Warning: Aweber turns into PayPal!

I'd love to hear Tom Kulzer's side on this one. If what you're writing is totally accurate, then the termination without a warning definitely has me wondering.

@Rod: I am also looking forward to his reply to my last questions.

@cjmo75: If a double opt-in subscriber complains that he receives emails from a list that he double opted into and that is can-spam compliant (I assume Aweber is)... they should he simply be unsubscribed?

@Justin: If they would not have send me the backup I would have sued Aweber for $1 per subscriber / month for the 2 1/2 years it took to build that list... = $1 x 90,000 x 30 month = US $2,700,000

Sounds like Tom gave you a pretty standard non answer.

I would love to know what they mean by 'batching subscribers' as well, since Aweber does have the capability to upload databases of subscribers, provided you can prove the url they subscribed at.

Perhpas you were the victim of a cyberattack where someone was 'batching subscribers' through a bot network to your aweber account, and it generated a massive wave of spam complaints?

Here's what I'm talking about:

Subscription form attack

Here's what you need to do now. Have aweber send you copies of the spam complaints received. If they are all confirm emails, then that is probably what happened.

Okay, let's dissect this a little.

AWeber is getting:

- Spam complaints about emails that link to your squeeze page.
- Spam complaints about emails you've sent through their service.
- Spam complaints about emails linking to the same sites you link to.

And then you talk about "accidental unsubscribes" as a reason to insert... well, how many blank lines? More than ten is probably excessive. More than a hundred is spammy. More than a thousand is a big flashing neon sign that says "I'm making it hard for you to unsubscribe."

I don't know what this "batching subscribers" thing is. I suspect it's something about sending the same email address to two different AR providers... perhaps one to AWeber, and another to a single opt-in AR. But I don't know, and I'm just speculating.

Regardless, I'd terminate you from my AR service too, if I had one and you were on it.

Read a similar story with getresponse here on WF some time ago and now it's aweber's time. Anyway, I too look forward to reply from Tom.

@Floyd: If I was a victim of that... Aweber would have opened the account as soon as the issue is resolved. I asked Tom if my double opt-in subscribers could be added to a new account and his reply was...

Tom Kulzer: "I'm sorry, but we are unable to do anything with those subscribers or future accounts."

@CDarklock: Probably about 10 blank lines... so if your words, excessive, but not spammy.

Regarding what they refer to as "batching subscribers"... it's not an email subscribe, but an actual Aweber subscribe form in an iFrame on the web page that gets submitted when the members subscribes to the membership site. It's technically the same as if the subscriber fills out the form and clicks on subscribe... just that the membership site enters the name & email and clicks on submit for the subscriber via JavaScript. That way the subscriber can become a member of the membership site and subscribe to an Aweber list with the same form and with just one click. It's something build into the Butterfly Marketing script from Mike Filsaime.

@tribos: Hmmm... thanks for the warning about GetResponse, I was looking into them as well.

@Frank - I am so sorry to hear that.

One lesson I learned is to ALWAYS back up my list.

That's why I have copies of my list in iContact -- even though I don't use iContact often.

I don't give 100% of trust to any service that I paid for -- unless i own the company who gives out the service.

I used to have lots of problems with PayPal too until I called them up and tell them EXACTLY what I do and how I make money online.

They listened and ever since then, I seldom have problem with PayPal. (They even assigned someone to look over my account)

Cheers
Desmond

That's why my best friend uses "Auto Response Plus" No monthly fees
and YOU completely OWN your list. I am sad to hear this story and a bit
freaked out if I may. Hope the best for you friend.

Best Regards,
UFG

The morale of the story:

Always back up your own data... don't leave it to your service
provider cos you don't know when they are going to crash!

@Desmond: I got my backup from Aweber, so no big harm done... just very upset with them not even warning me or telling me that they closed the accounts of a long term customer.

iContact seems pretty expensive, are you satisfied with their delivery rates? They said they don't require double opt-in... so I wonder if that pulls down their delivery rates.

@UFG: Auto Response Plus is a script that runs from your own server, kind of like my own Add2it MailResponder Pro script. I can use that of course and I do, but I like to have an external backup with a service provider as well.

@Floyd: Yeah, I am not trying any longer to get Aweber to get to their senses... but I want to know in details what caused their decision to be able to learn from it.

@thomashoi: I got a backup in form of my members database... and they send me their last backup copy. But generally I agree with you... back often, not only with service providers, but also your local HDD stuff. (Aurelius would agree )

Frank,

It was cool hanging out with you in Atlanta a while back.

