Did you hear that NING SUX?

Okay, before we start. This is a rant about how poorly managed Ning is when it comes to serving the customer.

I have been a Ning customer for over 5 years. Back in they days when no one really knew what Ning was or how to use it. I endured the early years and have remained loyal, even though it was painful and expensive.

I primarily used Ning to host my personal website, which is not really the purpose of the community platform, but it worked well for what I was doing. Ironically, since I was not driving it as a community, I had few visitors and very little communication on their system.

Sooo, yesterday (May 15, 2013at 3:58PM ET) I get an email from Ning saying that I had too much spam and they were firing my as a customer effective in a few HOURS!....My first reaction when I read this email while traveling is that it's spam. Someone is impersonating Ning for some unknown reason and no reasonable CEO would ever allow such poor decision making and customer management to occur within their business.

So, first thing this morning, I go to my website and it's locked down. I have this website integrated within dozens of marketing literature, so "my" customers get to see an ugly maintenance page. I'm unable to login to get my data off their system unless I contact them. However, they don't provide a way to contact them....Humourous while insane. The bright side is that I did have a few hours pack my digital bags and get out....

If a community platform is having a spam problem, one would think that the folks selling the platform (e.g. Ning) would implement tools to prevent spam NOT just fire the customers that are paying for their services. To give credit to the brilliant executives at Ning, their strategy of firing customers will definitely solve their spam problem over time when there are no more customers.

Anyway, I will work today to find a new business to spend my money with to host my stuff, all the while keeping an eye open for the small headline that will appear one day stating that Ning is shutting down dues to the weather, economy, Internet, Google, or something other than it being many years of burning cash and losing customers.....

Below is the email..

Hi there,
 
Over the past few months, we've noticed that there has been a large amount of spam accumulating on your Ning Network. We're certain that this spam isn't the image you want to portray on your network, and you may not even be aware of it. The amount of spam is so high that it is also having a serious impact on the health of the databases that your network and others rely on to stay online and speedy. For your benefit and for the benefit of other Ning communities, we will lock your network in the next few hours. We will also cancel your subscription and credit the remaining time on your current subscription term.