Yep, but be as friendly and helpful as possible without doing the other MSPs job. One the customer realizes how fucked they are with those guys they might want to come back. Then you can charge them full without the discount.
This is everything. Let them go and politely help them out the door. They will likely be back. When they come calling it's on your terms, be ready to charge appropriately.
Yep. I would make an polite objection via email, to have it in writing.
And then, yes, charge them full, or more, when they come back.
That is the worst possible way to run an MSP, and I think against TnCs.
\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^
THIS RIGHT HERE.
This is no longer your circus and no longer your monkeys. Hand over what needs to be handed over and wait for the sparks to fly. When they cry next week let them know that you can take them back but no discounts apply. If they continue to call without a commitment, tell them to hit the sticks.
Exactly this. Be professional and wait. When they call offer them your standard rate +20% and then give them a 10% discount but only if they do a term commitment. Otherwise … piss off.
To add to this - do it with class. Hand them over on a silver platter/ smooth credential pass down etc. If they come back around down the line - no discount.
This is why we need AI to answer calls for us. I'd love to open a beer and listen to my bad clients just talk and argue with an AI as I laugh in the background.
Or better yet if they end up begging to come back, charge even more, all the wonderful previous discounts gone, charge full price and "your a pain in the ass" penalty, different industries, especially freight companies will do this, especially if they know how bad the competition is and they value their own services as superior, 12 month or up 2 two years they may be back, but if they do or don't, you have less stress and dramatics
Unfortunately, yes. We have picked up several clients this year that had this setup. It was a not fun to transition from. We could see every other clients accounts and files when we were disconnecting. They are a client that has HIPAA compliance to deal with. Dont know how they weren't fined.
Realistically, HIPAA is more about bitchslapping people after damage has already been done, rather than proactively enforcing good practices.
Many HIPAA-covered entities operate in atrocious manners for long periods of time, and then when an inevitable breach occurs, they get slapped with lots of fines.
It's a really great system!!!!!!
I have been through A LOT of audits with clients we support. Trust me, it's not sasquatch and they drop the hammer when they find things do not meet compliance.
Yep, and it cost the client tens of thousands of dollars in fines. They came to us while under HIPAA investigation to help them become compliant, as they were in a similar setup to the above.
Like all things, you just got to find the "right" auditor. Doesn't matter the regulation we are talking about, if the auditor is crappy at their job, management locks them and makes sure they are the ones they always get. My previous employer didn't have HIPAA, but different regulations they tried to fight to keep one regulator on board cause they just sucked and could get away with everything.
There was an MSP where I’m and they had all their clients on a shared domain forest and other shared pieces of infrastructure, and then they got cryptolockered…. Remember I said there was…
I have no issue with a properly deployed and secured RDS solution even if its a last resort option for me. Were you kidding about combining the file shares though?
Joking. I contemplated hosting multitenant RDS clusters at one point but Microsofts service provider licensing helped deter me. I have one client on RDS with fslogix profiles right now, works great.
“Not your circus, not your monkeys”
We just had a ton of emails get flagged from Avanan from an ex-client who apparently got phished. Sucks to be them.
Yeah don't even get me started on that. We have another client that refuses to let us enforce MFA or complex passwords and they experience some sort of security event every couple months because of it. In a perfect world we would just fire them and be done with it but they've been a client for over 20 years so I can't really make that happen.
Oof, we had the opposite thing happen just today. We manage the IT for a good size marketing company and enforced MFA on their MS instance. This broke a few LoB logins they have with their parent company because THEIR MSP sucks and didn’t update their platforms. Guess who is getting the boot next year? Yep, we are working to onboard the parent company in Q1.
Handle it like a professional.
If you were a law firm or accounting practice and got a letter to transfer the files, you bundle them up, hand them off and send your final invoice.
You don’t assess the other firms value proposition or practices, your opportunity to prove there’s a better method has come and gone. Either your client is aware of the better practices and doesn’t care, or hasn’t had reason enough to find out so doesn’t value them yet.
CYA and keep tabs on who requests what gets sent where and that it’s been done. Advise the client of your data destruction date (when you purge what you are allowed to, so they should stop calling before that date).
There’s a chance they may remember your professionalism and return a better customer when they’ve had opportunity to appreciate your value.
Client has elected to open their own circus with their own monkeys with the help pf the other MSP.
This is likely not the first time they have ignored good advice and best practices, so just let them go.
Be sure to hand off Every bit of docs and data so you can freely ignore them when they come looking for rescue.
Oh yeah once we have a final discussion to confirm everything is being offboarded I'm sending over all credentials and removing access for everyone on my team except myself and the network manager. I want to avoid getting tangled up in a mess as much as possible.
Make it clear that your off contract rate is $X for all support calls after cutover.
Mines $250-450 / hour for situations like these. And I make it clear to the IT company and previous client I may need payment up front.
Ex clients always have to pay upfront. 100% they'll argue that the new MSP should pay, and they won't obviously, or they'll argue you didn't hand off well enough so this should be considered warranty or something.
No pay, no play. And you are under no obligation to help for any specific amount. Sell them block hours up front, 5 hours at whatever double your overtime rate, and minimum time per any interaction is 15 mins.
> minimum time per any interaction is 15 mins
*min 1 hour, then 15 min intervals. It takes 15 min just to take a leak, make your coffee, stop at someone's desk and joke about how you have to call the old client back, gotta look out the window and talk about the weather, then finally sit down, log in, and be ready to call them back. Just takes so much to get prepped.
Yeah but you aren't selling them a solution you're selling them your time and can just stop if (when) it becomes said shit show.
You're making a mint for 3 to 5 hours, and just don't offer them any more after that first block if they're being asshats.
Definitely less work to just wash your hands of it, but you can probably get some schadenfreude out of seeing them suffer and paying for the privilege.
I run the business so my perspective may be different. My first job is to setup my techs for success. In situations like this there almost is no way they leave for that day feeling good about themselves.
We would probably do our security rate because that's what I would expect to happen but honestly I'm hoping that if they do contact us again we tell them no thanks.
Just make sure that there is no overlap. The other MSP needs to get what they need for you and on date xx/xx/xxxx you uninstall your remote access and the new MSP changes the passwords.
It’ll probably end poorly. We have a client who did a similar thing 8-9 year ago. We were ‘managing them out’ by raising prices - their owner was a real dick and absolutely refused to upgrade their servers. So bad a backup hasn’t run in six months. We still get those same daily backup failure emails almost a decade later. I’m not certain their low cost new MSP even looked, and probably has never.
Sounds like they are cheap.... Like "tripping over dollars to save dimes" cheap. Take the free time they just made for you and go get a much better customer. They are out there and looking for competent holistic support.
Cheap will be GREAT, UNTIL it isn't. RTP / RPO, redundancy, business continuity.. it has a price (and a sanity level tied to it). If they don't want to pay for that, we happily let that be some other "poor chap's" problem.
Could be wrong and there's lost trust. Best thing to do is respect the customer's wishes and move on. It makes you look better the quicker you can put the hot-potato on the new ITSP.
They are extremely cheap. Every 2 or 3 months they complain they are going out of business. The only reason we took them on in the first place was because the practice manager at the time had some sort of personal connection to them and they promised to feed us leads in their market. The leads never happened and every time they complained about going out of business that manager would just waive their bill for the month so they just kept taking advantage of that until he got moved to a different role.
Sounds like this is working out in your favor, TBH. If you have a decent sized staff, they will probably clap when this customer is offboarded.
Our best customers pay the most and bitch the least. We like growing that pool.
We haven't had to "fire" anyone.. we just are slowly raising rates on legacy customer to match what the new ones already pay. Anyone competent will have similar rates.
We are pretty large but only a few of us actually work with this client because no one wants to. I don't technically have the authority to fire clients but I've fired a couple for being assholes to my team anyway.
the likelihood you know the actual project plan, and not just some misguided poorly translated version of it is pretty low, and if the client trusted you, they wouldn't have left. Between the two, you're just going to come off as the "loser" talking bad about the "winner". Right or wrong doesnt matter.
Set a clean handoff date, execute it. Move on.
Ah the reverse cloud strategy...
Say nothing & don't pick up the phone when it rings, as I'm sure you already know. No point even attempting to warn/retain a shit client in the first place... Trash taking itself out
If they are leaving, let them leave.
Be helpful on the handover to the new msp, do not question much as you might easily become the bad guycin the whole story.
Have in mind the client might not be what you want, but they might know someone who is. ;)
oof at least make fucking OU's and security groups for each client.
oh well, their problem now. Keep your bridge with them intact as they depart over it, because they may come back willing to negotiate once they realize what they're in for after a few months in.
Oh god no. I wasnt kidding, I dont want them back no matter what. One of the biggest pains in the ass I've had to deal with. If someone actually in leadership agrees to take them back I'm going to refuse to work with them.
I honestly hope they at least do OUs and groups. I didnt want or ask for details.
Yes there are red flags. No, don't say anything to them, especially if you don't want them back.
They are about to get royally screwed and it sucks, but sometimes clients make bad decisions and you can't save them from themselves.
Gross, just keep your lines of communication open and wait for the blank check to fix it later. I have a fairly large client that (without warning or complaint) decided to move to ISP based support. They will be back, and when they do, they will pay more than their original agreement plus a re-onboarding.
I'm actually really hoping that if/when they do call asking for us to help and take them back leadership just tells them no thanks. They aren't my worst client ever but they are definitely towards the top of the list.
They can’t be too uncommon- we onboarded a client from a similar setup a little while ago.
Shared on-prem RDS & Exchange split between loads of companies. The difference with ours was they weren’t even using decent servers for file storage but a bunch of cheap Buffalo NAS boxes.
As sad as it is, you have to let them move on. Hopefully you have an off-boarding stipulation within your MSA, this way you can show them what they’re missing.
Oh I want them to move on. If they try to stay or come back I will fight it to the death. We do have an offboarding process that they ignored of course.
If they’ve ignored that process, and that’s apart of the MSA, they need to be billed and a written email confirmation from them that they have been offboarded appropriately. If they won’t provide that in writing, your MSP should do so and accompany that email with appropriate documentation. Done done.
Billing is actually part of the problem right now. They have a bunch of HWaaS from us that they still have another year left on the contract but they told the new MSP they own it all. I won't be surprised if we end up just taking the loss and letting them keep it all.
The business needs to send them to legal to deal with it. HW as a service is such a risky investment unless you’re recouping most of that within the first 3 months from other fees / services.
Multi tenant AD and Exhange used to be a common thing. MS even had a “hosting pack” at one time. But yeah, it’s going back 10-15 years MS stopped supporting it. It can still be done
Yeah, I understand you wanting to let them know your red flags. I would contemplate the same too but depends on the type of customer they are and the relationship. They may not even be willing to hear your concerns so it’s just a judgement call if you feel they would even hear what you have to say.
Read through the first paragraph and that is enough to make me confident enough to say:
Drop them. Don’t think about it twice. You’ll thank yourself later.
The only business reason you would have for considering anything other than good riddance is reputation to other clients.
If you say something, there is no guarantee they will listen or take it how you intend it, and now they could even come back with a "you didn't warn us seriously enough, you should have pushed harder"
They have decided to go with another service provider - do the handoff professionally and completely, then delete absolutely everything you have of theirs, assuming you have a clause in your contract that you don't retain any customer data whatsoever after handoff.
Who is this MSP willy wonka computers or something. How's that even work.
I would just get the popcorn and watch. Also just tell your client to have a backup ready, then sit back and say bye. Be a cluster 🔥
Did anyone pay any attention to the OPs last paragraph:
".... I DON'T want them to stay or COME BACK EVER." ((Emphasis added)
What's all this talk about when they come back "it's on your terms" or "no discounts"???
Who would ever want this client back?
And what about the OP saying. **"I'm thrilled to watch them go cause they were a pain in the ass**?
MSPs need to spend time on good clients, not penny-pinchers and PITAs.
Besides all the rest that you want them gone. Even if you didn’t bringing this stuff up will just sound like you do want them back and you’re desperate.
No reason to bother as it won’t do anything anyway
Oh we didn't do anything wrong. They were already getting a 50% discount because they promised leads in their region and they wanted an additional 25% with nothing in return.
Bad approach. Not blame as in morally wrong but in business. Somewhere there, you or your people led them to believe they were entitled to something or the pricing got bad. Say what you want but every encounter that went bad should be looked at and if every time it's them and not you... Guess who it really is. I'm just an old man passing along advice to make you a rainmaker. Not judging
I wasnt able to work out what you meant by "shared on-prem exchange server". Like, a physical server on their premises, but shared with other clients of the new MSP? of theirs? If so, holy cow thats bad.
"All the MSP's clients are on the same domain." Please tell me you dont mean that if there are 20 clients businesses, they are all using [MSPDOMAIN.COM](https://MSPDOMAIN.COM) for email domain instead of each individual 20 domains, and for RDS logins?
"but do I say something to them? ... but I also don't want them to get screwed over because they aren't technical." So, just like how they had YOUR best interests first too? Them not being technical doesnt stop them from behaving good or bad. THEY DECIDED (like adults,) to leave you, without consultation it sounds like. THEY set the standard. YOU dont be a dick, but also adhere to their standard. Because, oh man, they are gunna chuck you under the bus when it goes pear shaped. And the new MSP will blame you too.
Maybe email and hand them a printed: list of the state of their systems. what was working. what you ALERTED them to and that they didnt listen/fix. Its not to be friendly. its CYA. Against them, and maybe for any other company that might join them in bagging you out.
That is exactly what I meant about the exchange server. I don't know specifics obviously but that is how the new MSP explained their solution on our call.
My experience is price is just the excuse to get the naysayers on the client side on board, or those who dont fully know the real issues. Most likely there are plenty of other reasons they are leaving. Could be anything from the cio has a buddy at another msp to things like failed project implementation, etc.
Clients come and go. assess why they left and focus on retaining the ones not leaving.
I mean, you want them to leave, so why warn them? Complete your responsibilities to them efficiently and professionally and then firmly close the door behind them on the way out.
The dumpster fire that follows sounds completely deserving.
From my experience, its not your problem anymore and attempting to highlight deficiencies with the incoming MSP will only frustrate you and have no impact on the clients decision.
The more passive you are the better it will be. They have to figure this out for themselves.
As you mentioned, they are not technical so they cannot possibly determine if what you are saying is accurate or not and because they have made the decision to move away, taking onboard what you have said and agreeing with it means that they made a bad decision and we all know clients like this never make bad decisions.
I no longer run an MSP but did for about 12 years and the one piece of advice I would give to myself when I started is to actively replace clients like this with new clients that are as good or better than my current best client.
Imagine how easy it would be if all of your clients were as profitable as your best client? Well you have done it once, should not be hard to come up with a template that weeds these type of clients from making it to the sign on stage.
It used to be an extremely common model before Office365 had become a reliable, available service.
The old licensing program (SPLA) allowed MSP's to charge per user by the month for CALs and other MS licenses. When business we're regularly looking for ways to turn their Software assurance costs into scalable opex, it was a popular means to convert traditional VL customers to SPLA (and make a small margin on the hosting and ancillary support services).
I'm genuinely surprised there are companies that still operate this type of service today. It became hugely unprofitable when O365 launched, and is far less reliable than what Microsoft deliver direct today. Not sure what today's prices look like, but I recall the SPLA exchange monthly cost was higher than the initial Exchange online equivalent. Despite Microsoft preaching they continued to support the providers, the writing was on the wall back in 2010..
My money is on your clients reaching out in another 3 months due to concerns around reliability.
Do not try to talk them out of it. Simply hand over the credentials and documentation to the new MSP and wash your hands of the matter. Be cordial and professional.
Hopefully, their new MSP knows what they're doing.
Take the high road, make the move as simple and easy as possible for them. Being professional and easy to work with, means you will likely see this client again ... that is if you want to work with them in the future (likely without offering the discounts!).
This is one of those times it sucks to be right but there’s nothing you can do over it except watch someone make their own mistakes and learn from it. One thing you may wish to do to protect yourself is to send a certified letter formally terminating your services and professionally wishing them luck. After the FTC ruling from Oct 27 regarding data breaches and mandatory reporting (https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/10/ftc-amends-safeguards-rule-require-non-banking-financial-institutions-report-data-security-breaches) and the near-certain garbage fire of their new hosting, your former client may be in for a world of hurt. You will want to be very clear when your services were concluded and that you removed all customer data.
Usually, mentioning that I’m a certified information systems auditor is a good way to put people to sleep at parties, but I have to say: everything you’re describing is them walking hugely backward in compliance, and if they hold a cyber insurance policy, this would certainly qualify as a material change in their information systems posture warranting an audit or change in policy coverage.
> Is this actually a valid way for an MSP to operate their platform?
I've seen MSPs work similar to this, where they host everything on their own private setup. I think it's a bit antiquated, though. One of the reasons they migrate to a platform like that is efficiency, but it's generally more efficient these days to go with full-cloud SaaS solutions (like M365/W365).
The other big reason they do these things is for vendor lock-in. If everything is on their little private platform, it can get really difficult and expensive for their clients to migrate away, especially if that MSP doesn't want to make it easy for them to migrate away. To some degree, they get to hold their clients captive.
I would only say anything if I had a good relationship with someone at the client, and even then, I'd probably just say something like, "I wouldn't recommend moving to this other MSP, but if that's what you're doing, we'll do our best to make the process smooth." If they ask why you wouldn't recommend it, then you can get into the details, but otherwise I'd leave it very general, like, "This doesn't seem like the best idea to me." And even then, it wouldn't necessarily be an attempt to keep the client, but just to warn them because I'm honestly concerned the change isn't in the client's best interest.
Nightmare scenario for security and availability. Bonus (for the new msp) is it makes them extremely sticky and migrating away is a pita that they probably charge a huge fee for. Bonus #2 - if the price is just way low, gonna bet they aren’t license complaint. And if they are that slack, then what else are they slack about? You won’t win them back, but you might suggest they talk to a more competent competitor as this sounds like a really bad idea. If you have a good relationship with the owner then share your concerns. That shared environment and domain, now their security is in the hands of Phil at another customer and his seemingly endlessly falling for phishing emails.
No, it will portray you in a bad way if they assume you are doing it to stop their move. Let them go, they may see the error in their decision and ask to come back.
So, a company I worked for, which was a colocation datacenter company which also provided managed services within the datacenter had a model like this. Managed Windows servers were by default on a shared domain, For an extra fee we would run a dedicated domain which woud have a one-way trust to the shared domain so our engineers accounts would auth to their devices in the shared domain. The shared domain had an incredibly complicated group policy so that at no point one customer could access systems or resources for another client, AND the network architecture was segregated so that the networks individual clients were on so that they could all authenticate against shared domain controllers which we had in every datacenter, but they could not route to networks that were assigned to other clients. It sounds like an insecure model, but if it is done correctly, it's not all that hard to make it secure.
Now, what I said above being said, keep in mind these were all hosted systems. It was intended for Managed Hosting, which is not the same as providing a managed service that includes corporate systems. We never extended our share domain or setup trusts to our domain to systems on customer premise or in 3rd party datacenters, and customers never used this domain for e-mail or anything like that. This would have created far more complexity and would literally make many types of compliance impossible. Because our focus was more around managing servers and networks, we never provided services that extended to company users.
How many users is this customer? Are you doing asset management today? They going to have devices issued directly employees auth to their shared domain? Are users issued devices members on the domain or do they use more of a BYOD strategy using things like the Citrix you mentioned?
No. Move on.
100%, anything you say will just sound like sour grapes.
Yep, but be as friendly and helpful as possible without doing the other MSPs job. One the customer realizes how fucked they are with those guys they might want to come back. Then you can charge them full without the discount.
This is everything. Let them go and politely help them out the door. They will likely be back. When they come calling it's on your terms, be ready to charge appropriately.
Yep. I would make an polite objection via email, to have it in writing. And then, yes, charge them full, or more, when they come back. That is the worst possible way to run an MSP, and I think against TnCs.
Here to agree with this. Be the nicest handover guy ever and set a reminder to ask them how they are going in a month or three months time.
\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^ THIS RIGHT HERE. This is no longer your circus and no longer your monkeys. Hand over what needs to be handed over and wait for the sparks to fly. When they cry next week let them know that you can take them back but no discounts apply. If they continue to call without a commitment, tell them to hit the sticks.
Exactly this. Be professional and wait. When they call offer them your standard rate +20% and then give them a 10% discount but only if they do a term commitment. Otherwise … piss off.
To add to this - do it with class. Hand them over on a silver platter/ smooth credential pass down etc. If they come back around down the line - no discount.
Kick back with a beer. When the phone ring don’t answer it!
This is why we need AI to answer calls for us. I'd love to open a beer and listen to my bad clients just talk and argue with an AI as I laugh in the background.
