right,
lets say i had a web dev & SEO project for a client specifically stated (in contract) that the project will take 3 weeks to complete.
as the project progresses, i was stuck with the client’s webhosting glitches, errors & problems. the site im developing produces errors and the CMS failed to run properly. since this is beyond my scope (fixing the errors), i contacted tech support, and they only get back to me after 1-2 weeks (yes that is how crappy i have experienced). at the end, what supposed to be a 3 week project became a 6 week project.
so, say during those weeks of time wasting (waiting tech’s reply), do i have the rights to charge my client though the predicament that was actually caused by their webhosting tech support’s incompetency and ineffectiveness in handling my complaints?
my mistake is i did not specify in the contract that i will charge any unresponsiveness when the project is progressing. your feedback will be a big help in helping me to draft future contracts with new clients.
thanks.
Adjust your contract accordingly, and move on. There is nobody to blame but yourself for not forseeing problems or delays during a project - it always happens and it’s usually just part of doing business.
If you are charging hourly, you can actually make more by a slow-moving client but this isn’t always good business. If it’s project-priced, at least make it clear that you’ll slip the schedule if there are delays that aren’t your fault.
Beyond that, just keep going and expect delays and issues on just about every project!
This is a tough one, while I sympathise with your situation it does seem apparent that the issue is something of which the client obviously has little to no control over (as the issue is with the hosting provider - not with them meeting their responsibilities), arguably I would be tempted under the situation to explain to the client that their host is giving you the run around and thereby their obviously a substandard service which could cause problems for them in the future, and make a recommendation for them to move to another service if possible (if migrating them could save you a few weeks, it would be worth helping them migrate for free and getting them away from that host). You could charge the client for the excess time used but I would in this case show sympathy toward the client in respect to the situation not being of their doing (these days it’s very hard to know what host you can trust). Hope that helps 
The issue was a 3rd party, you should have a clause in the contract about not being responsible for a 3rd party. I can sympathise, once I had to deal with a bad tech guy that just did not understand permissions for a Windows server. Took weeks and weeks!
i am not the one being liable for any loss in not being to produce the deliverables
Stuff happens, deal with it, learn from it and move on. Complaining that you didn’t do other work or earn anything during the time lost is your own fault. Not the clients or future clients. Why make them pay?
The lesson I learnt was to never ever let the client host the project.
do i have the rights to charge my client though the predicament that was actually caused by their webhosting tech support’s incompetency and ineffectiveness in handling my complaints?
I completely reject your idea to charge the client for something that was not their fault.
We all know what a bad server admin can be like, just find a really good one and keep them close!
thanks for the reply.
ever since that happened, i am putting conditions in my contract that prolonged project period due to issues like these, i am not the one being liable for any loss in not being to produce the deliverables. however, i will recommend them to migrate out from their current webhosting to a better webhosting with one off payment for every task billable after each time it has been performed.