You have to understand that when I say it’s over, it’s over. No, we can’t talk about this. No, I don’t want counseling. I want you to leave my life. Now. Not when you get around to it. It was what it was and now it’s gone. Let go.
(Yes, LinkedIn, I’m talking to you. The fact that you require me to contact support to close my profile is a disgrace. Why on earth would you want to invite more costly support requests? And why does this have to feel like a big drama break up?)
Mark Webster
on 23 Oct 06LinkedIn is pretty bad with not letting you walk away. Makes me wonder what value their ‘network’ really has, since there are so many dead profiles that people didn’t bother to close…
Clingy is never sexy…
DHH
on 23 Oct 06Speaking of things they’re terrible: How do you courteously turn down a request? There seems to be no easy way of “letting it ring on silent”, like you’d do with a phone call you’d rather not take at the moment, but don’t exactly want to send that signal to the caller.
And it’s probably not just LinkedIn. Social networks seem to be inherently disrespectful of common social conventions.
Stanley
on 23 Oct 06That’s what you get for “linking in” with that dorky service and the never-were’s who use it for “networking.”
Ben
on 23 Oct 06Just curious – other than your dramatic break up, what drove you away from LinkedIn?
Social networking for grown ups just didn’t cut it?
DHH
on 23 Oct 06In all the years I’ve been a member of LinkedIn, I’ve never, ever derived any value from it. But I continue to have to deal with the socially awkward invitations to become part of someone’s network. So all pain, no pleasure = Break up.
Trumpi
on 23 Oct 06...or you could change your email address to one of those ShortMail addresses. Oh – and make sure that you change your profile to contains other bogus information.
Olav
on 23 Oct 06That’s horrible, talk about making your users hate you.
Reminds me of two other cases. The first is the AOL controversy, where it took one customer 45 minutes on the phone before the support guy would close his account. Why would they want to keep unsatisfied customers anyway?
The other one is an online rss feed reader (can’t remember which one), that, when you want to cancel your account, asks if you want to export your feeds into an open format before leaving. Made me stay. :)
Brad
on 23 Oct 06I actually have gotten some value out of it, and certainly like the underlying idea of it. What good alternatives are out there that some of you are using, if any?
Mark Webster
on 23 Oct 06I second DHH’s comment. It’s bad enough turning down a social network invite in general, but with LinkedIn, often times the invite is coming from a professional contact, making it even more awkward to turn down.
I’m on LinkedIn because an old boss of mine invited me during his first week on our team. How can you politely say no…
(and you’re right, I’ve never once gotten any value from it.)
Patrick Elder
on 23 Oct 06I completely agree with David. I have been ‘using’ linkedin for about 6 months now and have no purpose to stay. The fact that it is so hard to close an account is unbelievable. Want to offer a survey while closing? That’s fine, but don’t require me to waste my valuable time closing something I obviously have no need for.
Besides the face it has no purpose for me I found it more than difficult adding friend into my network and there’s way too much going on on the screen.
Alfred Toh
on 23 Oct 06I’m just curious, since quite a few people have expressed that they generally got nothing out of social networking sites like LinkedIn, but just useless requests for linking. So what sort of expectations/benefits were you actually hoping to get?
sw0rdfish
on 23 Oct 06They obviously subscribe to the AOL school of “how to cancel an account”, or better yet “how to keep a customer who doesn’t want to be here, and make no money off him, but we can still count him as a customer so it’s ok”.
Dr Nic
on 23 Oct 06Hmm. I don’t remember reading “I’m a clingy girlfriend who’ll never leave you alone” when I signed up with LinkedIn. Doh!
DHH
on 23 Oct 06Alfred, I got suckered in through an invite like Mark originally.
Joe Miller
on 23 Oct 06DHH – understood and agreed!
You can accept the invitation and drop it silently afterwards. So in a way, it does model the “Oh yeah! I’d love to grab a coffee some time! We totally should do that!” behavior I’m sure we’re all guilty of.
Mark Gukov
on 23 Oct 06I totally agree with you. Very few sites allow members to delete their own accounts (Google is one of them).