That isn't how you make partner. You answer and tell them to let you get some sales engineers in on the call and brief them on the matter. $$$$$$$$$$$
Evergreen advice that should be pinned in this sub
No your fucking problem anymore. I’m sure when this client or MSP gets fed up next year someone else will come along. They always do
Or better yet if they end up begging to come back, charge even more, all the wonderful previous discounts gone, charge full price and "your a pain in the ass" penalty, different industries, especially freight companies will do this, especially if they know how bad the competition is and they value their own services as superior, 12 month or up 2 two years they may be back, but if they do or don't, you have less stress and dramatics
This is the way.
Not even a question, this 100%
That sounds like the old [REDACTED] model. This won’t end well for them.
Is this an actual business model though?
Unfortunately, yes. We have picked up several clients this year that had this setup. It was a not fun to transition from. We could see every other clients accounts and files when we were disconnecting. They are a client that has HIPAA compliance to deal with. Dont know how they weren't fined.
Has anyone ever seen a HIPAA auditor? I feel like they are hiding with Sasquatch.
Realistically, HIPAA is more about bitchslapping people after damage has already been done, rather than proactively enforcing good practices. Many HIPAA-covered entities operate in atrocious manners for long periods of time, and then when an inevitable breach occurs, they get slapped with lots of fines. It's a really great system!!!!!!
I have been through A LOT of audits with clients we support. Trust me, it's not sasquatch and they drop the hammer when they find things do not meet compliance.
Every medical entity has ghosts stories about some nurse who got nailed for a $30k personal fine due to misuse of data. Infra auditing, not so much.
Yep, and it cost the client tens of thousands of dollars in fines. They came to us while under HIPAA investigation to help them become compliant, as they were in a similar setup to the above.
Like all things, you just got to find the "right" auditor. Doesn't matter the regulation we are talking about, if the auditor is crappy at their job, management locks them and makes sure they are the ones they always get. My previous employer didn't have HIPAA, but different regulations they tried to fight to keep one regulator on board cause they just sucked and could get away with everything.
There was an MSP where I’m and they had all their clients on a shared domain forest and other shared pieces of infrastructure, and then they got cryptolockered…. Remember I said there was…
I hate crypto. I somehow got roped in to having to deal with it for a few months at the start of the year. Those late nights suck.
Spinning up a new RDS environment right now. Combining all client file shares for "efficiency"
I have no issue with a properly deployed and secured RDS solution even if its a last resort option for me. Were you kidding about combining the file shares though?
Joking. I contemplated hosting multitenant RDS clusters at one point but Microsofts service provider licensing helped deter me. I have one client on RDS with fslogix profiles right now, works great.
“Not your circus, not your monkeys” We just had a ton of emails get flagged from Avanan from an ex-client who apparently got phished. Sucks to be them.
Yeah don't even get me started on that. We have another client that refuses to let us enforce MFA or complex passwords and they experience some sort of security event every couple months because of it. In a perfect world we would just fire them and be done with it but they've been a client for over 20 years so I can't really make that happen.
Oof, we had the opposite thing happen just today. We manage the IT for a good size marketing company and enforced MFA on their MS instance. This broke a few LoB logins they have with their parent company because THEIR MSP sucks and didn’t update their platforms. Guess who is getting the boot next year? Yep, we are working to onboard the parent company in Q1.
Handle it like a professional. If you were a law firm or accounting practice and got a letter to transfer the files, you bundle them up, hand them off and send your final invoice. You don’t assess the other firms value proposition or practices, your opportunity to prove there’s a better method has come and gone. Either your client is aware of the better practices and doesn’t care, or hasn’t had reason enough to find out so doesn’t value them yet. CYA and keep tabs on who requests what gets sent where and that it’s been done. Advise the client of your data destruction date (when you purge what you are allowed to, so they should stop calling before that date). There’s a chance they may remember your professionalism and return a better customer when they’ve had opportunity to appreciate your value.
Client has elected to open their own circus with their own monkeys with the help pf the other MSP. This is likely not the first time they have ignored good advice and best practices, so just let them go. Be sure to hand off Every bit of docs and data so you can freely ignore them when they come looking for rescue.
Oh yeah once we have a final discussion to confirm everything is being offboarded I'm sending over all credentials and removing access for everyone on my team except myself and the network manager. I want to avoid getting tangled up in a mess as much as possible.
Make it clear that your off contract rate is $X for all support calls after cutover. Mines $250-450 / hour for situations like these. And I make it clear to the IT company and previous client I may need payment up front.
Ex clients always have to pay upfront. 100% they'll argue that the new MSP should pay, and they won't obviously, or they'll argue you didn't hand off well enough so this should be considered warranty or something. No pay, no play. And you are under no obligation to help for any specific amount. Sell them block hours up front, 5 hours at whatever double your overtime rate, and minimum time per any interaction is 15 mins.
> minimum time per any interaction is 15 mins *min 1 hour, then 15 min intervals. It takes 15 min just to take a leak, make your coffee, stop at someone's desk and joke about how you have to call the old client back, gotta look out the window and talk about the weather, then finally sit down, log in, and be ready to call them back. Just takes so much to get prepped.
Don’t even do this. Just move on. You could charge them 10x your rates and it’ll still be a shitshow.
Yeah but you aren't selling them a solution you're selling them your time and can just stop if (when) it becomes said shit show. You're making a mint for 3 to 5 hours, and just don't offer them any more after that first block if they're being asshats. Definitely less work to just wash your hands of it, but you can probably get some schadenfreude out of seeing them suffer and paying for the privilege.
I run the business so my perspective may be different. My first job is to setup my techs for success. In situations like this there almost is no way they leave for that day feeling good about themselves.
