Has your host ever overcharged you when you're a loyal customer?

Same happened to me when I wanted to order an extra server at the same host I was with some years ago, suddenly I got 1TB of included bandwidth instead of the 250 GB of my "older" servers where I had to pay extra for the extra GB on traffic above 250GB.

I just sent them an email and they corrected all servers to 1TB, but still...

BTW just in case my current hosts are wondering... this thread isn't anything to do with my current arrangements. It's someone else who discovered they were being overcharged to the tune of several thousand dollars per year. Their hosting company says that they are aware that many customers are on old pricing but they do not proactively seek out those customers to advise them of their newer/better pricing. Sounds like bread and butter to me.

Honestly do you expect the host to notify you of things like this. Every company should evaluate its hosting needs on a 6 month to yearly basis. Explore your options look at promotions and new technology. It is never in a hosts best intrest to move you off old hardware or onto better pricing. Its in your best intrest though to know if you can do better.

Try having a host who is charging you for data going from server-to-server because they have you routed externally instead of internally.

Won't call anyone out, but that was a funny one to catch .. and it taught me to log in to even managed boxes from time to time and poke around.

I would absolutely expect that to be the case. I wouldn't call it "overcharging". "Overcharging"
would be if they charged you more than you had agreed to pay. The hosts themselves sign
a three year or sometimes a one year contract on space, power, bandwidth, etc. Hardware
gets cheaper over time, as does bandwidth generally, so yes a customer who signs up a
year or two later will pay less for a 1Ghz server than you paid when it was the hot new CPU.

That's the nature of a technology business and a major part of costs for some companies.
If they purchase ten servers today with 3 GHz processors and 2 TB drives, by the time they
sell the last one the value of it will have dropped in half because the 5 Ghz processors and
4 TB drives will have just come out. This effect costs the hosting company a lot more than it does you.
They are still making payments on that $10,000 optical router they leased two years ago,
which now sells for $5,000.

In fact, we have a service that we price so low that we don't even make any money on you
when you are a new customer. We pretty much give it away for the first year. However, if we keep you a happy customer and you stay for five years, during that time our costs will drop
and we'll earn our money starting the second year or so.

That said, I see no problem with talking to the host every two years or so and renegotiating.
Loyalty counts for something. What counts for even more, in the eyes of the web host, is that
the brand new $5,000 server you signed up is now an older machine worth $3,000, so they
can afford to keep you on it for a slightly lower price.

It's in your best interest to change hardware if and only if your current hardware doesn't handle
the load well. If you have a reliable server that is working well, "don't fix it if it aint broke" is a
good thing to keep in mind. "Upgrades" can and do go wrong, more often than anyone would
like, and even when they go right there is a cost to it.

I've been with The Planet for about 8 years (upgrading to newer servers every couple of years) and hit them up a few months ago about this very same issue. I'm a long time customer, and I'd like the same deals new customers are getting blah blah blah...

They initiated an accounting audit and within a couple days they cut my hosting bill by over a half.

Sometimes you just gotta ask

New customers get special introductory deals on lots of things with the second year being a higher price that a lot of people pay without ever checking. Try getting a quote as a new customer next time your car insurance renewal comes up if you want to feel like someone has just been putting their hand straight in your wallet.