For Want of a Nail…

Several years ago, we built a website for a large prominent client. I tried to convince them that they needed our WebsiteOverwatch service but I was unsuccessful.

A few days ago out of the blue he called and said, “Hey Dave, our website is down. Can you take a look and see if you can fix it?” Here’s what happened:

He had paid for his web hosting account by the year. When it came time to renew, the credit card he had on file with his web hosting company had expired. The web hosting company tried to reach out to him via email, but those emails ended up in the clients’ spam folder. After four such attempts to reach the client and no response from him, the web hosting company decommissioned the website.

The web hosting company did the site restore from an outdated backup. The client fat-fingered the new IP address when entering it into his name server. Etc. In the end the site was down for a week. Worse, this happened while he was trying to negotiate the sale of the company.

Which reminded me of the old proverb:

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost;
For want of a shoe, the horse was lost;
For want of a horse, the rider was lost;
For want of a rider, the message was lost;
For want of the message, the battle was lost;
For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost,

This was a client who could have easily afforded our WebsiteOverwatch service and we would have made sure the credit card information held by the web hosting company was up to date. Instead, his false economy nearly cost him the sale of the company.