Sorry for your troubles. Hope you get it sorted out.

If an account was getting hammered with a spike of fake subscribes it would seem the prudent thing to do would be to disable that particular form until the attack passed and to contact the account owner.

If it was a sustained issue over a long period of time then it's inexusable if the first contact was closing the account.

Don't expect much. Aweber was hacked and peoples' email addresses were compromised and all they did was make a blog post about it with comments disabled.

@LB: Yes, or they could have temporarily suspended that particular account and then contact me. But what Aweber did instead was terminate both accounts I have with them without any notice at all.

Ugh, just another reason why it sucks having certain business tools reliant upon a 3rd party (similar to the PayPal freeze stories)

Please do peep us posted with any answers/solutions

~Dexx

Any updates?

I would create a quick script that would back up my lists every day. In fact I back up my files from hosting. It is one of the reasons I moved to VPS hosting.

Recently, I have been using in "in-house" mailing system but follow all the spam laws (unsubscribe, signature, address etc.,) and send emails only to opt-ins. I use scheduler program so that I dont go over ISP limits and not get blocked by email service providers. My list is small so it is working so far.

I would be intersted to see what happens to your case.

Actually you "CAN'T" just switch to another service. Most make your subscribers opt-in again.

Then you lose 90% of your list.

The only way to really protect your list is to host it yourself and white list your email mailer on your own with the major email ISP's.

Re's
Rob Whisonant

Rob, that is what we might end up doing. Using Frank's mail responder pro, and then hosting it on our server. Trafficwave.net looks like a potential option too, as their IP's seem as clean as aweber and they are also growing fast, so could become a big player

The best solution is a self-hosted one like, typically.

@Tim: 30-40 if way too much. I used about 10... just to add some whitespace to make it look better.

@LB: Wow... I saw this today the first time. That will cost many Aweber members thousands in lost potential revenue due to their subscribers getting spammed and them then unsubscribing or being a lot less responsive.

@Paul: To achieve that the ESP could have simply suspended the accounts and then started the dialog. There is no excuse for terminating accounts permanently right away. An immediate suspension of the accounts would have protected their business and their other customers the same way.

What Aweber did equals a police officer that shoots a potential burglar on sight just to find out later that it wasn't a burglar, but the home owner. Little mistake, big difference.

Hmm... damned if you do... damned if you don't.

I have capability and sufficient expertise to run a list on my own server but I chose to have it managed by a 3rd party.

FWIW I agree with the sentiment that any genuine confirmed opt-in subscriber's complaint should be treated as an unsubscribe request. Otherwise, you are on the slippery slope of ESPs moderating the content of your mailing list. Why shouldn't I be able to send a message that has the potential to upset my readers? It's a stupid thing to send a message about some sexual potency miracle cure to a list comprised of accountants who requested news related to Quickbooks, but it's certainly legal to do so if they requested to be on that list.

To combat the "I don't know how I got on this list", I include a statement next to unsubscribe options "We sent you this message because you confirmed your request to receive this information on DATE at TIME." That timestamp is straight from the opt-in database. Good luck arguing with that.

There must be more to it than Aweber is telling you. Could some of the complains be affecting their business?

When people get hit on their own wallet they tend to act less rational.

Hope you find a solution.

Michael

@Paul: I agree with most of what you said. Yes, I am certainly reacting strongly to what I believe to be unreasonable. I also agree with you that my comparison was too strong. Nobody died here and as you said and I agree, this is not a long term issue to my business.

So, let me officially apologize for using a too strong comparison.

But the fact remains that the purpose of this post is not to get my accounts back or help me personally in any way shape or form... except of course with the suggestions for other service providers, which are appreciated.

This post is just here to make people aware of an issue that everybody should be aware of in this Industry, that sometimes companies out there develop and grow past the point where they provide a customer friendly environment that is taken care of by a small, dedicated staff... to a "monster" of a company, big, huge and not much interested in each single customers anymore.

Of course... that just in my humble opinion that might be taint by what happened.

@Michael: If Aweber receives spam complaints... for whatever reason... that does hurt them as well. I understand that part 100% and can understand that if any of their customers is causing an unreasonable high amount of complaints, that Aweber would need to suspend that account and then start the dialog with that customer to see what causes the complaints. If it's the customers fault, I could then understand that they might terminate his account.

What I do not agree with is an immediate termination without first suspending and talking.

