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MailChimp deleted my account with no warning

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Re: MailChimp deleted my account with no warning

#131

Post by diminoten »

vkou wrote: post #104
skybrian wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You exaggerate, but actually, this is a good reason to avoid accusing people of lying unless you understand the situation pretty well. Honest mistakes do happen a lot.

It doesn't matter if the individual people at MailChimp were liars. What matters is that the institution as a whole - the way their policies and procedures come together - lied. The institution certainly knows of it's capabilities. It deliberately chose to not tell that to it's CS reps, because of a multitude of reasons, that come down to 'It makes our/their jobs easier.' My ISP, for example, lies to me every time I…

"The word lie has lost all meaning"

"It doesn't matter if they're liars"

C'mon, man.

Re: MailChimp deleted my account with no warning

#132

Post by crankylinuxuser »

abc-xyz wrote: post #72
alfanick wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never used MailChimp but if I did then I would assume that the mailing lists I built with their service would be 99.999% secure, and that I'd always be able to access it even if they went out of business. You're saying you never used service X, yet you would absolutely trust service X and assume that even when service X is out-of-businness, you can access data related to you. That's very surprising to read, I'm e…

Yes, because their entire business model is built around email marketing, and despite not using MailChimp then they're as far as I know the biggest player. Give me a couple of hours and then I can guarantee 99.999999% durability for almost no cost through Google/Amazon services. I would be very sad if MailChimp can't gaurantee the same. Edit since I can't reply: We're talking about durability of their mailing lists,…

Uptime for themselves != Uptime for customers

You absolutely have to consider TOS, account disablement, and other service provider-caused downtime.

And from what I've seen, no uptime calculation adds in account issues like this. And I'd really like to see how fast their resolution is.

Re: MailChimp deleted my account with no warning

#134

Post by briandear »

jrockway wrote: post #52

We've had a similar experience. We use them for both marketing mass emails and for ingesting support ticket emails (I believe that's through Mandrill). Someone sent a marketing email they didn't like (they said another one of their customers complained about it, or something; literally one complaint) and so they silently shut off our incoming email. We noticed it when one of our customers called to ask why we hadn't…

And yet I still get junk from MC senders for which I never subscribed. I report as spam, but those people still keep sending with no problems. (Anecdote, I report as spam an email sent to me@mybusiness.com, then get emails from the same sender at info@mybusiness.com, support@mybusiness.com and finally to emails that aren’t even real such as contrived first_initial_lastname@mybusiness.com (which aren’t in use but go to a catchall, so clearly some “marketing person” just added me to a list without any consent at all.)

At all times these are reported as spam. Then, when we, a few years ago sent out a new feature announcement and a request for a follow up appointment, our account gets frozen for sending unsolicited marketing emails — to our actual customers who have opted in to our emails! Emails that complied with every bit of the anti-spam laws. So Mailchimp arbitrarily lets through their massive enterprise senders sending actual unsolicited emails but freezes their smaller (but still paid) customers sending marketing to actual, current customers.

Anecdotes aren’t data, but for us, it was reality.

Re: MailChimp deleted my account with no warning

#135

Post by ascar »

elliekelly wrote: post #102
chrisshroba wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a good starting point is to take the existing process and add a more formal appeals process for people who feel their accounts were unjustly terminated.

My little sister works in customer support for a fairly large email marketing company that competes with MailChimp. From hearing her talk about some of her conversations with users booted from the platform I think a good number of spammers sincerely believe they have a legitimate business and are confused to hear they've been flagged for spam. A lot of these people seem to only know enough about the internet to be da…

I've worked on the email dev team of a mailchimp competitor and from what I've overheard, when a customer gets spam-flagged the first step is to help him avoid it in the future. A lot of small businesses using these tools might actually accidentally misuse them.

Re: MailChimp deleted my account with no warning

#136

Post by sacado2 »

deedubaya wrote: post #20

I bet it sucks that the user didn't get a warning or notification... ...but as normal user of email, I appreciate a heavy hand when it comes to email lists which mailchimp deems malicious or bad for its ecosystem. It's no secret that mailchimp maintains a high standard for the quality of lists and email it delivers. The common thread in these stories seems to be malicious actors, poor/spammy content, etc. So I'm not…

Well, OP's business seems pretty typical to me?

Re: MailChimp deleted my account with no warning

#137

Post by ryandrake »

“Service Xyz suddenly canceled my account and banned me for no reason and I no longer have access to critical data!”

How many times does this story have to be posted for us as a user community to get some sense and stop relying on unaccountable cloud services to host critical data or perform critical tasks? It seems like a similar story gets posted every week. Back up your data, people, and whenever possible, self-host.

For every online account you have, ask yourself: what is the consequence of me permanently losing this account and all data associated with it? If the answer is “catastrophic loss” then FFS do something about it!

Re: MailChimp deleted my account with no warning

#138

Post by brewdad »

baldfat wrote: post #126
LanceH wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company is set up to deliver a lie, even if the last person telling it is doing so unintentionally.

Mailchip seems to be in the wrong, but ignorance isn't the same as a lie. I bet you people just assume or their manager doesn't know either. Why was my account suspended - https://mailchimp.com/help/why-accounts-get-suspended/

The first level support person isn't lying if he/she doesn't truly know whether the data is recoverable. A manager higher up, who approved the script and knows better, is lying however. To the end user it makes no difference who the liar is, only the the lie is being told.

Re: MailChimp deleted my account with no warning

#139

Post by 1001101 »

garraeth wrote: post #90

A similar thing happened to me while using their Mandrill system. After years of using it with no issues, all of a sudden no emails were getting out. They shut us down without notice and without recourse. We were sending simple support emails, and auto-emails (when you register, forgot your password, etc). Absolutely would never recommend.

Did you continue to get billed for it?

Re: MailChimp deleted my account with no warning

#140

Post by ergothus »

LanceH wrote: post #94
cmiller1 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie "A lie is a statement used intentionally for the purpose of deception" I don't think you can prove it was a lie.

The company is set up to deliver a lie, even if the last person telling it is doing so unintentionally.

That's...fascinating. While we have lots of corporate personhood, I normally disregard blaming specific actions on a company because at the end of the day a person makes the call. But here you've pointed out that a company, operating as a collection of people, can "act" in ways that may be unintentional or may be deliberate, but are hard to pin down to a specific person.

Definitely worth considering in more depth, thanks for the perspective.

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