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Comments
That's a standard message they send out to anyone that signs up, probably automated.
Wow thats really annoying. If i had something to complain about i'd complain about it and not wait for their support to contact me.
Anyway this was my response:
I received it too, so i replied. Then i got an automatic reply from their system that they opened a ticket for me. Haven't received any reply or followup to the ticket yet.
I wouldn't call this spam, and I never got anymore emails from pingdom after signing up for free first year. (besides error reports!) I think they are just trying to see if you need help. Got a problem? here's a cookie!
I'll forgive them this one email. If they continue doing this, I'll send them your reply :P
Wow, you guys sure are tough on a free service trying to reach out and assure you that support is there if you need it. Fucking ridiculous.
This doesn't have anything to do with being free or paid for. If i would havean issue i would have contacted their support. I didn't contact their support and therefor i didn't have an issue. If they still email me thats just cold-calling (cold-emailing?).
Especially since during signup i checked (or didn't check) a checkbox that asked me if i wanted to recieve "interesting news" and "exciting offers" or likewise .
Yes it might be rude to reply in such a way but i've found it to be extremly effective.
@gsrdgrdghd personally as a person who does have a similar set up as that (to send an e-mail asking how else we can improve like a week or so after they purchase a service) I don't really understand your "anger" about it (its only set to send once too). Its basically asking "how can we make it better". If you ignore it ok cool (I mean you have other important things to do), if you're a total jerk about it and take the time to write out an e-mail like that when you could have SAVED time by just not reply (or spending the time to just reply with "everything's fine thanks!"). The only thing they're probably wanting to know is "did I do this right?".
I feel like you went a bit over the top with that and could have easily been done by saying "Hello, Thanks for checking in but I'd appreciate it if Pingdom didn't send me any e-mail I didn't explicitly ask for." or something.
Is it that much of a "I want to kill you" moment if they ask you for a quick e-mail on how they're doing?
My two cents imho.
@HalfEatenPie this is my server alert email address, where i get alerts when one of my servers goes down. Therefor i've set it up to wake me up in the middle of the night if i've got an email on it.
How would you react if you stayed in a hotel and the staff woke you up at 4am to ask how your bed is?
@gsrdgrdghd oh Ok then haha that makes sense then.
They should probably have it set up then so that you can have a dedicated e-mail to send downtime notices for. I guess explaining that situation and just let them know would have been better though.
I think it would be appropriate for them to respond with "No, fuck YOU!" and cancelling your free account. The entitlement some people feel is ridiculous.
That email is a service for most of their customers, and all you're doing to them is creating problems with delivery and being obnoxious about it. That means they should actively seek to weed out people like you from subscribing to the free service in the first place.
You didn't even mention why you had a problem with that email in the first place. In fact, if you did, they would explain to you that you can have multiple email assigned to your account and mix and match what alerts go to which emails.
May i ask if you run a business in the hosting industry (or anywhere else)?
What you consider an "appropiate response" is just ridicolous.
For me it is spam and i can react to spam how i want. How do you react to telemarketers cold-calling you? Do you politely ask them to not call you again?
And to use my previous example: How would you react if you stayed in a hotel and the staff woke you up at 4am to ask how your bed is?
Also i understand that there are different ways to interpret such an email. While it can of course be interpreted as customer service it can also be interpreted as annoying and nannying
I do, and of course I never respond that way. That answer is "appropriate" only in the sense that it is symmetrical to your "inquiry". Would you mind telling me if you ever provided a free service? I can't imagine that you did, because you would have known what it's like to be on a receiving end of those kinds of self-important emails.
This is not telemarketing and this is not your hotel example. It's like sampling a free cookie in a supermarket and then lashing out at the person for asking if you liked it or not.
Imho they shouldn't make a difference between those customers who used a promotion code and those who paied. But i see we disagree there :P
I wouldn't mind if they canceled my account (if i cared i would have written a much friendlier email), in fact from their last promo: http://i.imgur.com/g6fOM.png
Yeah, the maxim is that everyone should treat all customers equally, which holds right until the moment you're a paid customer yourself and you suddenly expect better service.
There are always problematic users and they are 1/100 among paid ones and 1/10 among free ones. Somehow people who get in for free feel that much more is owed to them.
So you are implying that i am a problematic customer because i don't like unsolicited bulk mail?
You are a problematic customer to them, yes.
Well when i'm problematic because i don't like unsolicited bulk mail then thats not really my problem.
Anyway just fyi i've explained their support the situation in a follow-up mail (they are fast btw)
I understand that you can come up with justifications for acting indignant, nobody has problems doing that. You were still demanding policies that are in conflict with interests of most other customers and you were a jerk about it.
Where did i act ignorant?
Well i make my own policies who i want to recieve emails from and for what reason. Nothing wrong with that.
Proove that.
Where was i a jerk?
Anyway...
/gsrdgrdghd out
You've convinced me, you did everything right. I wish you customers just like yourself.
Email didn't bother me, but if I had been woken up by it I'd be a little upset too. Personally I don't let the email address itself wake me anymore, but instead specific addresses like monitoring, our datacenter, or our ticket system.