Of course... Aweber can run their business in any way they see fit. But would you be interested to use the services of a company that terminates you without dialog? Especially if it's not your fault?

I hope Tom answers the remaining questions soon and I can show his replies here. Even if those replies are "Yes, Frank... it's your own fault because..." ... I believe them to be valuable lessons for everybody, myself included.

I would like to see Tom's answers as well.










For the record, I think 5 blank lines is excessive. If you only are doing it so "it looks better" you shouldn't need more than 3 blank lines at most.



Sorry, but the 10 blank lines sounds like a cop out to me, and like it or not, it DOES appear a bit underhanded.

However, I don't think that one reason alone should be enough to lose your account without warning.










Don't get me wrong though. All in all, it sounds like you got a raw deal. At least based on what I've read so far.










All the best,









Michael



p.s. I still think 3 blank lines is all anybody should need to separate blocks of text; barring special circumstances.

Hey Frank, last year this happened to one of my 90k lists as well. I had no warning at all. I called them and they basically gave me a similar response saying "sorry, but we can no longer serve this email list". Luckily it wasn't one of our main lists, but still very frustrating. I moved them all over to getresponse with no problem, but use aweber still for all of my other lists... which is probably asking for trouble, but so far so good.

Brad

This is what happens when small to medium fish turn into large sharks, shame!

hey add2it, have you considered that those spam-complaints could have come from an blackhat-competitor that simply intented to "destroy" your business.. by flagging/reporting your emails as spam, etc? Just something that came into my mind, hope it helps, and I also hope that your accounts get reinstalled again, after all.

But luckily aweber isn´t the only one that offers this service. If they don´t want your money you can always search for alternatives.

Show of hands... Anyone else remember a thread about a similar action by GetResponse not that long ago?

This is not a problem faced by any one single company in the ESP industry. Without a lot more information than any of us is likely to get, we're not in a position to judge the specific cases involved appropriately. And Tom and Simon have both made it clear in the past that they're not going to discuss individual accounts in detail in a forum.

I don't blame them. That is the responsible position.


Paul

Well I've never really had any issues with Aweber.. What does bother me is when someone reports spam complaints for no apparent reason. It's almost as if they do it out of shear boredom!

I'm terribly sorry this had to happen to you, but it just goes to prove how volatile and unpredictable the internet really is. We really do not have much control, there are too many external factors and services we all rely on.

Guess we better keep backups?

What I find really interesting here is the gross over reaction to it. It seems to me that if Aweber (the largest AR) was constantly doing this, or they were actually having serious problems, wouldn't they have went out of business a long time ago, since all 75,000 + subscribers would have switched to another provider?

It seems really dangerous to me to make a significant business decision based on the annoyed rantings of a few people, especially against a company that has the best deliver-ability in the industry and is consequently the largest of its kind.

Especially when you do not have all the facts.


Chris

I used to think that using a free 3rd party resource to do business
is risky, with this new development, I'm now thinking that everything
3rd party whether paid or free is risky.

Frank, I hope you resolve your problems soon.

I also hope this will not be the trend with Aweber since most warriors here
think of them as the best ESP out there.

All the best,

Back in college I worked at K-Mart. A woman came in to return a shirt. I wouldn't give her any money for it. Another woman came into return a pair of pants. I wouldn't take the pants back, either.

I could just imagine these two women telling their friends how K-Mart blows, their customer service sucks, and how the company had gotten too big to care about customers any more. And I bet a few of their friends said, "well, I'm not shopping at K-Mart any more if that's how they're gonna treat customers!"

Only one problem -- these other people wouldn't have all the information. Because:

1. The woman who wanted to return the shirt was trying to return a shirt that belonged to WalMart... and she wanted me to take it back because she "didn't have time" to run to WalMart.

2. The woman who was trying to return the pants had spilled bleach on them. (Since it was K-Mart bleach, well... K-Mart's fault.)


Likewise, we don't have all the information. And we probably won't get it.

Aweber is under no obligation to share with the OP the exact reason his account was terminated.

I mean just think about the huge fights that happen on this forum when some new member with a one-week-old (free) account gets banned. Folks argue, look for "loopholes," look for reasons why the WF is wrong, make accusations about mods "playing god"... and on and on.

So you can see why a big company might not be too interested in discussing, in detail, why an account was terminated.

