LinkedIn is Evil

#1

Post by smock » Tue, Jun 17, 2008, 9:16 PM UTC

I just spent the last half hour trying to downgrade my account from business to personal, after discovering a recurring charge which I hadn't realized was going to be recurring. There are plenty of buttons and obvious links for how I can upgrade my account - but not a single one for downgrading. I considered canceling, but now that I'm in the system it will be awkward to leave. Basically they have me boxed in.

From their FAQ, it appears that the only way to downgrade is to E-MAIL THEM! Even though I find this unacceptable, I went ahead and composed an e-mail using their link - only to get a 'Page Load Error' upon submission.

Has anyone else had a similar experience with LinkedIn, or am I just missing something obvious?

Re: LinkedIn is Evil

#2

Post by sam » Tue, Jun 17, 2008, 9:25 PM UTC

The same thing is happening for me. I just noticed that they are billing me $20/month and I'm also getting an error when I try to send them a message via their form. Not being able to downgrade in a simple way is Evil. It reminds me of AOL in the bad old days.

Re: LinkedIn is Evil

#3

Post by bfioca » Tue, Jun 17, 2008, 9:26 PM UTC

Maybe downgrading is considered an edge case.

Re: LinkedIn is Evil

#4

Post by babul » Tue, Jun 17, 2008, 9:31 PM UTC

Although many people use LinkedIN, I don't as there are many things in thier T&C I am not happy with regarding the sharing of my personal information and those in my network.

Re: LinkedIn is Evil

#5

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 17, 2008, 9:34 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: LinkedIn is Evil

#6

Post by brk » Tue, Jun 17, 2008, 9:35 PM UTC

Odd, I've gone from free-paid-free-paid-free a few times now by following whatever the process was at the time.

One thing I suggest for any sites like this is to get one of those "disposable" credit card numbers with a configurable time/balance limit. Login to your online card balance viewer portal and there is usually an option for this. Eliminates a lot of "please please cancel my account" debates...

Re: LinkedIn is Evil

#7

Post by smock » Tue, Jun 17, 2008, 9:48 PM UTC

brk wrote: post #6

Odd, I've gone from free-paid-free-paid-free a few times now by following whatever the process was at the time. One thing I suggest for any sites like this is to get one of those "disposable" credit card numbers with a configurable time/balance limit. Login to your online card balance viewer portal and there is usually an option for this. Eliminates a lot of "please please cancel my account" debates...

That is a really good idea - I had the same issue with a wireless provider I signed up for (Deep Blue Wireless, if anyone has ever used them) previously.

Regardless, I think it is a pretty shady business practice to obfuscate the process of removing charges which were signed up for. It can be done really well - Netflix has made it really easy, and because of it I am willing to go back and forth as a subscriber. At this point I will never sign up again for a LinkedIn business account.

Re: LinkedIn is Evil

#8

Post by j2d2 » Tue, Jun 17, 2008, 9:53 PM UTC

bfioca wrote: post #3

Maybe downgrading is considered an edge case.

Agreed. Considering a company evil is a bit much...

Re: LinkedIn is Evil

#9

Post by sam » Tue, Jun 17, 2008, 9:54 PM UTC

bfioca wrote: post #3

Maybe downgrading is considered an edge case.

This is a joke, right?

Re: LinkedIn is Evil

#10

Post by rplevy » Tue, Jun 17, 2008, 9:58 PM UTC

LinkedIn seems to be an all-around stubborn and inconvenient site. I had the same experience, but in my case it was in deleting my account. The deletion process was unnecessarily difficult, so I deleted all my contacts (I think the account ultimately did get deleted though). The reason I wanted to delete my account in the first place had to do with the fact that it was overly restrictive in managing, showing, deleting my own content. The last straw was that I had posted a question in the public Q/A section and there was no way to delete the question permanently when I did not want it to be shown.