kids. runs. code. food. complaints. etc.

I'll be honest, I don't know if I signed up first or if they started bugging me first, but in full disclosure at some point I did in fact create an account with these guys. Digging through my gmail archives, however, the first time I got mail from them was when a friend of mine added me as a friend. Thanks a lot, dude.

It looks like on 11/30/2007 I tried to delete my account on their site, got some kind of error, and (I think) contacted them via their support form thinger directly:

From: <xxxxxxx@gmail.com>
Received: 11/30/2007 3:07:45 PM Pacific Standard Time (GMT - 8:00 )
To: <support@plaxo.com>
Subject: error when deleting my account

Name: Josh Rotenberg

Subject: error when deleting my account

Version: I Don't Know

Plaxo Product: Pulse

Email Client (if any): Not Applicable

Operating System: OSX

Question:
I'm getting "Sorry, but we are currently experiencing technical
difficulties. Please try again in a few minutes." I will try again in a
few minutes, but, FYI.

I got that, then a canned "we have received your request" mail that same day, and then a response from a real human on 12/01/2007 that said:

Hi Josh,

Thank you for contacting Plaxo Customer Care.

I understand that you receive an error message when you try to delete your Plaxo account “joshrotenberg@gmail.com”.

As per our records, your e-mail address, joshrotenberg@gmail.com, is not register with Plaxo. It looks like you have already deleted your Plaxo online account.

Please revert for clarifications.

Sincerely,

Gary

support@plaxo.com

OK, so there are a few possibilities at this point, right? First, an email being "registered" with Plaxo may or may not be the same thing as actually having an account with them, i.e. they have lots of email addresses that they've culled from various social notworking sites that they spam under the guise of sending out mail to real accounts ... or they don't have a great handle on their system and if an account "is not register" in the support guy's little web ui, then it doesn't exist. Or they are just lying.

I continued to receive email from them to this same account. I'm lazy. I ignored them for a while.

Then I read about Comcast buying them: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/its-complaxtic-comcast-buys-plaxo-to-boost-video-sharing/

And figured if there was ever a good time to really get off their radar, it was now. So I went back to their site on what looks like 05/12/2008 and, low and behold, was able to activate my account with the same email address. I guess I figured if I used that email address and tried again via their system to delete my account, maybe it would work. Maybe they'd fixed some bugs in that six months or so. Sure enough, I was able to access my account, and I followed their instructions to delete my account. No errors.

Since that day, however, I have, in fact, received some email from them. So today, I tried again, after getting a "Weekly Update". I forwarded the message to support@plaxo.com:

Hi,

I'm pretty sure I deleted my account, yet I'm still getting these. Can
you please delete me once and for all?

Josh

I got their "THIS AUTOMATED RESPONSE CONFIRMS THAT WE HAVE RECEIVED YOUR MESSAGE", and a little while later, from a human:

Hello Josh,

Thank you for contacting Plaxo Support.

As per our records, "
xxxxxx@gmail.com", is not registered with Plaxo online account.

Thanks for using Plaxo.

Um, OK. I forwarded the message, so you can clearly see that, regardless of whether or not I'm registered, I'm getting the mail. Thats a). Secondly, I'm sure that "Thanks for using Plaxo" is part of the canned response, but it still sounds obnoxious given the context. And finally, do you plan to continue to help me out? Or what?

I replied again, including the full set of headers from the Weekly Update mail:

I know that, I deleted the account myself. Yet I still get mail. Here
are the headers, if that helps you at all.

I also sent mail to abuse@plaxo.com, hoping that maybe the people answering that address would take the issue a little bit more seriously and have some idea of how to handle it:

Nothing special, just trying to stop mail from plaxo. I deleted my
account, yet I still get mail, and your support simply says "No
account by that name." Not really a helpful answer.

Heh, I was wrong. I got two copies of the following ... from the same guy, one coming from abuse@plaxo.com, and one from support@plaxo.com:

Hello Josh,

Thank you for writing back.

I apologize for the inconvenience caused. Please forward us the print screen of the email that you have received from the Plaxo.

Thank you for your continued patience.

Forward them the print screen. I'm guessing he wants a screenshot? Uh, well, at this point I've already forwarded the message content, and then the message headers. How could that not be enough for "the Plaxo" to go on? Nonetheless, I put the entire raw message into a text file, and forwarded that back to them with the following message: