Tuesday, March 9, 2010

The Hows, Whats & Whys of a Deleted EC Account

OK, I'm at the cross-roads again with Entrecard. After Monday's fiasco with having my entire Entrecard account deleted, I did hear from them. Here is their later email to me:

-----Original Message-----
From: Entrecard Support
To: willoaksstudio@aol.com
Sent: Mon, Mar 8, 2010 6:09 pm
Subject: Re: Your Entrecard account has been deleted

hello,

your account is active. It was reported that there was not widget on your blog and we seem to missed it also. we apologize for the inconvenience.



And, I did follow up with this rather exasperated reply:


To E.C.

So this means all the ads bought from me and all the ads I had queued up for my blog are just..poof, gone?

And I'm curious, you have my email address in order to report to me that you have deleted my account....but you cannot use it to confirm the anonymous "report" of no widget on my blog? which I also think you could have figured out by all the drops I both made and received earlier today as recorded on my dashboard?

I really don't understand this operation but I do know that an awful lot of great blogs have dropped out of EC...it's all really just sad. I used to think this was a pretty cool program and have even spent a bit of real money to put my blog on other widgets.

You're darn right I'm inconvenienced.

Karen
WillOaks Studio


The "Net Effect" of Being Cancelled

So, fellow ECers and blog readers....this is what my full, active dashboard looked like just yesterday morning! A nice long queue of blogs who had "purchased" ads lined up to show on my site. A pretty nice price for my ads (because I refuse to be a compulsive dropper here anymore, it's not terribly expensive.) Worst of all, what doesn't show up here, was the list of ads I had purchased ahead of time and was so excited to finally be showing up on (it included Admaster.)


OK, so below what a reinstated, but wiped out dashboard looks like after they have "deleted" and then "reinstated" your account.

I'm truly at the cross roads now about Entrecard. I've seen so many great blogs drop out. I've joined CMF and Adgitize since the last serious crossroads with EC....guess I'll just sleep on it a few days and decide what to do next....sigh. This really, truly bummed me out because I thought I had this program on a nice, sweet nearly auto-pilot and was happy with how it was going. And now? It all seems kind of stupid in light of recent developments....

Yep, my slate has been wiped clean, space on my blog sells for 2 ec (and I've been turning down ads for now), I've lost all the value I expected to earn from the reservations lined up at an average of 256 and 384 credits per day, and I have nothing scheduled now for showing my own blog ad. Obviously, I'm still pretty frustrated...I've dropped a note to EC to point out that while "sorry" is fine, there was a lot of value lost by me due to their mistake and asking them if they intended to make it "right" with me for all the credits I've lost due to being capriciously deleted....we'll see....

And still later, yes, they have sent 3000 credits to my account accompanied by this note:
You have been sent 3000 Entrecard credits!

These credits were sent from Entrecard direct to your Entrecard account and have
been applied to your balance. The transaction included the following note from
the sender:

error on ec

I also received a personal note from Larry, and I wrote back with a thank you and with the suggestion that a blogger be contacted before an account is just deleted--here's what he wrote:

Hello Karen,

Your credits were never lost. It has been refunded to your account. please visit http://entrecard.com/user/47608/transactions. In all fairness, I'vecredited your account another 3000 credits. I hope that helps.

Larry

And my response:
Thank you very much, Larry. It does make me feel better and I will append this to my blog post.

You're correct, I didn't loose any past credits. I lost the value of my blog for ad placement going forward, though, and credits for the ads that were queued up for showing on my blog for the next 8 days, purchased at between 256 and 384...and I am now valued at like 8 ec instead of 384...that's sort of like starting over again. Plus I need to contact all the bloggers that were scheduled to show on my EC widget and were canceled without notice. So it is actually a pretty big deal if one is using EC seriously.

I wonder, might you consider contacting a blogger about the widget lack or widget placement before just deleting an account going forward? Maybe you could have a posted policy that you'll contact them once, if there are any anomalies, and if there's no response in a given time, then you reserve the right to delete the account? Just a thought. It happened so quickly to me and I never saw it coming. I was dropping this morning, and came back to a deleted account in the afternoon (besides the fact that an anonymous blogger has that kind of power over another blog!)