I guess the whole mentality started with forums: what happens to a conversation if a participant decided to delete their account.
Tom
on 23 Oct 06Because they are going to give you the hard sell when you try and cancel. Maybe they should call themselves LinkedInAOL :D
Rod Begbie
on 23 Oct 06Joe Miller—
Actually, they don’t let you drop someone easily after accepting an invite. You have to, oh yes, contact support to remove someone from your network.
Mike
on 23 Oct 06LinkedIn actually added the ability to remove connections by yourself recently.
Right hand column, click on ‘Remove Connections’ http://www.linkedin.com/connections?trk=tab_ab
Andrew Kasper
on 23 Oct 06This isn’t the only place where LinkedIn falls a little short. Earlier today, a friend and I were discussing how utterly lame it is that non-paying users are given a limited number of “introductions.”
I realize that increasing the number of introductions might make them vulnerable to the “shotgun” approach to making new contacts, but the fact is that most people are only connected to people they trust. If a connection is asking you to introduce them to your other connections and it isn’t appropriate, you can let them know. The problem of “too many introductions” is one that naturally sorts itself out—if a connection is being inappropriate, that connection won’t remain your connection for very long.
LinkedIn
on 23 Oct 06David, I’m pregnant.
MikeInAZ
on 23 Oct 06That’s because I have a patent on the One-Click-Quit process.
Andy Atkinson
on 23 Oct 06I tend to review tech things and tinker with new stuff, so I generally create accounts at various services for testing whether I intend to use them or not. This is bad news that I can’t automatically delete my LinkedIn account. I currently cannot delete a mySpace account since the original email address I put in is invalid (Gmail ”+” character) (due to MySpace html textbox escaping… Facebook let me close my account easily and gave me a “we’re sorry to see you go” message. Too bad there was no message “we also deleted all your crap off our server and have dispatched the intern who will throw the backup tapes in the fire.”
Ann F.
on 23 Oct 06You could still be friends…
Franky
on 23 Oct 06They are bad, but at least they don’t sound as awful as AOL. At least they haven’t lied to you yet! Or maybe they have, but nothing is worse than dealing with an AOL customer service agent over the phone who will do anything he or she can (including deception and lies) to keep you from cancelling your account. And yes, I hate AOL so much that I take any opportunity I can to bad mouth them.
Kris Tuttle
on 23 Oct 06Certainly part of the “how to create a non-customer for life” program.
This type of thing leaves a deep scar.
ns
on 23 Oct 06Facebook actually takes a rather fake approach to canceling your account… if you decide to come back after canceling, simply login with your old username and password… all of your data is still there…
Elviejo
on 23 Oct 06Other company that does the same is GoToMyPC… and yes, never for any circunstance will buy anything from them…
pwb
on 23 Oct 06LinkedIn is fine, people. If you don’t derive value from it, OK. But it’s a bit unseemly to complain about non-existing problems. Closing an account is easy: http://www.linkedin.com/feedback?displayContactCustomerServiceFeedback
Don’t want to accept an invitation? Just “Decide Later”. Pretty simple.
I think LinkedIn has managed to tip-toe pretty well through the delicate balance of enabling communication without pissing off the scrooges too much. It’s a very difficult tight rope to walk.
Drew Pickard
on 23 Oct 06I could never figure out how to accept anyone’s invitation when I was invited to link up with them . . .
Then I realized that the action buttons for a link up invitation DONT SHOW UP AT ALL in Safari.
Good one, guys.
The first few times I used it, I ended up spending at least a minute or longer just finding the simplest things . . .
When, oh when, will social networking become attractive and usable??
Des Traynor
on 23 Oct 06Jeff found the exact same problem over at CodingHorror
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000703.html
Alexa Smith
on 23 Oct 06I agree – I haven’t gotten much out of LinkedIn and I’ve been there since near the beginning. It’s one of the few though that I think has potential. The problem of opting out is also true for blogs. The Arianna Huffington blog won’t let you delete your account yourself and no one will ever respond so there’s at least one person in their total member count who doesn’t want to be! I’ve closed my accounts on 2-3 other social sites as the time required doesn’t equal enough benefit to keep going…
Mark Larson
on 23 Oct 06Hate to be cynical, but it probably helps the marketing numbers game. “There are 7.5 million professionals already on LinkedIn” (scrambles to create an account)
Jonas Feiring
on 23 Oct 06I’ve always gotten the creeps whenever a LinkedIn mail has dropped into my inbox. This company just does not feel right…
Gordon Strause
on 23 Oct 06I’ve seen a few threads like this on the web. I’ll start by saying that I have found Linkedin useful. It’s reconnected me with some former co-workers; I’ve used it to hire contractors and employees; I’ve even researched some competitive start-ups with it. I’m curious—is there anyone here claiming that Linkedin isn’t valuable, did they try to do anything? Did you try to find someone you’d lost touch with? Did you try to find someone that might be helpful to you (contractor or employee or expert)? Or, is it, I signed up and I’ve been waiting for my cookie? Waiting around for more invitations is clearly not that useful, unless someone finds you interesting.
It is irksome that resiging an account seems like work… did anyone do it, and was harrassed by customer service? If they are doing the AOL-nonsense, then they should stop. On the other hand, if it’s an eMail (say one sentence “please resign my account”)... well how hard is that? I read this whole thread really carefully and I’m not sure that I understand the complaints.
strimble
on 24 Oct 06I bet you wish you would have paid more attention to the line below in LinkeIn’s User Agreement, found here… http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=user_agreement&trk=ftr_useragre
Found under the Termination section… Furthermore, you agree that all terminations shall be made in LinkedIn’s sole discretion and that LinkedIn shall not be liable to you nor any third-party for any termination of your account or access to the LinkedIn Service.
It might be best to know what you’re getting into before you sign up. Don’t blame LinkedIn for something they’ve obviously covered in the User Agreement. If you don’t like what the User Agreement has to say, don’t sign up. By signing up, you agreed that ‘all terminations shall be made in LinkedIn’s sole discretion’.
Peggy Champlin
on 24 Oct 06Similar to Andy, I played around with accounts at FeedBlitz and FeedBurner on behalf of a client. When we decided to go ahead with these accounts, I couldn’t modify them to be in her name or delete the accounts to start over. In both cases I had to contact customer support.
FeedBurner responded promptly to my email request. Feedblitz required an additional email from my client’s email address to make the change and then still didn’t do it, so I finally called their phone support and got it done quickly that way.
To one of the points raised earlier, I’d much rather have been able to click some link on the site and confirm the deletion with a dialog box than to have to email, sometimes repeatedly, and keep track of whether they’d actually done it or not.
Adrian
on 24 Oct 06I had a similar experience with Odeo – I signed up for it, realised later it was nothing I actually wanted to use and then tried to find a way to delete the account. I sent an email to support saying I wanted to delete the account and they replied “why would you want to do that?” and didn’t respond to any other message. Incredible…
Jeff L
on 24 Oct 06My current job found me through LinkedIn, but lately all the headhunters that have been calling have been finding me there, instead of Monster. Somewhat annoying, but I’d have trouble leaving after actually having a real employer find me there.
Konstantin Guericke
on 24 Oct 06No worries—nobody is going to talk anyone out of closing their account. Think about it from our perspective: it’s much better for the network when people close their account than leave it up and not respond to introductions, etc.
It currently takes two clicks from (http://www.linkedin.com/feedback?displayContactCustomerServiceFeedback= to remove your account. It definitely would be nice to move that to one click.
However, based on the feedback we get, members are much more interested in improvements, so that they can do more with their network of relationships on LinkedIn. So, we’ve been working hard on that in the past 12 months.
Of course, we can’t deliver value to our members just on our own. You have to actually try to search for someone to get value. And when people use LinkedIn with a clear business purpose, we almost always hear it works great.
We have been profitable for the past seven months and user growth in October so far has been stronger than in any month of our history, so I think we are creating value for some people since they are paying us and/or inviting others to join.
Ted Shelton
on 24 Oct 06I have been using Linked In for a long time and feel that I have gotten a lot of value from it. I also feel that, as with any tool, it is the amount of time and effort that I invest in the tool that has determined the value that I have derived.
I don’t believe there is any magic bullet to having and making use of a social network – no software tool is going to replace the need to meet people, provide value to those people, develop relationships with those people etc. A tool can make it easier though to keep track (or rediscover) those people and can make it easier to handle routine communications requests.
Here are my rules for using Linked In—
(1) I never invite anyone to join my network that I don’t have a good real world relationship with.
(2) I never agree to join a network of someone else that I don’t have a good real world relationship.
(3) I never ask anyone for assistance through Linked In if it isn’t the kind of request that I would respond positively to.
As a result, I have hired employees referred through Linked In, I have been reconnected to colleagues from the past, I have done reference checks on people through the people we know in common, and I have been able to refer jobs to people in my extended network, helping my friend who are in my immediate network.
I agree that it should be easy to quit and that your complaint is reasonable - but at the same time, don’t tar Linked In as being useless - it is as useful or useless as you choose to make it. Just like any tool.
pwb
on 24 Oct 06Hate to say it, but this is one case where the nay-sayers, DSS included, are a bit lame. It’s fairly easy for a reasonable person to see value in the service and it’s really not a tremendous burden to get an occasional email from the service or go through the two-click process to opt-out.
I think you’ve picked the wrong service to bag on.
pwb
on 24 Oct 06I mean “DHH”.
Matthew Stibbe
on 24 Oct 06I had a very similar, excruciating experience with LinkedIn. I blogged it at some length.. In the end I got a comment from Konstantin Guericke, the company’s Co-Founder who sorted it out. Although I appreciate the fact that they listen and that they did sort it out. You shouldn’t need to be a blogger and you shouldn’t need to bitch to the founder to get a simple customer service problem sorted out. Still, if you want, his details are on his profile at: www.linkedin.com/in/konstantin
Service Untitled - Douglas
on 24 Oct 06I’ve cancelled a LinkedIn account before. Just send them an email with the following text “Please cancel my account. Thank you.” and they’ll reply within 24 hours and cancel it. Not that big of a deal.
Chris
on 24 Oct 06Gah…couldn’t find anything else to blog about?
Michiel Ebberink
on 24 Oct 06I the netherlands there is the social networking site hyves. It has been very populair, but i tink its getting annoying and boring. They don’t allow users to delete accounts either. If you search the site for an answer on how to delete an account you will find he answer: why would you want to leave hyves? I deleted all my messages, inbox and profile information en friends/connections. I only have to change the emailadress and i’m done.
LinkedIn has one advantage you aren’t on the web with your personal life. and thre aren’t much ways for your connections to write certain things about you that aren’t nice to find out.
Sean Scott
on 24 Oct 06I’ve seen a couple of blog post in the blogosphere trashing LinkedIn much to my amusement.
Of all the services i have signed up for its actually the one I have used the most,, and seems the least intrusive. I get an email every once in a while with account updates, and whenever someone invites me to their network.
As for uses, it’s only as usefull as you make it. I use it as a virtual resume, haven’t gotten my last job by simply sending the potential employer to my linkedin page. And since i am always interested in getting great talent, I find the refer someone to me feature to be great.
Obviously everyone is entitled to their opinion but i hate to see a great example of why the web can be usefull being kicked in the head. If you want to blog about something blog about trying to cancel an AOL account. Oh that’s been done before.
DHH
on 24 Oct 06For the record, I didn’t get any value from LinkedIn because I ultimately wasn’t interested in an online social networking application. For the people who are interested, I’m certainly not denying that LinkedIn can be useful.
The point of this post is that putting road blocks in front of people who wish to cancel their service is lame. Having to ask permission from customer service to be deleted is lame. It serves as much as a call to new services as it does to LinkedIn: Please don’t do that.
Konstantin Guericke
on 24 Oct 06DHH, Please let me know if you find a single person who closed their account and had to ask for permission. I am not aware of a single one in four years.
It’s just two clicks—since the founding of the company, we had the policy of closing accounts without asking any questions. We do ask for the reason after we close the account, so we get an idea why people close it and see if it gives us some clues on what to improve.