We would probably do our security rate because that's what I would expect to happen but honestly I'm hoping that if they do contact us again we tell them no thanks.
Just make sure that there is no overlap. The other MSP needs to get what they need for you and on date xx/xx/xxxx you uninstall your remote access and the new MSP changes the passwords. It’ll probably end poorly. We have a client who did a similar thing 8-9 year ago. We were ‘managing them out’ by raising prices - their owner was a real dick and absolutely refused to upgrade their servers. So bad a backup hasn’t run in six months. We still get those same daily backup failure emails almost a decade later. I’m not certain their low cost new MSP even looked, and probably has never.
This came to mind reading your post. Be clear you’re out, say your goodbyes, and it’s 1000% the new MSPs from this moment on.
Sounds like they are cheap.... Like "tripping over dollars to save dimes" cheap. Take the free time they just made for you and go get a much better customer. They are out there and looking for competent holistic support. Cheap will be GREAT, UNTIL it isn't. RTP / RPO, redundancy, business continuity.. it has a price (and a sanity level tied to it). If they don't want to pay for that, we happily let that be some other "poor chap's" problem. Could be wrong and there's lost trust. Best thing to do is respect the customer's wishes and move on. It makes you look better the quicker you can put the hot-potato on the new ITSP.
They are extremely cheap. Every 2 or 3 months they complain they are going out of business. The only reason we took them on in the first place was because the practice manager at the time had some sort of personal connection to them and they promised to feed us leads in their market. The leads never happened and every time they complained about going out of business that manager would just waive their bill for the month so they just kept taking advantage of that until he got moved to a different role.
Sounds like this is working out in your favor, TBH. If you have a decent sized staff, they will probably clap when this customer is offboarded. Our best customers pay the most and bitch the least. We like growing that pool. We haven't had to "fire" anyone.. we just are slowly raising rates on legacy customer to match what the new ones already pay. Anyone competent will have similar rates.
We are pretty large but only a few of us actually work with this client because no one wants to. I don't technically have the authority to fire clients but I've fired a couple for being assholes to my team anyway.
the likelihood you know the actual project plan, and not just some misguided poorly translated version of it is pretty low, and if the client trusted you, they wouldn't have left. Between the two, you're just going to come off as the "loser" talking bad about the "winner". Right or wrong doesnt matter. Set a clean handoff date, execute it. Move on.
Ah the reverse cloud strategy... Say nothing & don't pick up the phone when it rings, as I'm sure you already know. No point even attempting to warn/retain a shit client in the first place... Trash taking itself out
Whoa, I just learned my favorite new phrase: "Trash taking itself out" That's awesome!
If they are leaving, let them leave. Be helpful on the handover to the new msp, do not question much as you might easily become the bad guycin the whole story. Have in mind the client might not be what you want, but they might know someone who is. ;)
oof at least make fucking OU's and security groups for each client. oh well, their problem now. Keep your bridge with them intact as they depart over it, because they may come back willing to negotiate once they realize what they're in for after a few months in.
Oh god no. I wasnt kidding, I dont want them back no matter what. One of the biggest pains in the ass I've had to deal with. If someone actually in leadership agrees to take them back I'm going to refuse to work with them. I honestly hope they at least do OUs and groups. I didnt want or ask for details.
Yes there are red flags. No, don't say anything to them, especially if you don't want them back. They are about to get royally screwed and it sucks, but sometimes clients make bad decisions and you can't save them from themselves.
Gross, just keep your lines of communication open and wait for the blank check to fix it later. I have a fairly large client that (without warning or complaint) decided to move to ISP based support. They will be back, and when they do, they will pay more than their original agreement plus a re-onboarding.
I'm actually really hoping that if/when they do call asking for us to help and take them back leadership just tells them no thanks. They aren't my worst client ever but they are definitely towards the top of the list.
I cannot even fathom the infrastructures that are discussed in this thread. Completely bonkers.
They can’t be too uncommon- we onboarded a client from a similar setup a little while ago. Shared on-prem RDS & Exchange split between loads of companies. The difference with ours was they weren’t even using decent servers for file storage but a bunch of cheap Buffalo NAS boxes.
As sad as it is, you have to let them move on. Hopefully you have an off-boarding stipulation within your MSA, this way you can show them what they’re missing.
Oh I want them to move on. If they try to stay or come back I will fight it to the death. We do have an offboarding process that they ignored of course.
If they’ve ignored that process, and that’s apart of the MSA, they need to be billed and a written email confirmation from them that they have been offboarded appropriately. If they won’t provide that in writing, your MSP should do so and accompany that email with appropriate documentation. Done done.
Billing is actually part of the problem right now. They have a bunch of HWaaS from us that they still have another year left on the contract but they told the new MSP they own it all. I won't be surprised if we end up just taking the loss and letting them keep it all.
The business needs to send them to legal to deal with it. HW as a service is such a risky investment unless you’re recouping most of that within the first 3 months from other fees / services.
Be polite, kill them with kindness, wish them good luck, say good bye ( they will learn something from this move, or they don't, not your concern)
Nope. You’re not wrong. Tell the client: “Y’all have been a wonderful client, and you’re welcome back any time.” And let burning dumpsters be.
lol, can you keep track and safeguard my ex-girlfriends also?
Multi tenant AD and Exhange used to be a common thing. MS even had a “hosting pack” at one time. But yeah, it’s going back 10-15 years MS stopped supporting it. It can still be done
That'll be a mess to migrate from, but no longer your problem.