It's just a thought,
Karen
WillOaks Studio

And a final P.S? In the middle of all this, the blower motor on my furnace burned out. It filled the house with that stink of burning motors or electronics or plastic or whatever reeks when it melts. It was scary and took awhile to figure out what was burning, and then I got very lucky. I plucked a repair company out of the phone book based on my furnace model...and they got here within half an hour (for a price, of course!) and it was fixed really quickly. Very lucky as it was 4 p.m. when I started calling! And very lucky as it's below freezing here again last night...
Whew, what a DAY!

20 comments:

VanillaSeven said...

So sorry to hear that Karen :(
I've been trying to withdraw from EC too. but it seems they contribute a lot for my alexa ranking. Mine was 40k+ and now almost dropping to 50K, not a good sign indeed.
I will support your EC till you get back on your feet again.

http://vanillaseven.com/2010/03/09/a-night-at-melaka-part-1/

Mandy said...

Hiya! It must all be pretty frustrating for you! I thought of leaving last week (but that was more about leaving all of these advertising places). I realised I was able to do without others but not without EC so I went back. Alas, by then I had also lost all of my adverts and ad prices. Still, I find EC helps my browsing as well as brings me visitors so I am here to stay (for now).

Anonymous said...

Oh my dear, what a day! But in the grand scheme of things the EC contretemps was a mere blip, or less. The furnace on the other hand not so much. Glad that got resolved quickly.

Unknown said...

Dear Karen,
I'm so sorry that you have been having so much trouble with the Entrecard folks.
I can understand your frustration when treated that way, but I hope you decide to stay. EC is not perfect, but it is a way of being seen. I have "met" lots of different kinds of people and learned from them thanks to this structure. I'll miss you if you leave. But only you know what is best for you.
Hope you are able to stay a little longer.

Best wishes,
Anna

BeadedTail said...

What a time you've been having! I hope EC does something to prevent deleting accounts so quick. Such a mess! It's good that Larry contacted you and tried to make amends. At least someone is trying to help. Hope the rest of your day goes better!

Clara said...

Wow. What a day. I do hope you stay with EC. Altho, I would still come by if you didn't. I just love your blog. The jewelry and nature pictures are amazing. Glad you were able to get the furnace fixed quickly. Hope you got the smell out quickly, too.

Joanne Olivieri said...

Karen, It's terrible that you had to go through all of that and spend time on it while you could have been doing much more important tasks like creating. I think EC is a good tool for being seen, especially when someone is new to blogging. However, it is different for everyone and I support whatever you decide to do.

Lynne said...

I so hate that this happened to you. I know I have visited blogs where there should be a EC widget but there isn't one. I hit refresh and then it appears. Not sure why that happens, but wonder if that's what happened here or if EC truly came to look before they deleted your account. Either way, I agree, it was their error and they should be more cautious before deleting any blog account.
I for one opted to not take advantage of the fact that that I could've advertised so cheaply on your site. I though EC would've reset your account. I'm sure anyone who was previously scheduled to advertise on your widget would certainly understand that it was out of your control.
sewingmom.com

Ann said...

aw so sorry that you had such a rough day, first with the EC mess and then with the furnace. I hope you'll let us know when you are ready to accept ads again because i will definitely buy an ad from you.

Hot Rocks said...

Oh dear...what a big mess! Sorry to hear about your EC fiasco. I know a lot of people are DROPPING out of EC (pun..LOL)! I hope everything gets sorted out and that your furnace gets fixed too!

yljien said...

Hi Karen,

this is sad...and annoying. you are right...they must inform you first or at least ask first if the report is true or not and investigated it further before they deleted your account...and for whoever reported that you do not have widget displayed, i hope he/she refresh your page when he/she noticed that your widget did not appear in his/her browser...sometimes it happens on the first launch of the site some EC widgets do not appear but when page is refreshed the widget appears...sometimes there are downtime of browsers and do not function at its best...hope things will be ok.

