For instance, they’ve been in business forever but still don’t allow the client to customize the notification email that AWeber sends to them when someone fills in their form. The default email they do send is filled with crap and junk information that makes it almost unreadable and useless for lead follow up – which is the point of lead gen forms in the first place. Isn’t it?

AWeber sucks!

though this stopped a while ago it is interesting to read.

Why? I had a website until recently using AWstats, but about time this above issue arose I started getting calls from mates to say my e-mail address was blocked. then I started getting calls from government departments & those offering services to confirm e-mail address.

finally I was told by a mate a few months ago about a pop up that came up when he tried to e-mail me. wording was strange about my email address my being not allowed.

since I was getting no joy from my website I decided to contact someone I saw on ‘linked in’ to help with what I was doing wrong. get a pop up from Aweber saying I cannot use my email address. read through & it was what my mate had said he got few months ago.

did two things. first hit the connection to Aweber to find out what was up. reply was that I can not use the word security in an e-mail address end of story. they were told that they could not dictate to me what address I used.

second was tried again & was able to contact the business. they said they were signed to Aweber as an email marketing but they were not aware that business e-mails to them were being blocked.

I then contacted our (NZ) department for commercial issues. their response was they could do nothing, but if Aweber were based here, not overseas, they would then look into it with view to prosecution. Only option is taking local web service provider to disputes tribunal & why I have come across this.

I have never being signed up to Aweber but there seems to be a connection to Awstats as complaint I found on net with associated issues are same as those two combined.

seems they both are not what they are cracked up to be.

Customer service is definitely not of the required standard.

Ken

I congratulate Tom for spending the time to post on this blog not many CEO’s would do that.

I would of thought in this day and age that you would WANT a double optin?

Why? to confirm that the subscriber address is real and it’s a valid address.

Sure it’s an extra few seconds for the subscriber but why would you want to waste time with someone who’s not interested in what you’ve got to email?

Did someone spell their name wrong by accident? That could certainly happen once every 20,000 signups or so. Did they try to opt-out but the page failed to load? That could certainly happen once every 1,000 attempts.

Using a single person’s experience, good or bad, as the basis for a decision that would harm a company when the technology involved isn’t foolproof seems like overkill.

If they were selling penis enlargement pills, I’d be less tempted to give them the benefit of the doubt, but this sounds like a real company with a solid track record of doing the right thing.

50 kids die a year because their parents forget they left them in the car seat. Is it really that difficult to believe that one person could forget they signed up for an email list?

My understanding of the sequence of event is:
1. CEO received a spam complaint from one list
2. CEO ordered to switch ALL lists to double opt in
3. CEO asked a staff to notify Ian’s client

To me, this is not proactively solving an issue. That is, “hey dude, i dont’care what’s your story but this is my decision as per our TOS”.

If Aweber has attempted to solve an issue, before ordering a switch on all lists….
a. someone could have call Ian’s client to find out more
b. email Ian’s client to find out more
c. fax to Ian’s client to find out more
e. send a snail mail to Ian’s client find out more

The problem is anyone who has had experience with net companies who have a TOS agreement, have also had the experience of having it waived in their faces as a discussion ender when problems arise with no room for taking the customer’s particular needs into account.

The reflexive action when the customer has concerns about something like this often is to go on the defensive and whip out the TOS.

I can’t help but think that if the approach is more along the lines of “You know what, you have a valid concern and at my company we take such concerns very seriously. Let’s work together on finding a solution we all can live with.”, you can transform a concerned, often agitated customer into one of your greatest advocates who sings your praises every chance they get.

Don’t we all need as many such individuals as we can get?

Ken

Also, I’m a bit surprised that the CEO of AWeber has the time to be personally responding to issues like this… especially when his comments don’t seem terribly professional or helpful. If th CEO’s going to get involved in a thread like this, you’d expect the reponse to be a clear resolution offered in one post — probably in 20 words or less! Crazy!

The second opportunity would have been to find possible solutions that would prevent the escalation with other customers for the same or similar reasons and to demonstrate them in public for everybody to see.

All that would have been resulted into just another opportunity from a PR perspective to show if and how problems are being handled by the company and how a negative incident can be turned into a case study with positive outcome that could be used as reference for other companies.

Web 2.0 is not only good to raise public awareness of problems, but also to resolve them and learn something from it.

But it seems alot of time was spent putting forth the idea that the problem was with someone’s lack of acceptance and understanding of the general concepts of “opt in”.

If Ian still doesn’t know which list was being cited as the offender, how can anyone honestly talk about being forthcoming with details? Was he offered your personal time BEFORE he went public with this? Your involvement at this point appears to be nothing more than damage control.

Ken