Is there a legal term...
Discussion
Is there a legal term for this situation.
I do business with a data centre. They provide an SLA on different elements. Cooling, power, bandwidth, connectivity etc...
So... If connectivity to the site is so rubbish that it renders the entire site useless. How do I go about claiming costs for the loss of the site, rather than just the loss of connectivity?
This is an issue that has been going on since November and entails a whole load of technical detail that I can't / won't go in to.
I am at the stage of writing angry emails in the hopes that they will do right by us, but also happy to hand over to the legal bods if they don't. Right now the technical issue is still persisting and I am only looking to speed up the financial/ legal position once the issue has been fixed. After around 1 month of this issue, they admitted fault.
I do business with a data centre. They provide an SLA on different elements. Cooling, power, bandwidth, connectivity etc...
So... If connectivity to the site is so rubbish that it renders the entire site useless. How do I go about claiming costs for the loss of the site, rather than just the loss of connectivity?
This is an issue that has been going on since November and entails a whole load of technical detail that I can't / won't go in to.
I am at the stage of writing angry emails in the hopes that they will do right by us, but also happy to hand over to the legal bods if they don't. Right now the technical issue is still persisting and I am only looking to speed up the financial/ legal position once the issue has been fixed. After around 1 month of this issue, they admitted fault.
Consequential loss?
I'd be very surprised if it wasn't excluded in the contract, to be honest.
Might be better off lifting and shifting to another location that can support you better, rather than getting lawyers involved. Demonstrating actual loss might be tricky, even if your sales fell off a cliff.
I'd be very surprised if it wasn't excluded in the contract, to be honest.
Might be better off lifting and shifting to another location that can support you better, rather than getting lawyers involved. Demonstrating actual loss might be tricky, even if your sales fell off a cliff.
Prizam said:
Is there a legal term for this situation.
I do business with a data centre. They provide an SLA on different elements. Cooling, power, bandwidth, connectivity etc...
So... If connectivity to the site is so rubbish that it renders the entire site useless. How do I go about claiming costs for the loss of the site, rather than just the loss of connectivity?
This is an issue that has been going on since November and entails a whole load of technical detail that I can't / won't go in to.
I am at the stage of writing angry emails in the hopes that they will do right by us, but also happy to hand over to the legal bods if they don't. Right now the technical issue is still persisting and I am only looking to speed up the financial/ legal position once the issue has been fixed. After around 1 month of this issue, they admitted fault.
Consequential losses.I do business with a data centre. They provide an SLA on different elements. Cooling, power, bandwidth, connectivity etc...
So... If connectivity to the site is so rubbish that it renders the entire site useless. How do I go about claiming costs for the loss of the site, rather than just the loss of connectivity?
This is an issue that has been going on since November and entails a whole load of technical detail that I can't / won't go in to.
I am at the stage of writing angry emails in the hopes that they will do right by us, but also happy to hand over to the legal bods if they don't. Right now the technical issue is still persisting and I am only looking to speed up the financial/ legal position once the issue has been fixed. After around 1 month of this issue, they admitted fault.
What does the contract say about their liability?
How hard have you tried to mitigate the losses, by moving the site to another host f'rinstance?
we are redundant so have not experienced any real loss. Other than paying a lot of money for a site we cannot use. this effectively reduces our computing power. but not to the detriment of any publicly available services.
We are, however, now potentially exposed should we lose any more computing power.
We are, however, now potentially exposed should we lose any more computing power.
Prizam said:
we are redundant so have not experienced any real loss.
So zero consequential loss to claim for.Prizam said:
Other than paying a lot of money for a site we cannot use.
No reason why you shouldn't get that back - I presume you're under some kind of fixed-term contract for the period since this started.Prizam said:
We are, however, now potentially exposed should we lose any more computing power.
Get more redundancy set up, then?TooMany2cvs said:
Prizam said:
we are redundant so have not experienced any real loss.
So zero consequential loss to claim for.Prizam said:
Other than paying a lot of money for a site we cannot use.
No reason why you shouldn't get that back - I presume you're under some kind of fixed-term contract for the period since this started.Prizam said:
We are, however, now potentially exposed should we lose any more computing power.
Get more redundancy set up, then?Contract - This is what I'm asking about. We can get money back for the connectivity element, but because there are connectivity issues it renders the whole site useless. The difference in cost over the period we have had issues is around a 75k difference. This is the cost I am looking to recover, or at least partially recover.
Exposure - We have provision to have the complete loss of 1 site and still continue working. This really should be enough. Normally, we would expect our exposure to be minimised to within hours, 24 hours absolute max. this is contractually an acceptable risk. To setup, another site for additional redundancy would cost an awful lot.
In pistonheads terms...
You buy a new car with a leaky fuel tank. It exposes you to risk (Of fire) and gives you a hardly usable range of 10 miles.
The dealer attempts to fix the tank several times, but cannot. They fit a new tank, with the same issue.
You have been without a working car for a long time.
You can claim for the cost of the tank and repairs, but the dealer won't allow you to claim for the cost of the lack of car, or the fact they have been fobbing you off with crap repairs and you have been attempting to drive a risky car for the last 4 months.
You would, under the advice of pistonHeads, reject the car. If the dealer doesn't want to play ball then there are escalation points available.
Or at least, claim back the money for the monthly payments you have been making whilst the car has been unusable. Lets please assume a lease deal and no courtesy car given.
So what do you do when you're driving a knackered datacenter and they only want to pay out for connectivity issues?
You buy a new car with a leaky fuel tank. It exposes you to risk (Of fire) and gives you a hardly usable range of 10 miles.