Split Rock Ranch said...

What a fiasco. I just checked to see how much ads were for your blog and they are now at 1024 credits so apparently you had a lot of people scrambling to advertise on your blog! Hopefully that makes up for all the trouble. I've been lax about blogging, dropping, etc. lately. The foster kittens and fibers are keeping me busy. But I always enjoy dropping in on your blog because it is always such a treat. Glad you got your furnace repaired and I hope that the rest of the week goes much better than today did!

Lin said...

Apparently you made an impact--I got a notice on my acct today informing me that I had no widget and that they would delete my account if they didn't hear from me.

Glad it worked out for you. Sorry about the furnace!! Yikes.

Rick (Ratty) said...

Yours is one of the first that I really sympathize with. You have every right to be upset with Entrecard. You are completely right, they should have notified you before taking action. I really hope things work out well with whatever decisions you make. I hope Entrecard takes your advice. You have my full support on this one.

Lin said...

I gave you the very last of my credits. :) They aren't much, but I didn't want to waste them now that I'm officially shut-down!! LOL! Spend them wisely, Karen. ;)

Janiss said...

This all really bummed me out because I was looking forward to advertising Sparkle's blog on yours! In fact, I hope this wasn't MY fault - lately it seems like every time I buy an ad I'm really excited about, something happens - the blog goes on hiatus, leaves EC or something. Maybe I just have Bad Ad Karma.

I don't blame you for being unhappy with EC. Like VanillaSeven, I want to hang onto the great Alexa rating I've got right now (Sparkle has a book coming out in August and this looks good to the booksellers). So I WILL be advertising again (hopefully you will stick around long enough for that to happen!).

BTW, the furnace thing - I joined Angieslist.com last year (the member website that has user reviews of contractors), and it has been invaluable! I've found loads of great people for furnace stuff, cleaning rain gutters, etc., and membership is dirt cheap. You totally lucked out picking out a good furnace person in the phone book!

Duni said...

As I'm reading along here I'm getting more and more worried, because it can obviously happen to anyone for no reason at all. I hate the fact that they didn't inform you via email beforehand. In fact, Entrecard did just that with my other (old) blog. One day it was just gone. Poof. Luckily I hadn't been active on that blog, but I had planned on transferring the 2000 EC to my new blog. Naturally they were deleted.
I wish there was a more transparent and open communication between bloggers and Entrecard.

Sheila said...

That really sucks - I can't believe you weren't contacted before they deleted your blog - that makes no sense at all. I've added your widget on my blog.

http://theadmaster.net

Doctor Faustroll said...

EC routinely screwed with my account back when there was still a ticket system, forums, and a way to comment on all the blog posts.

I pointed out that if you allowed an ad to sit in your pending view for 10 days, it disappeared without ever running and no refund of lost credits, and EC denied the problem existed.

Their lack of response at the time (besides closing the ticket system and the forums) led me to stop accepting ads and letting all the queued ads run through before removing the widget for a couple of months. I continued to get between 15-40 drops a day with no widget on the site.

This was about a year before Corny did his two-day experiment that stirred up the recent fecal storm.

The widget has not been on either my sites for a few weeks at least and I'm still getting drops. I stopped accepting ads again and removed the widgets after the last of my advertisers had gone through.

I see an occasional no widget warning on my dashboard, but I've still an active member waiting for the welcome ax to fall.

I'm not sure what kind of scam Cindy and EC are running, but it must be profitable to them to continue doing such a piss poor job at it.

Anonymous said...

Geez...what an ordeal. At least they had the decency to attempt some sort of retribution, even though it didn't really do you much good. I think at that point, even though it's ultimately up to you and what you're willing to do, I would just call it quits. E.C. was great. But now it's not. I'm sort of just sitting in limbo with it right now too. But then again, I'm also doing that with a lot of other online things right now just due to other obligations. Anyway, I think it's sad what E.C. has made itself into. Most of us lingerers are just hoping something drastic will happen and restore it's former glory. But I seriously doubt it.

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