Did you get banned from Aweber?

I'm only guessing but perhaps they don't relate the number of complaints received to the number of leads in your account. In other words, they are not working on a percentage.

If that's the case, with 500,000 leads, no matter what sort of email you send them, you are bound to generate some complaints.

By targeting those who generate the most complaints, Aweber will then distance itself from the cause and stay on good terms with the networks. This being the case, they would, perhaps, prefer to have many smaller accounts than a few large ones which are easily identified by the networks as 'troublemakers'.

I'm only speculating - raising these thoughts for consideration.

As an afterthought: Are you able to retrieve your list from them? Do you have a copy of your list(s) of subscribers?

Ivan

That sound scary to be honest. I own aweber account since 2004 and never receive any warning so far.

It must be something you did which caused your account closed. Otherwise they have no reason of doing so.

You are doing right by contacting them, I looking forward to know the answer as well so that we can learn something to avoind getting similar situation.

Out of curiosity, did you backup your list?

When you get a list that big you need to take it in house. NEVER rely on a third party to handle and CONTROL your income. You will always lose.

It's not really that hard to whitelist your email server, even though services like aweber want you to think it is.

Re's
Rob Whisonant

Yep, I too, to got my account terminated, roughly 12 hours ago.

The exact same mail.

To be honest, I'm very disappointed with Aweber. I've been using their service for... over 3 years now, and without a single word of notice, I (try to) log in one morning, barely a couple of hours after my login, to find my account TERMINATED (?!?)

No warning, no suspension, nothing. Why not work with the paying customer?

There was more disappointment to follow. I immediately launched a Live Chat with one Kristie, but her responses were slow, and obviously scripted. I called their customer hotline, and spoke with one Mark, and his responses were word for word whatever Kristie was copy/pasting me.

I argued that with the size of my list (around 2000), and my open rate averaging 200+, my spam complain rate was low - hovering between 0.1 - 0.2. thats 2 complaints every time i broadcast a mail to 2000 leads.

They kept repeating that it wasn't just that, it could be:

a. complaints regarding my follow up emails (my response: i don't use follow up emails)

b. direct complaints via emails to aweber (my response: how could aweber terminate my account based on phantom charges, and not show any proof of this so-called emails? furthermore, couldn't my competitors simply be sabotaging my list by opting in with multiple emails and complaining?)

c. it could be even ISPs complaining, and so on and so forth, affecting their delivery service and even resulting in a shutdown of aweber servers, and other doomsday scenarios (right, which my 2 mails a week to only 2000 leads could case)

In the end, I gave up and said I wanted to talk to their Best Practices Manager, who wasn't available but "promised" to give me a call back - I'm still waiting for that call.

Also, the guy on the phone told me they WOULD NOT send me a backup of my leads, which i find totally unacceptable. I don't have anything resembling a recent backup, as I never thought it to be necessary - I play by all the rules, spam count is always below 2.0, double opt in from day 1, and I send my subscribers relevant content (also gaming niche).

----

according to Aweber's Anti Spam Policy

"Note: we don't presume guilt. We investigate all potential spam incidents thoroughly before making a decision. But once we've made a decision, we act fast."

Right. My friend received the exact same email 1 minute before I received mine, so obviously this is a mass action on behalf of Aweber's part.

Other links: (had to break them up as I'm not allowed to post links yet)

google:

1. craigcaron aweber suspending accounts are you next

2. frankbauer avoid aweber mistakes

3. warriorforum aweber shutting down im accounts


In the above cases, all 3 eventually got backups of their account, so i'm hoping worse case scenario, I manage to get a backup to mine as well.

But still, extremely disappointed

The same happened to me...

Had to start over again with Getresponse ^^

i lost my accounts last September with them after i asked them to switch off some anlytics thing i was paying for....

Just like any big Net biz these days they seem to ban first ask later (or not at all) Everyone gets swatted with the same TOS crap with no (very little) human common sense.

That's disgusting they can do that.

You build a business with them thinking it's safe and with a click of finger... They're taken your business away.

James

Sounds like the power dogs of the internet are just following suit to what all the big companies do. One mistake and your out.

Sending emails asking why wont get you anywhere unfortunately.

I can't comment about specific accounts publicly for obvious privacy reasons.

However, we don't arbitrarily close customer accounts. That just
wouldn't make any sense. The email that Peng Joon received says exactly
why the account was closed: "generating an unacceptable number of
complaints."

That data is available in every account every time you login and is absolutely
not hidden from anyone.

* What Is An Acceptable Complaint Rate? :: AWeber Knowledge Base

* How Do I Lower My Complaint Rate? :: AWeber Knowledge Base

* Where Do I Find Out How Many Complaints I've Received? :: AWeber Knowledge Base

It's extremely rare that an account is closed with no notice. If it is closed
without notice that account is usually doing one or more things so egregiously
bad that there's no way we can let it continue.