Cheers,
Becky

here's my question...

let's say you back up your list (saving their emails im assuming), then what good is that? they STILL have to subscribe to you AGAIN through a different autoresponder...

if you add them yourself, wouldn't it be against the can-spam law?

i always thought they have to subscribe themselves....

so my question is...if you have a backup of your list, what good is it since they have to subscribe themselves...

They should have at the very least sent you an email informing you that they were going to close your account and given you a reason why.

I had my account deleted before I even had a chance to build a list.

crazy stuff.. would like to see the outcome of this

I laughed when I saw one post suggesting a suit if the OP didn't get his list back. The contract he agreed to was probably strongly worded in favor of Aweber. Take a look for example at the penalties if you violate Craigslist's TOS.
When I read about accounts being terminated without warning it makes me think we need an association to promote an 'IMers Bill of Rights.
(I would volunteer to start one if I could get 1000 of you to send me $7 but it could probably be done quicker by someone with a big list)

Here's the facts: AWeber monitors accounts to ensure they're CAN-SPAM compliant, and they virtually force everybody to use double-opt-in to get onto their list.

Everybody believes this approach is about as "state of the art" as we have today.

So for a vendor like AWeber to flatly terminate an account with no prior notice or discussion, even though it's a long-established account and appears to conform in every possible way with their own published "best practices" suggests strongly that there's something else at work. The question is ... what's REALLY going on?

I've had two incidents where a server (two different ones) was hacked into and used by the hacker to send out spams. In both instances, the IPs were blacklisted fairly quickly, and the ISPs went into "panic mode" fixing things. One of them was such a subtle attack that it literally took down the entire data center for 6 hours before they were able to track down the compromised server -- which happened to be mine.

If ever there's a valid reason to kill somebody's account, such situations are surely good candidates. In truth, I was a victim just as much as they were. In both cases, I told them to just take the servers offline until we could fix the problem, which they had already done.

But having an account with a long-standing history of compliance suddenly getting axed for unspecified reasons tells me that there was probably a breech on AWeber's side and they don't want to discuss it. They could only narrow it down to something that can best be described as "toxic data" in your dataset. Rather than telling you to "clean" your data, it's more likely they just wanted to get it out of their database.

Personally, I'd be careful using any data added in the past few months. Look at your subscriber trends and see if there has been a sudden increase of subscriptions lately for no obvious reason. AWeber is in the best position to do such an analysis, but they evidently don't care to help.

I'd also look for any patterns in terms of geolocalized IPs vs. subscription dates and see if there was a surge in subscribers from some particular area.

The point is, maybe someone did do something that had the effect of "seeding" your list with a bunch of bogus emails. IOW, you got attacked, but in a very subtle way. Your list got poisoned. And until you determine if that's the case, your spam complaints could be excessively high no matter who is hosting your account.

Obviously, SOMETHING triggered AWeber's system in a way that led to your account getting terminated. The responsible thing for them to do, IMHO, is to work with you to resolve the issue. It could be that you were, in fact, targeted. It could also be that you're just one of many people who's site(s) got hacked by some malicious a$$holes who just felt like messing with someone at random.

But before you just load up your lists somewhere else, I'd definitely do some data analysis and see if you can detect any patterns that reflect changes over the past few months that would have led to an overall increase in spam complaints. It's not going to be from adding 10 blank lines before the unsub link. It's more like ... names that just didn't belong on your list in the first place.

Honestly, it could also be something as innocuous as a typo somebody made on their own subscription form and they just haven't noticed.

Unfortunately, from AWeber's standpoint, they can't tell the difference. It just looks like your rate of spam complaints jumped (we're guessing) and they decided it's best to shut you down.

It's a dicey thing -- like when someone uses your credit card number without authorization, it's great to be able to help the bank diagnose things but ... ironically, for privacy reasons, if you deny making certain charges, they cannot discuss them with you. Here YOU are, the person MOST INFORMED about your own usage habits, and their policies say they cannot include you in their attempts to resolve the problem.

Maybe something similar is going on with AWeber -- they can't discuss anything with you without disclosing information about other users. Even identifying the toxic subscribers could give away that info. So .... you're just shut down and left to your own devices.

-David

Although I haven't personally used this site, I've heard a few people recommend iContact.com as a viable alternative. Not sure if it is just good marketing, or if they actually are a good alternative, but you might look into that.

Actually we use Aweber but...if I were running the company. I think I would have my staff doing a little more research before terminating someone...

Constant Contact is throwing down truck loads of money right now with a TV commercial every friggin 10 minutes.

Competition is gonna be getting a little more aggressive in that realm.