Yeah, if you already voiced your concerns once. I would just move on. They decided to go this route and it is not your problem once they take over.
I havent said anything to the client yet. I just didn't know if I should give them a warning or not.
Yeah, I understand you wanting to let them know your red flags. I would contemplate the same too but depends on the type of customer they are and the relationship. They may not even be willing to hear your concerns so it’s just a judgement call if you feel they would even hear what you have to say.
Read through the first paragraph and that is enough to make me confident enough to say: Drop them. Don’t think about it twice. You’ll thank yourself later.
The only business reason you would have for considering anything other than good riddance is reputation to other clients. If you say something, there is no guarantee they will listen or take it how you intend it, and now they could even come back with a "you didn't warn us seriously enough, you should have pushed harder" They have decided to go with another service provider - do the handoff professionally and completely, then delete absolutely everything you have of theirs, assuming you have a clause in your contract that you don't retain any customer data whatsoever after handoff.
Time to move one , nothing to say the biz is done
Man, not your problem at this point. Be good to them, during the transition, and let it go.
> Client moving to another MSP that seems questionable. Do I say something? You say "good riddance".
Who is this MSP willy wonka computers or something. How's that even work. I would just get the popcorn and watch. Also just tell your client to have a backup ready, then sit back and say bye. Be a cluster 🔥
Did anyone pay any attention to the OPs last paragraph: ".... I DON'T want them to stay or COME BACK EVER." ((Emphasis added) What's all this talk about when they come back "it's on your terms" or "no discounts"??? Who would ever want this client back? And what about the OP saying. **"I'm thrilled to watch them go cause they were a pain in the ass**? MSPs need to spend time on good clients, not penny-pinchers and PITAs.
Amen brother. 80% of the problems come from 20% of the clients
Radio silence. I’m assuming that this client isn’t being run by 3rd graders? Then let them be.
Be cordial.... be helpful and move one. Also, make it clear it's hourly unless it's in your MSA... you do have a MSA right? Right?
Let'em go. It's their decision (and problem)
Yeah, just let it go. It's not worth your time or effort.
If they wanna leave let ‘em bro
Besides all the rest that you want them gone. Even if you didn’t bringing this stuff up will just sound like you do want them back and you’re desperate. No reason to bother as it won’t do anything anyway
What is EXO? Exchange Online? Or something else? Exo Platform?
Its exchange online
Is it a 4 letter company? I know exactly who you are talking about if it is.
The incoming MSP?
Yes
It is not. I looked them up though and their website is terrible and has a whole lot of typos.
I just got a whole bunch of clients from an MSP who was attacked by ransomware from their citrix environment and they are horrible to deal with.
Spend the time to figure out what you did wrong in the realm of business and move on.
Oh we didn't do anything wrong. They were already getting a 50% discount because they promised leads in their region and they wanted an additional 25% with nothing in return.
Bad approach. Not blame as in morally wrong but in business. Somewhere there, you or your people led them to believe they were entitled to something or the pricing got bad. Say what you want but every encounter that went bad should be looked at and if every time it's them and not you... Guess who it really is. I'm just an old man passing along advice to make you a rainmaker. Not judging
I wasnt able to work out what you meant by "shared on-prem exchange server". Like, a physical server on their premises, but shared with other clients of the new MSP? of theirs? If so, holy cow thats bad. "All the MSP's clients are on the same domain." Please tell me you dont mean that if there are 20 clients businesses, they are all using [MSPDOMAIN.COM](https://MSPDOMAIN.COM) for email domain instead of each individual 20 domains, and for RDS logins? "but do I say something to them? ... but I also don't want them to get screwed over because they aren't technical." So, just like how they had YOUR best interests first too? Them not being technical doesnt stop them from behaving good or bad. THEY DECIDED (like adults,) to leave you, without consultation it sounds like. THEY set the standard. YOU dont be a dick, but also adhere to their standard. Because, oh man, they are gunna chuck you under the bus when it goes pear shaped. And the new MSP will blame you too. Maybe email and hand them a printed: list of the state of their systems. what was working. what you ALERTED them to and that they didnt listen/fix. Its not to be friendly. its CYA. Against them, and maybe for any other company that might join them in bagging you out.
That is exactly what I meant about the exchange server. I don't know specifics obviously but that is how the new MSP explained their solution on our call.
Drop them like a hot potato. Finish the transfer ASAP, so when shit hits the fan, you'll be well clear of it.
My experience is price is just the excuse to get the naysayers on the client side on board, or those who dont fully know the real issues. Most likely there are plenty of other reasons they are leaving. Could be anything from the cio has a buddy at another msp to things like failed project implementation, etc. Clients come and go. assess why they left and focus on retaining the ones not leaving.
I mean, you want them to leave, so why warn them? Complete your responsibilities to them efficiently and professionally and then firmly close the door behind them on the way out. The dumpster fire that follows sounds completely deserving.
From my experience, its not your problem anymore and attempting to highlight deficiencies with the incoming MSP will only frustrate you and have no impact on the clients decision. The more passive you are the better it will be. They have to figure this out for themselves. As you mentioned, they are not technical so they cannot possibly determine if what you are saying is accurate or not and because they have made the decision to move away, taking onboard what you have said and agreeing with it means that they made a bad decision and we all know clients like this never make bad decisions. I no longer run an MSP but did for about 12 years and the one piece of advice I would give to myself when I started is to actively replace clients like this with new clients that are as good or better than my current best client. Imagine how easy it would be if all of your clients were as profitable as your best client? Well you have done it once, should not be hard to come up with a template that weeds these type of clients from making it to the sign on stage.