Follow email marketing best practices and engage properly with subscribers
that have explicitly requested information from you and you'll never have
a problem. Over 104,000 other current clients enjoy excellent email
deliverability because we hold all clients to the same quality standards.

Sorry, but 5 or 6 of over 104,000 accounts does not make for a mass banning.

Simply says that a bunch of your buddies were doing stuff they likely knew they
shouldn't have been doing and got caught at the same time.

That's unfortunate. I never knew people got banned from AWeber. I use it, but so far only have a small list. I don't get it -doesn't using their system mean that everyone who gets your mail has opted in? So what are they complaining about?

Gabriel,

I know exactly how many accounts we close for violating our terms of
service and having bad email marketing practices. I'm intimately involved
in those policy decisions and watch those metrics closely for obvious
reasons. A forum thread isn't needed to tell me that we close accounts.
Yes, it happens. Is it widespread? No it's not, since the vast majority
of small business owners do email marketing the correct way.

Unfortunately those that post in these threads rarely give all the details
of what they were doing that resulted in them getting terminated. While
those folks didn't follow our terms of service, I'm compelled to and can't
bring to light the information they are clearly leaving out for privacy
reasons.

Richard,

Account backups are available for all clients at any time with a few simple mouse clicks:

* How Do I Backup My Messages and Subscribers? :: AWeber Knowledge Base

Thought I would give an update as to what's happening. I just got off the phone with customer support. They were efficient and I was hardly kept on hold.

I was told of the exact reason my account was banned. It was because I sent an email to a Farmville list about the launch of a Dating product. At first glance, it definitely will look like spam, but it's actually related because it's by the same author. (Tony Sanders)

While it is a grey area on whether the email is targeted, I felt it was a very harsh decision for an honest mistake. There was no warning whatsoever, one strike and that was it.

In addition, they said I will not be able to get a backup copy of my leads as my account has been deleted.

Tom, I've sent you an email. Maybe you can look at it when you have the time?

Dexx,

Those are guidelines, which are applied with common sense and human review.
We're not just going to randomly cancel client accounts without a very good
reason.

Remember, what you're seeing here from people who have had an account cancelled
is only a small part of the bigger story. Complaints are rarely the only factor that
goes into it, but it is certainly an important factor.

Have you ever try to just contact them to at least export your lists? 500k double optin worth a lot of money. Try your best to recover them.

Tom, thanks for joining the discussion. Appreciated.

Personally I think a customer should be able to receive a full backup, even after Aweber's decision to terminate his account.

Otherwise, your company is acting like a 85 year old running a Gym: if a guy is caught peeing in the pool, he's banned without warning and can't go inside the gym - ever.

Problem is, now he can't go inside the gym to grab his stuff, including his wallet he forgot last time he went to gym...

Your comment?

The problem with these kinds of threads is that nobody, except maybe Tom, knows the full story. And releasing those details would be highly inappropriate in a public forum. Utlimately the onus is on the enduser who agreed to the terms of service and use when signing up with Aweber, including backing up their own list. Anytime you use some one else's platform you have to play by their rules. In Aweber's case, they have to protect the integrity of their entire system.

Though I'm inclined to agree with Fernando that not allowing someone to retrieve their list is pretty harsh. I don't see why the account can't be placed on hold and then the customer is contacted with a deadline before the account is actually deleted. That would seem a much better business practice to me.

RoD

I would also like to know if these guys are going to be able to export their lists now that their accounts are banned. It would be a shame to lose an entire list just because a few people complained.

I was going to use aweber in the future but after reading this thread I have second thoughts.. anybody know any autoresponders with a one time payment? I know autosenders is one and I think auto response plus is another does anyone know of any others? I know aweber IS the autoresponder to use but after readind this thread....having second thoughts..

Been reading through the post its very strange times we all facing,Thank the heaven's i have closed my Aweber Account because now we have 3 servers set up to do the work(In house mail server ect) we back up our lists and its been a better turn out since leaving aweber behind. and alot cheaper also,

reminds me of paypal :p

Tangential to the OP's point, but if I had anywhere near half a million double opt-in subscribers, I'd be cooling my heels on a beach on my private island in the Caribbean. I would have a dedicated team to handle my email delivery and related issues. The last thing I'd do is use a third party. Jesus, even half-ass monetization of a true double opt-in list of that size should result in many tens of thousands of dollars every month. Maybe even six figures every month.

I digress, I know, but what the hell man? LOL Long before you got to 500K you should have set up your own robust delivery and management system.