Continuing on with the ‘things that can go wrong’ theme i’d like to recount an unfortunate experience I had with Aweber.

Now first off I want to make it absolutely clear this post  is Not intended as an exercise in Aweber bashing,

I simply want to make people aware that even with the biggest and the best, things can go horribly wrong and if you are forewarned of possible problems you will be in a better position to deal with them should they occur, and even take steps to prevent them  rearing their ugly heads… there are lessons to be learned from my experience so read on…

Aweber are one of the best known and probably most popular of the Auto-responder service providers, they are at the heart of so many mega successful on-line businesses that it would not be fair of me to slate them out of hand, my experience with them was not a good one but I have to be fair here because I know the majority of Aweber customers do not have any problems with them, in fact they are so popular just about every major marketer and his pet budgie recommend them (if you dont yet know the importance of auto-responders in your business check out my related post).

Ordinarily Aweber are the best of the best, but as my experience shows even the best can have room for improvement…

I’d opened an Aweber account in January, received three emails straight away… the usual welcome to…, account details etc, a few days later I had a 5 email auto-responder sequence linked to an opt-in page setup, I received the sequence approval email from them, tested my opt-in page and email sequence and everything was fine, fast forward a couple of months during which time i’d put that on the back burner whilest I worked on something which would run  in tandem, then one day i’m explaining to a friend about auto-responders and showed him my opt-in page… but something looked different… oh my opt-in box had gone…! well obviously you cant opt-in if there is nowhere to put your name and email address…

After much head scratching I tried to log into my account at Aweber, but no joy, login not recognised!, so I sent an email to customer services asking where my account had gone…

A reply came that my account had been suspended because they had been unable to contact me to confirm my home address details, I thought that strange because I am not a difficult guy to get hold of… so I re-submitted them in an email and asked that my account be reactivated… the reply I got shocked me because it said my account could not be reactivated as it had apparently been more than 30 days since my account had been suspended so my account along with all my data had been deleted!!!.

I read that email in disbelief!, so I asked them how they could justify deleting an account with email sequence set up, subscribers in place…(well actually just two but what if it had been several thousand?) and no problems with the billing, but they just said they had made several unsuccessful attempts to contact me (they said they sent an email, did not mention trying to phone me but I assume they did oh and left a message on my account so if I had logged in within that 30 days I would have received it)… hmmm now I cant be certain but Im sure I did log in within the time frame given because I did update a couple of details and change my password, anyway what has annoyed me is that I really dont think they made enough effort to contact me, now as we all know on occasion the odd email may go astray (John Thornhill cleverly anticipates this on his Marketing Masterclass course by having his students register two email addresses so if one email regarding a weeks studies goes astray there is a second to a different address that is certain to get through) now I personally dont think sending just one email requesting contact is enough… when they did not get a reply they should have sent at least a couple more just in case the first did not get through.

We have an answerphone which is always on when we are unavailable to take a call, now I do know there were several ‘blank’ messages on there about the time Aweber were apparently trying to contact me… but the whole point of having an answerphone is so anyone trying to contact us, especially urgently, can leave a message and a number to call back… at least then we know to get in touch, but if no one bothers to leave a message then we dont know who called do we?.

And finally why, if emailing and phoning did not work, did they not send a letter…? you know those old fashioned thingies we used to send before we had the internet and email…

So because Aweber could not contact me by email (and I’m sure they must have only sent one because that email address receives mail every day, so theirs must have been ‘the one that went astray’) and because they allegedly could not reach me by phone…(it obviously did not dawn on them that perhaps if i’d known they were trying to contact me urgently to avoid deleting my account that  I would have contacted them, you see thats why answer phones are so useful… so we never miss an important call), and because I did not log into my Aweber account again within 30 days of it being suspended to find the message they say was waiting for me… my account gets deleted along with all my data…

Now personally I think that stinks and does suggest there is some improvement they can make to their standard procedure with regard to dealing with their customers, it almost feels like a lack of dedication to the customer… and maybe there is a little of that, and maybe because this probably is such a rare problem they have perhaps not had to deal with this sort of thing before, whatever the case is it is a big shame it all unfolded like it did because I wont use their service now, but Like I said at the beginning of this post I dont want this to be seen as an Aweber bashing session, whatever my experience and my personal feelings it has to be remembered that Aweber are a world renowned auto-responder service, their reputation is second to none and hundreds or even thousands of highly successful marketers swear by them… but every diamond has it’s flaw  and I’m the unlucky bugger who found it!.

So what am I using for my Auto-responder solution…? AutoResponse Plus, I want to have full control over all my data and this provides that, it is a full featured auto-responder program which installs on your domain, you dont have any monthly fees just a one off purchase cost of just under $200, the license allows you to install the software on up to 10 domains, gives you full support and upgrades for two years oh and also includes professional installation on one domain by one of their guys. I’m still getting used to AutoResponse Plus but I’d have to say so far I’m very impressed, there is a lot to it and once I’v mastered it I’ll write a full review. Oh it is also recommended by British marketer Nick James so it cant be bad.

To conclude I’d suggest you check out all the auto-responder service providers and choose one you like the look of yourself, find a few customer reviews to guide you to what may be best for you… if you want a self hosted solution where you really do control everything yourself then AutoResponse Plus is the best of these… you should check it out before you make your final descision…

Until the next one…

Pete