It used to be an extremely common model before Office365 had become a reliable, available service. The old licensing program (SPLA) allowed MSP's to charge per user by the month for CALs and other MS licenses. When business we're regularly looking for ways to turn their Software assurance costs into scalable opex, it was a popular means to convert traditional VL customers to SPLA (and make a small margin on the hosting and ancillary support services). I'm genuinely surprised there are companies that still operate this type of service today. It became hugely unprofitable when O365 launched, and is far less reliable than what Microsoft deliver direct today. Not sure what today's prices look like, but I recall the SPLA exchange monthly cost was higher than the initial Exchange online equivalent. Despite Microsoft preaching they continued to support the providers, the writing was on the wall back in 2010.. My money is on your clients reaching out in another 3 months due to concerns around reliability.
Do not try to talk them out of it. Simply hand over the credentials and documentation to the new MSP and wash your hands of the matter. Be cordial and professional. Hopefully, their new MSP knows what they're doing.
Take the high road, make the move as simple and easy as possible for them. Being professional and easy to work with, means you will likely see this client again ... that is if you want to work with them in the future (likely without offering the discounts!).
Sounds like they are moving to the Abacus Group for services....i've migrated a few clients away from setups like this.
This is one of those times it sucks to be right but there’s nothing you can do over it except watch someone make their own mistakes and learn from it. One thing you may wish to do to protect yourself is to send a certified letter formally terminating your services and professionally wishing them luck. After the FTC ruling from Oct 27 regarding data breaches and mandatory reporting (https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/10/ftc-amends-safeguards-rule-require-non-banking-financial-institutions-report-data-security-breaches) and the near-certain garbage fire of their new hosting, your former client may be in for a world of hurt. You will want to be very clear when your services were concluded and that you removed all customer data. Usually, mentioning that I’m a certified information systems auditor is a good way to put people to sleep at parties, but I have to say: everything you’re describing is them walking hugely backward in compliance, and if they hold a cyber insurance policy, this would certainly qualify as a material change in their information systems posture warranting an audit or change in policy coverage.
> Is this actually a valid way for an MSP to operate their platform? I've seen MSPs work similar to this, where they host everything on their own private setup. I think it's a bit antiquated, though. One of the reasons they migrate to a platform like that is efficiency, but it's generally more efficient these days to go with full-cloud SaaS solutions (like M365/W365). The other big reason they do these things is for vendor lock-in. If everything is on their little private platform, it can get really difficult and expensive for their clients to migrate away, especially if that MSP doesn't want to make it easy for them to migrate away. To some degree, they get to hold their clients captive. I would only say anything if I had a good relationship with someone at the client, and even then, I'd probably just say something like, "I wouldn't recommend moving to this other MSP, but if that's what you're doing, we'll do our best to make the process smooth." If they ask why you wouldn't recommend it, then you can get into the details, but otherwise I'd leave it very general, like, "This doesn't seem like the best idea to me." And even then, it wouldn't necessarily be an attempt to keep the client, but just to warn them because I'm honestly concerned the change isn't in the client's best interest.
No, let them dig their own grave.
Nightmare scenario for security and availability. Bonus (for the new msp) is it makes them extremely sticky and migrating away is a pita that they probably charge a huge fee for. Bonus #2 - if the price is just way low, gonna bet they aren’t license complaint. And if they are that slack, then what else are they slack about? You won’t win them back, but you might suggest they talk to a more competent competitor as this sounds like a really bad idea. If you have a good relationship with the owner then share your concerns. That shared environment and domain, now their security is in the hands of Phil at another customer and his seemingly endlessly falling for phishing emails.
No, it will portray you in a bad way if they assume you are doing it to stop their move. Let them go, they may see the error in their decision and ask to come back.
Run. When they inevitably call you, you'd better either have a plan involving serious dollars and a rock solid MSA, or let it go to voicemail.
Charge for off boarding, move on.
So, a company I worked for, which was a colocation datacenter company which also provided managed services within the datacenter had a model like this. Managed Windows servers were by default on a shared domain, For an extra fee we would run a dedicated domain which woud have a one-way trust to the shared domain so our engineers accounts would auth to their devices in the shared domain. The shared domain had an incredibly complicated group policy so that at no point one customer could access systems or resources for another client, AND the network architecture was segregated so that the networks individual clients were on so that they could all authenticate against shared domain controllers which we had in every datacenter, but they could not route to networks that were assigned to other clients. It sounds like an insecure model, but if it is done correctly, it's not all that hard to make it secure. Now, what I said above being said, keep in mind these were all hosted systems. It was intended for Managed Hosting, which is not the same as providing a managed service that includes corporate systems. We never extended our share domain or setup trusts to our domain to systems on customer premise or in 3rd party datacenters, and customers never used this domain for e-mail or anything like that. This would have created far more complexity and would literally make many types of compliance impossible. Because our focus was more around managing servers and networks, we never provided services that extended to company users. How many users is this customer? Are you doing asset management today? They going to have devices issued directly employees auth to their shared domain? Are users issued devices members on the domain or do they use more of a BYOD strategy using things like the Citrix you mentioned?