Ok I have a little rant today as I was going thru my emails and get one of those form letters that I have a site that is not showing. Owners – You Need to Let Members Contact You – let me tell you what I have just been thru.
Now here is funny part here and what really got my goat – the link that the email says is not showing is not even my link grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
After getting this report, I went to the site to check out what is going on as obviously I still have credits otherwise the site would not be trying to showing. Well I logged in to get this message
Your account has been suspended!
This has happened to you for several reasons:
- You are not surfing enough
- Your websites violate our terms. Breaking frames for example Etc.
- You are clicking on the wrong image consistently
This can be fixed.
If you are not surfing enough, you need to let us know you are goin to surf at least 200 pages every week. If you think you can do it just send a request to xxxx.com@gmail.com. Your account will be activated. Surfing will help deliver credits to your websites.
If your account has been suspended because you clicked on the wrong image just let us know and we will acitave it.
If your website is breaking frames your account will be suspended. This is annoying to everyone. It breaks the surfing rhythm! This is not good!
Well for one, I have not been on this site in long time and my site was still showing so I must have had credits but yet you want me to surf 200 a week to be part of your site. So I tried to find the support button on the site and there was none as I wanted to share my 2 cents – so decided to come here and share and then send them the link to my blog.
Listen owners you cannot have your cake and eat it too – give your members a reason to surf – don’t demand that we have to surf or get suspended. It’s YOUR responsibility as an owner to do this – it’s NOT the members.
Also, if you don’t keep the lines of communication open you will NEVER grow your site – YOUR members are people and not a robot or just a number – treat them like that and there will be not be issues of getting them to surf.
Now that I have this off my chest I feel better but I can’t even get in to your site and delete my account because you don’t have a contact button on the site for members that want to contact you.
Being the type of person that I am, I did take out the name of the site and thought I would just make this an in general so other owners would re-think their policies.
Owners – Stop Slamming The Door In Your Members Face
P.S. With all the people showing as staff on your site, you would think one of you could do a spell check – hint, hint
A great rant Nancy. More owners should learn this, since it is the members that make a site.
Wolf Boyce
Arch-Hits
Well I hope Wolf – there are good owners out there and hopefully the new ones can learn a few things
Interesting Blog post, Nancy!
Owners are real people and we make mistakes too!
Suspending a Member account is usually a tough decision, but having a way to be contacted is just as important as having a log in link, just my humble opinion.
I agree that your Members need to be able to contact you by either email, a support desk or even a contact form on your site.
Hope your issue gets resolved! 🙂
I agree and I just went thru suspending a member and it was not easy choice but sometimes you don’t have a choice especially when a member tries and cheats YOU and your members
I agree Nancy. I have received the same kind of form letter in the past from sites and found no means of contacting Admin on the sites in question and no cancel account link either. I hope other Admins will take heed that in reality without the members they may as well close down their sites.
Yes, members are the backbone on your businesses and hope that owners remember that
Nice Nancy 🙂
First and foremost make yourself available to members.
If a site does not have a contact button, and not just for members, and does not show me the face of the owner, then I am not there.
I also believe that owners should appear in chat every now and then, even if its just to say hi.
Thanks Russell – I totally agree that members should see the owners now and then and realize that we are real and not just someone that hides behind the words Owner/Admin but that is another subject for a blog post sometimes – another pet peeve of mine also
Hi Nancy,
You are so right on this. We are members of countless TEs and we can’t possibly surf them all lol, but that’s another story too.
I think also it’s the script, not LFMTE, but like Ventrino or some other scripts, that suspend members for inactivity.
But also as an owner too I know that it should be known that the owner doesn’t suspend you personally it is the script that does and the settings for the most part.
And yes getting suspended can happen for many reasons.
Oh and I like you calling out the owners with NO way to contact the Admin, from getting an email or seeing the you are suspended when trying to login and no way to contact Admin, oh my then there is no way to ever become active,
oh unless we know Sally who can skype Sammy to call his partner Jane, that could ask Jane too maybe help Sally’s friend get into her account.OMG…
All the while we are surfing away at another TE with no problems, or if we do have a problem, we can see Contact Us inside the site and on the main page too oh and yes sometimes the Support link to contact Admin can be found in some of those emails we get from from Admin..
Have a nice Sunday!
PS: Do let us know if and how you got back into your suspended account for inactivity?
Thanks Dorena and I just sent them a copy of the blog post and asked that they delete my account
Great post Nancy 🙂
It is high time that users start expressing their opinion about things like this.
Many users are also owners, so they look at things from a broader perspective.
Posting things like this is a big help to the industry.
Thanks for ranting!!
Thanks John and you are right lot of the members are owners and wanted to be treated like a real person
Good for you to rant! Hope they read it. Might a good practise to see first if there is a contact form (and maybe even use it) before signing up and certainly before buying credits. Right?
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Thanks Xarah and yea a person should test to see if the sight is inviting or are you just going to be another number