The dealer attempts to fix the tank several times, but cannot. They fit a new tank, with the same issue.
You have been without a working car for a long time.
You can claim for the cost of the tank and repairs, but the dealer won't allow you to claim for the cost of the lack of car, or the fact they have been fobbing you off with crap repairs and you have been attempting to drive a risky car for the last 4 months.
You would, under the advice of pistonHeads, reject the car. If the dealer doesn't want to play ball then there are escalation points available.
Or at least, claim back the money for the monthly payments you have been making whilst the car has been unusable. Lets please assume a lease deal and no courtesy car given.
So what do you do when you're driving a knackered datacenter and they only want to pay out for connectivity issues?
TooMany2cvs said:
Prizam said:
You would, under the advice of pistonHeads, reject the car.
May Sir be assuming the Consumer Rights Act applies to business-to-business transactions?It would be prudent to structure your business so you are not dependent on the datacentre to provide connectivity.
If it's a facility that doesn't permit you to do that, move to one that is.
You'll need to look at the contracts and the SLA's that were agreed at the time.
It will probably say something like: "The liability of PROVIDER for breach of contract, negligence or any other liability howsoever arising shall be limited to service credits due under any applicable SLA."
If it's a facility that doesn't permit you to do that, move to one that is.
You'll need to look at the contracts and the SLA's that were agreed at the time.
It will probably say something like: "The liability of PROVIDER for breach of contract, negligence or any other liability howsoever arising shall be limited to service credits due under any applicable SLA."
Edited by essayer on Monday 19th February 13:49
essayer said:
It would be prudent to structure your business so you are not dependent on the datacentre to provide connectivity.
If it's a facility that doesn't permit you to do that, move to one that is.
I'm not sure that's the point. The OP has stuff running in a data centre (website or whatever). The SLAs in the contract will relate to the individual compute facilities provided, cpu, memory, connectivity, disk etc. The costings are probably built up from some sum of the itemsIf it's a facility that doesn't permit you to do that, move to one that is.
The OP says that the connectivity is so poor that the whole service is duff so he can't get the utility from the components, but the only SLA that applies is on part of the contract. By definition, a data centre needs to be connected to the world to work.
To the OP's question, it depends on how the contract is worded, but at a basic level, if the service is not being provided (or the performance is so bad that it is unusable), one would not expect to be paying for it. Without seeing the contract wording it's hard to give better advice though.
Bert
BertBert said:
I'm not sure that's the point. The OP has stuff running in a data centre (website or whatever). The SLAs in the contract will relate to the individual compute facilities provided, cpu, memory, connectivity, disk etc. The costings are probably built up from some sum of the items
The OP says that the connectivity is so poor that the whole service is duff so he can't get the utility from the components, but the only SLA that applies is on part of the contract. By definition, a data centre needs to be connected to the world to work.
To the OP's question, it depends on how the contract is worded, but at a basic level, if the service is not being provided (or the performance is so bad that it is unusable), one would not expect to be paying for it. Without seeing the contract wording it's hard to give better advice though.
Bert
Bang on. The OP says that the connectivity is so poor that the whole service is duff so he can't get the utility from the components, but the only SLA that applies is on part of the contract. By definition, a data centre needs to be connected to the world to work.
To the OP's question, it depends on how the contract is worded, but at a basic level, if the service is not being provided (or the performance is so bad that it is unusable), one would not expect to be paying for it. Without seeing the contract wording it's hard to give better advice though.
Bert
The contracts are crap, wordy and difficult to decipher. At face value, they suggest that based on SLA, a refund is applicable for 100% of the connectivity charge.
This is the refund that the datacenter provider are suggesting too.
I suggest that, because of the rubbish connection, the length of time it has taken so far to not yet resolve... and the amount of effort it took us to demonstrate that the issue did indeed lie with them. That we should be entitled to a lot more of a refund than just the connectivity element.
"An unintended consequence of rubbish connectivity is that the whole site was completely unusable for a prolonged period of time. Meaning an investment of £xxx,xxx was effectively wasted"
I suspect this will go legal but would like to use the correct terminology before handing it over... if such a legal precedent exists.
Can you expand a bit more on "useless" .. are you seeing lack of connectivity, reduced rate, packet loss etc?
IP transit should be fault-free and, in a DC, provided at whatever rate you're contracted to, so it's unusual for a provider to be *that* bad (but some are)
The main issues I've normally seen centre around temperatures, power availability, or providers disappearing into thin air leaving racks disconnected etc.
Are you contracting directly with the datacentre, or another business which rents space in the datacentre then space in racks etc?
IP transit should be fault-free and, in a DC, provided at whatever rate you're contracted to, so it's unusual for a provider to be *that* bad (but some are)
The main issues I've normally seen centre around temperatures, power availability, or providers disappearing into thin air leaving racks disconnected etc.
Are you contracting directly with the datacentre, or another business which rents space in the datacentre then space in racks etc?
Prizam said:
co-lo
So space and power rental plus connectivity? If the contract is wordy and unclear you will def need a commercial/legal brain involved. Sadly, once you start paying for external help, the returns seem to vanish very quickly. Have I got it right that you have paid 75k for the service that you want to get back? How much of this do you get according to the comms SLA? Say that is 25k. Then you are fighting over 50k. Assume you meet in the middle, then you have 25k to get. Lawyers fees eat that up pretty quickly, making the legal route unattractive.Have you written to them to state your case? I suspect that using 'legal' arguments will be slow and painful. Do you have the ability to take the business elsewhere easily? If so, that might prove a better lever. Can you just stop paying? Not nice but that's what customers seem to do these days!
Bert
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