Hey big shots. I'm human.

[Scott Ames]

eBay, Google, PayPal, et. al. are quick to simply delete an account , lock the account holder out, and never do business with them again if there is any problem at all. Worse, they rarely share why the account holder was removed and there is no negotiation. People have had their income stream killed by this turning of backs by big shot companies.

I can understand the thinking. It's a pain to deal with forged accounts, false clicks, spammers, and the like. There doesn't seem to be a good way to weed out the innocent from the guilty. If someone hijacks an account the innocent account holder is often the loser with no recourse. A multi-billion dollar company doesn't really need the little account they figure so why go to any effort to figure out what actually happened? Why give the account holder an opportunity to argue and plead his/her case?

I think that's unfortunate thinking. There are many avenues they could pursue short of killing an account. After all, hundreds or hundreds of thousands of little accounts could add lot of money to the bottom line.

Here are some ideas for them.


Instead of simply deleting an account without recourse, suspend the account and dig to find the root cause of the problem. Give the owner a chance to defend themselves and/or redeem themselves.

Don't point to Terms of Service as the cause. Give the owner the exact reason. You really won't reveal too many secrets by doing so, which is your primary reason stated for not telling the account holder the problem. If you suspect click fraud.. say so....if you think they were selling illegal products, say so.. people can take it.

There is nothing more frustrating to be told you did wrong, but not told what you did. People are human and do make errors. Here is a shocker for you... not everyone will read every word of your Terms of Service. They might just think selling a pet is ok but you don't.

You can always reinstate for a trial period and watch the account.

You could have the owner post some sort of bond for performance or impose a monetary penalty for bad behavior.

People are human, they make mistakes. Sure you get some with bad intent, but a lot of people just are trying to eek out a living while figuring out life and the system.

[MichaelHiles]

I take it you've had a bad day with a service provider?

I agree that there should be a process for resolution, but when you're talking about internet companies with millions of accounts, the staffing requirements for ANY business process, customer servce, account suspension resolution, etc... are pretty gargantuan.

[Scott Ames]

Originally Posted by keyword-research.info

I know what you mean Scott. I've been banned from AdSense since 2005. Every year or so I e-mail them asking to get back in, but they won't budge. You'd think they would forgive you after a set period of time or give you a strict trial 2nd chance. Google is missing out on some good adspace just because they refuse to forgive people.

It's nuts. What did you do to offend them? Do you know?

[Scott Ames]

Originally Posted by MichaelHiles

I take it you've had a bad day with a service provider?

I agree that there should be a process for resolution, but when you're talking about internet companies with millions of accounts, the staffing requirements for ANY business process, customer servce, account suspension resolution, etc... are pretty gargantuan.

It's a big job, no doubt. They however are also gargantuan companies and I think they could gain more revenue than the cost of a smart process. Who knows, perhaps someone ran the numbers and decided to leave the crumbs behind.

[gacott]

Just this year they de-indexed a number of domains I had, I'm talking domains with 10+ years of existence on them. I have no idea why, I can't get them back in the index no matter what it seams. They say they will look at them, then that they have looked at them, then if they want, maybe, sometime they might show back up in the index, perhaps.

[LB]

Instead of simply deleting an account without recourse, suspend the account and dig to find the root cause of the problem. Give the owner a chance to defend themselves and/or redeem themselves.

Don't point to Terms of Service as the cause. Give the owner the exact reason. You really won't reveal too many secrets by doing so, which is your primary reason stated for not telling the account holder the problem. If you suspect click fraud.. say so....if you think they were selling illegal products, say so.. people can take it.

There is nothing more frustrating to be told you did wrong, but not told what you did. People are human and do make errors. Here is a shocker for you... not everyone will read every word of your Terms of Service. They might just think selling a pet is ok but you don't.

You can always reinstate for a trial period and watch the account.

You could have the owner post some sort of bond for performance or impose a monetary penalty for bad behavior.

Unfortunately, none of these are profitable. Additionally, they have quite a high "intellect factor" involved in that they need an employee who actually knows what they're doing to achieve. Better employees means higher salaries and thus...less profitable.

Just the way it is.