Bob's dashboard

Oh, yea, we also need the export feature to merge duplicate groups, and preapprove all the old members in the new group. I'm not about to manually time in the 200 members, are you?

Oh, yea, we also need the export feature to merge duplicate groups, and preapprove all the old members in the new group. I'm not about to manually time in the 200 members, are you?

Oh, yea, we also need the export feature to merge duplicate groups, and preapprove all the old members in the new group. I'm not about to manually time in the 200 members, are you?

Linkedin - Lack of customer service
Friday, April 10, 2009 10:53 PM
From: "Bob Kaplow"
To: "Reid Hoffman"

Reid;

I saw your interview last month with Charlie Rose on PBS. I still have it saved to my DVR.

I'm writing to you as an increasingly frustrated LinkedIn user and group manager. It seems that LinkedIn functionality is a constantly changing target. Every time an enhancement is made, other things we depend on are broken or taken away. Every time I access the site, I never know what will work, what is broken, and what is just gone.

I've brought all sorts of issues to the attention of your "Customer Service" department, and almost always get blown off by their responses. For a short time, the GetSatisfaction.com web site provided some assistance from some of your dedicated employees, but that too has become useless.

I've reported some critical errors, and even told your people what the problem is and how to fix it, and my complaints AND SOLUTIONS are ignored. That doesn't exactly make a customer feel very welcome. In the real world, I'd have taken my business to another company long ago. And as soon as some new startup implements another Kevin Bacon networking site, I'll be among the early adopters.

Back in August I suffered through what I know call "The Great Group Fiasco of 2008". I know there were reasons for some of the changes, but some of the destroyed functionality that was promised in 30 days still hasn't been restored. It's been EIGHT MONTHS since you broke all this stuff. The final straw for me was when I discovered that the only workaround to several of these issues was taken away a couple weeks ago, leaving me unable to manage my groups.

In fact, if you check my LinkedIn profile, you'll see that I jsut changed my status to "Bob is getting REALLY FED UP with all the LinkedIn bugs and total lack of response from customer support." An old college friend saw it and asked me what bug I'd found. Here is the list I sent him:

=====

1) If I click on Connections or Imported Connections, I get "We are sorry, the address book is unavailable. Please try again later."

2) Upload new contacts fails with: "Your contact upload is still being processed. Please check back later." But it actually HAS uploaded the names, it just doesn't give me the list of new names so I can invite them.

3) I can't archive invitations that have been accepted.

4) Imported connections don't get removed from the list after you send an invitation.

5) Connection Updates and other information on the network status page is incomplete. You used to be able to see several days of history, now you don't even get a the current day.

6) Invitations don't have a "Not at this time" option. Any response other than accept is treated as SPAM, restricting the ability of the issuer to issue further invitations.

7) Invitations previously removed have returned to active status.

8) News for random companies shows up on my home page

9) Invite Imported contacts used to have a box to invite only those with LinkedIn accounts. Put it back. I refuse to spam nonmembers.

10) Pages with continuation have "1 2 3 4 ..." at the bottom, but many no longer have NEXT and PREVIOUS selections.

11) Imported Contacts list formats names as "First, Last" instead of "First Last", or "Last, First"

12) I can no longer cut and past a list to imported contacts. They now have to be manually entered, one at a time, and only 6 per page. I used to be able to cut and past several dozen at a time when necessary.

13) My home page ALWAYS says "One of more of your email addresses have bounced check email addresses status." because I've included email addresses for former jobs so people can find me. The message used to show up only when my primary email address was bouncing. Another fix promised months ago but never delivered.

14) When I mouse over a contacts name, sometimes the details don't pop up in the box. Other times it works fine.

Group problems:

15) The export member list function is missing

16) You can't sort group members by joined date, first name, number of connections, or sometimes even last name. All you get is the default list order, which at times is totally jumbled.

17) Group managers need the ability to merge duplicate groups

18) Group information is occasionally whacked. I see bogus join dates, and waiting members not in the pending count.

19) Get rid of the 50 group limit.

20) Group membership requests occasionally vanish, never delivered to the owner.

21) Group list no longer shows email address to manager.

22) Group manager can't control the number of group members listed on a page any more.

23) Cant' search group list by email address

Customer Service issues:

24) Response time from Customer Service is taking 7 days. When they do respond, they don't fix the problem, or even address the problem. Looks like it's been outsourced to folks on another planet that don't even understand English.

25) Responses from C/S are almost always IE centric, and request that you perform operations that will cause other frequently used sites to no longer work properly (clear all cookies) when that will have no affect on the problem.

26) We need LIVE customer service that actually knows how to fix problems

27) We need better testing of new releases so each new feature doesn't break existing functionality while adding nothing useful.

28) Commitments made by support are not kept.

29) Whether we pay or not, group administrators are some of the most dedicated Linkedin users. Why treat them so poorly?

As the CEO of LinkedIn, I have only one question for you: Do you care about your customers?

Bob Kaplow

Sending group announcements to members doesn't give me the functionality you screwed up last summer. I used to be able to SORT the group list by first name, by date joined, or whatever. That all got trashed last summer in the Great Groups Disaster of 2008, and still hasn't been fixed as promised EIGHT MONTHS AGO.

So now that you've screwed up my ability to tell who is new in the group, how the hell do I find out who just joined? If you're going to redact the email addresses, at least restore the functionality I had to download the list of members with the dates they joined, or fix the damn sort options that we used to have. There's a sort pull down there now, but it only has one option, and it doesn't even work.

The email message of 3/20 that you quote above says we can't download email addresses, not that we can't download ANYTHING. SO PUT THE REST OF THE EXPORT FEATURE BACK!

And as someone said in another thread, your group managers are some of your most loyal users. WHY DO YOU KEEP FUCKING WITH US????

and 8 months later this is STILL HAPPENING. Does any one at LinkedIn even care any more. You've pretty much guaranteed that neither myself nor any one I know will ever become a paying customer.

Have you guys been taking customer service lessons from Brannif? Arthur Anderson? Enron? ValuJet?

Well, it's broken still / again :-(

If they posted a phone number that went to someone in this country, it would be ringing off the hook. Over the past year LinkedIn customer service has gone to HELL! THey just don't care any more.

I still get the "bouncing email addresses" messages every time I go to my home page. My primary address is fine, but I have other old email addresses that are no longer valid so that old contacts can find me.

They said they'd fix this last year, but of course that was as hollow a promise as anything else from LinkedIn lately.

I'd like th see all the stuff that was broke inthe great group fiasco of 2008 finally fixed, and decent customer service from LinkedIn. They've gone to hell over the past year.

HELLO IS ANY ONE HOME????

Steve, I'm getting really PISSED OFF at LinekdIn lately. Every time I turn around, something else doesn't work, or has broken. Last summer, when you totally screwed up groups, you posted a list of commitment to fix allt he problems within thirty days. I'M STILL WAITING!!!

The latest problem is I can no longer download the group membership list, necessary because of the still unfixed group management problems.

When I go to your customer help site, I either get no response, or a totally useless response. Have you offshored support to some planet that doesn't speak English?

Before the "Great Group Fiasco of 2008" you guys were great about responding to stuff here. Now it's clear to me that no one gives a damn any more.

I think there is a GREAT opportunity for some competitor to pop up and bury you folks, the way Amazon did to brick and mortar book stores. IMHO, it can't happen soon enough.