surpass hosting is that your fears will not be realized. Surpass billing support, though less prompt at responding to tickets then general technical support due to working regular weekday hours, is the most reliable and helpful support system I have encountered. I can't convince you of this, but I believe Surpass is the best choice for people who wish to get a lot for their dollar, and not have to lose out on good support and security, which is why I'm here, and why I have recommended dozens of people who are in need of hosting to come here. Take that as you will, and I hope you will at least consider Surpass to be the best alternative for your client.

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