Frank,

Dedicated server (just for mailing)
+
Email Marketing | Email Marketing Software | Interspire Email Marketer
+
Interspire.SMTP.com - Email, Delivered.
=
Your own email server with the deliverability of Aweber.

--
I sympathize with you there, potentially losing a list that you've worked hard on over as long as you have can be quite traumatizing to the hard-core list marketers amongst us.

I myself have never used any Email Marketing Service, Aweber or anyone else for that matter. I do realize that this is mostly due to my extensive programming knowledge (I've always just created Double Optin confirmation scripts myself, and maintained my own email databases for both security and ownership issues). I would never trust my lists with any third party no matter how well established they are, it's just too insecure a means of operating a list these days with the amount of spam going around and the sheer number of scammers out there spoofing identities of known list marketers.

Hope you get it sorted soon~ All the best~

Sorry to hear about your story. Nothing is perfect in this world, keep yourself safe by protecting your data and backing up your lists. That's it!

@Paul Myers: Thanks for pointing that out... was also looking at GetResponse as an alternative. So they also terminated permanently without suspending first and then starting the dialog with their customer?

@jitterbug978: Me neither till end of last week.

@jitterbug978: The spam complaints in this case where not from people I emailed via Aweber, but from people that received emails from other people and those emails they complained about had links to a webpage with an Aweber form to my Aweber account!

So, it was basically ViralURL members that cloaked / shortened their links in spam they send out that where at least 1/5th of the reason Tom Kulzer gave for my two accounts being closed. My second account (non viralurl) was closed simply because it also belonged to me and possible some of the other 4 reasons Tom mentioned (see initial post).

@Michael Oksa: As you can see in my initial post... the lines are just 1/5th of the problem in Awebers eyes. And the reason the gave me a backup of the list is because it's my list, they just hosted it. Also, as mentioned before... it was not me spamming my subscribers (they double opted in to get emails from me), but 3rd party people spamming 4th party people with a link in their emails to a web site that had my Aweber form on it.

@Kay King: I agree with all you said... the JavaScript was only used with one of the accounts... not the other one. Aweber closed both because both where owned by me.

@Paul Myers: On one side I can understand your frustration wasting your time with what you believe are useless posts. On the other side I am wondering if that would be an over reaction from your side... you don't see this as a helpful discussion? I think it helps others avoid doing the same "mistakes" I did.

I am of course still waiting for Tom Kulzers answers to get the facts, but for now I e.g. decided to reduce the number of blank lines between email body and unsubscribe section from 10 lines to 5 lines to avoid upsetting subscribers about too much white space.

Judging by the feedback from many here it seems that 10+ lines make them feel more compelled to unsubscribe and that's counter productive to one of the other reasons for white space, to make the email look more personal (an unsubscribe link right below the signature screams that the receiver is NOT getting a personal email and lowers the click rate).

I also learned in this thread so far to avoid two specific other ESP's besides Aweber... namely GetResponse & TrafficWave.

@Chris: Did you see the link above to the blog post from Aweber where they announced that a hacker had stolen email addresses from their database? Or the post from Brad Callen where he said the same happened to him? They seems to have serious problems if you ask any of those people affected by them.

@BJ Min: No, as long as you have their IP address and timestamp you are fine and can import them into another autoresponder system. Of course not all ESP's allow you to import them as they fear you got their details of a CD with 10,000,000 "Guaranteed Spam Free" email subscribers.

But some ESP's do allow it like e.g. ImnicaMail (not 100% sure what their requirements are) and you can of course import them into a self hosted MailResponder system.

@AllAboutAction: Very well said... I also hope to get my last questions answered by Tom Kulzer (so far he hasn't) and as I said before... even if he says "Frank, you brought this on yourself..." I don't mind sharing here what I did wrong so we can all learn from these mistakes.

The biggest frustration is simply that they did not have the decency to start a dialog after suspending and instead didn't contact me at all and terminated permanently. Maybe they do that with customers that are still on the older, lower cost payment plan?

@garyv: Yes, when a member clicks on the "Click here to continue" button it opens first the terms & agreement page where they have to click on "I Agree" before they are added...



On that terms page it states that they also opt-in. Besides that... they first receive a confirmation email at their email address in which they need to click on the confirmation link before they will ever receive further emails.

@DogScout: Are you subscribed to somebodies TrafficWave list or are you using them yourself to email to your lists?

