DreamHost overbilled their customers to the tune of $7.5 million today. Then, they joked about it.
Today, in what is surely the most readable and contentious blog posting so far in 2009 — er, I mean 2008 — DreamHost took a lighthearted approach to an undeniably serious customer service snafu.
And the blogosphere is going crazy over it.
When running a billing script to clear out their charges for the remainder of 2007 (a script which determines when and how customers of the Internet hosting company get charged) they accidentally entered a date of December 31, 2008. This resulted in nearly every account they service being charged for the rest of 2008.
Wow.
That’s a mistake of colossal, perhaps company-ending proportions. It’s every PR person’s worst nightmare and every vice president of customer relations’ death knell: the complete and utter screw up that can’t possibly be explained away.
Time to call in the PR army.
Only, DreamHost doesn’t have an army of PR flaks. They’re a small company with a lot of goodwill in their community, a decent track record, and a whole lot of lighthearted attitude. So, they relied on their strength: the funny.
With their usual tongue-in-cheek attitude, they posted an amusing blog post (“Um, Whoops”) that explained the situation, what they are doing to fix the problem, and what they have learned from the experience.
Not everyone found it laugh-out-loud funny. I did, but I’m not a DreamHost customer. I have nothing to lose from this mistake. The responses to the blog posting are riveting, hilarious, and deadly frightening from a customer service point-of-view.
If you’re in any way involved in customer service, you should spend at least ten minutes reading DreamHost’s blog post and the responses that follow.
At the time of this writing, according to an informal poll set up by one of the blog’s commenters, the answer to the question, “Will you stay with DreamHost after their billing screw-up,” is 53% yes, 31% no, and 17% undecided.
Ouch.
Did DreamHost do the right thing by being dead-set on openness and transparency? Did they simply shore up their base of dedicated customers who like to laugh, at the expense of more serious-minded customers? What about that swing vote?
DreamHost is on Get Satisfaction, and you can join the conversation about them here.
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[…] The DreamHost Nightmare By Eric Suesz Did they simply shore up their base of dedicated customers who like to laugh, at the expense of more serious-minded customers? What about that swing vote? DreamHost is on Get Satisfaction, and you can join the conversation about them … Demand Satisfaction! - http://blog.getsatisfaction.com […]
[…] Plenty has been said about the major mistake made by webhost DreamHost overbilled it’s customers in the amount of $7.5 million dollars. There has been a wide range of responses from customers, competitors and customer service experts. There is a great analysis of the goods and bads of this experience by Service Untitled’s blog. I’d like to put on my Adultitis diagnosis hat and put my two cents in. […]