I agree that we should get to one click, but I think other usability issues of our site affect more users in a more important way and should get those addressed first. Nobody is perfect—especially not in social software applications where the user experience is shaped as much or more by other members than by the functionality and UI you provide.
DHH
on 24 Oct 06It’s not the number of clicks that an issue. It’s the fact that it’s not self-service. You have to issue a support request to get your account closed. This then takes x number of hours to be put into effect.
That’s like asking permission.
Instead, it’d be great if this didn’t have to involve customer support at all. If deciding to cancel was something you had the power to do, right there, right then. Just by clicking a, say, “cancel my account” link, being led to a confirmation screen, and then it was over.
Why does this have to involve humans again?
Scott Allen
on 24 Oct 06I really don’t understand what the big deal is about this. A lot of other sites, for example, say that it may take 24 to 48 hours to completely remove you from their database and that you may continue to receive messages in the meantime. For all you know, that may be because they have to do a nightly database synchronization across multiple servers, or it may just be because someone is manually going and initiating the process. How would you ever know?
I agree with you that it seems it would be far more cost-effective for LinkedIn to just automate it, but maybe it’s not, and that’s why they haven’t implemented that feature yet.
Scott Allen
on 24 Oct 06Andrew wrote: ”...non-paying users are given a limited number of ‘introductions’.”
Andrew, et al. —This requires clarification. Non-paying members are given a limited number of concurrent introduction requests. It just means you can only have five open requests. If you need to send another one, you just look at the five you have open, see which one seems to be dead in the water, kill it, and you have another slot open for a request.
For the casual user, five concurrent requests should be more than enough. If you’re making more than five concurrent requests, it’s clearly of critical day-to-day business value to you and you should be paying for it.
I agree the UI for that could be better. For example, it would be nice if when you tried to make a sixth request, it showed you a list of your five open ones, oldest one first, and asked you if you’d like to cancel one of them to make your new request.
J. Rosend
on 24 Oct 06David, if you allow me to ask and just out of curiosity, what made you change your mind about keeping your linkedin account?
(I’m in now way affiliated to them.)
J. Rosend
on 24 Oct 06Sorry, jumped directly to comments and didn’t realized you had already answered.
Rachel
on 24 Oct 06Oh no. Not another AOL.
Kieran
on 24 Oct 06If you dont like ringing to cancel an account then dont use lovefilm.com. I can sign up, give them my money and peel oranges via their website – but can I cancel my account without ringing their indian call centre – can I b**locks!
Marko
on 24 Oct 06David, what’s your email? I want to invite you to join my network of professionals over at linkedIn! ;)
Jens Meiert
on 24 Oct 06Make it easy to stay, and make it easy to leave. I’m somewhat surprised that LinkedIn goes the way you described.
Jens Meiert
on 24 Oct 06(...since LinkedIn usually provides some good ideas.)
Chuck
on 30 Oct 06got an early invite to LinkedIN and then wanted out, fast. but I couldn’t. so I used it for my other line of work – nightclub DJ. and I changed the contact info to just my website.
people got anoyed at me because they thought I was taking the piss (only half right). so LinkedIN managed to make me really mad and a bunch of their other users. awful company
Chuck
on 30 Oct 06reminds me of the time I got free from BMG’s music club by changing my address to their distribution center – worked a charm
how about every anoyed user changes their profile to LinkedIN’s information? maybe after that chaos they will finally behave like a responsible business
Derek
on 20 Nov 06I have not set up an account with “Linkedin” and am planning on doing it in the near future. As a business professional, it seems to be the platform that I am looking for in a professional (social) networking site. With that said, not all innovations in a business exists because of the click-rate speed factor. While it is important to improve, automating the account closing sequence “could” prevent valuable data from being collected from the exit interview. They call this primary marketing data and it is worth its wait in gold. You cannot complain about a company that strives to continously improve its operations and especially when they maximize primary data from the exit interview. I think that they will never remove this feature unless they figure out some way to collect the same information upon automation. Its a small price to pay but a great business model. Konstantin Guericke is not telling you this for a reason.
This discussion is closed.