@Richelo Killian: That's interesting... can you show a screenshot of an example of how it looks like in your emails with the unsubscribe link as the second link?

@David: According to Aweber the spam complaints where about links in spam emails that point to my site with the Aweber form, besides 4 other reasons Tom Kulzer gave (see original post). The growth of that list during the last 2 1/2 years was constant... and fake emails can't be added without the confirmation of the email address owner (double opt-in).

In the end it's up to Tom Kulzer to educate me (and that way us) further and stop the wild speculations.

@BlueSquares: I have the dedicated server and software to do this... re: Interspire.SMTP.com ... have you used them personally? I see it would cost between $500-$900 per month to email a 80k list twice per week... worth it in your opinion?

Does it scale automatically? I mean... do they charge monthly depending on the number of emails send or are you on a fixed size contact that needs manual upgrading & downgrading as your usage changes?

@David: Excellent suggestion! Tom Kulzer, listen and adapt please.

@LB: Good point... you could still loose your SMTP account (right?), but you can't loose your self hosted software & list. Or what do you think BlueSquares?

Aweber isn't responsible for whether those 90,000 people get hit with SPAM.

They are responsible for whether they get the blame and it effects their deliverability.

That's the end of the responsibility/care road for Aweber.

Additionally, they also understand that it's not always the fault of the account holder
and withholding 90,000 customers from an account holder would result in various
legal challenges and a lot of negative commentary around the web which could
easily be indexed and stop people from signing up with them.

It's all explainable stuff, nothing untoward.

@Richelo: Ah, interesting... you got the unsubscribe link right at the top of your HTML newsletter. Very different indeed.

@Roger: I am either blind (probably) or your "hint" links did really help me find what you referred to. Can you hint more directly please?

@Roger: Ah, thanks... I see now what you are referring to. But with a double opt-in list you are immune to people trying to hurt you by adding spam-trap email addresses to your list. The confirmation email will go there, but nobody will click to confirm an the spam-trap email address will not be added to your double opt-in list.

"batching subscribers"

Is that due to one of those refer a friend scripts? I know Aweber don't allow this

@troy23: No, it's not a refer-a-friend script. What they refer to as "batching subscribers"...it's an actual Aweber subscribe form in an iFrame on the web page that gets submitted when the members subscribes to the membership site. It's technically the same as if the subscriber fills out the form and clicks on subscribe... just that the membership site enters the name & email and clicks on submit for the subscriber via JavaScript. That way the subscriber can become a member of the membership site and subscribe to an Aweber list with the same form and with just one click. It's something build into the Butterfly Marketing script from Mike Filsaime.

As per AWeber's privacy policies and terms of service, we can't talk about specific
account details in a public forum. I can offer a couple of thoughts on this thread
though regarding general practices.

Why would AWeber terminate an account unless we were absolutely positively sure
that our terms of service were being broken? What incentive does AWeber have
for doing that?

Terminated accounts mess up our ESP reputation with ISPs before they are
terminated by doing bad things. Then once they are terminated they bad
mouth us in public for enforcing our terms of service. Why would I want to
terminate an account that wasn't violating our terms of service if that's how it
was going to turn out? Somehow it's always our fault for actually enforcing a
quality standard on our network.

There's a reason over 81,000 small businesses use AWeber and a big part of
it is the fact that we do have high quality standards and enforce them evenly.
If we willy nilly terminated accounts accounts all the time you'd certainly
hear about it an awful lot more than you do.

Enforcing quality standards and getting personal emails from the CEO doesn't
make AWeber to big to care. If it does, let me know because I'm going to get
out of the business. If anything, it means we care more because we opt for a
particular quality standard over profits at all costs. Many companies are the
complete opposite, unfortunately.

@Tom Kulzer: I am glad to see you here. Still looking forward to your reply on my last email. Just want to make sure I 100% understand what exactly you believe I have done wrong that justified closing two annual pre-paid accounts without even a messaging telling me your company did or a chance to fix matters and get unsuspended.

@Chris: I definitely agree to "Sh*t happens".

I was once a happy Aweber users. But they are now too big and two years ago I had to switch services. Companies like that just start to treat their members poorly. They have no problem ripping the rug out from under you and tell you to beat it and in the process don’t bat an eyelash.

The fact is Aweber does not really care about your or your success. If you dealt with a smaller company they would have a personal touch. They would first contact you and inform you of the problem and see if it can be fixed at your end.

Aweber thinks why bother with the extra work, they have so many customers now any of them are expendable.