Robert Stanke.com

I don't do stuff like this very often, and in fact have questioned in the past whether or not consumers do more harm than good on social sites as they rage against companies.  But this case has some good business practices that are failing for one company and I felt were important to point out.  So here goes...

Many, many times on this blog I have professed my love for Evernote.  One of the top search engine queries that drives traffic to my site are strings containing the word "Evernote".  I have stated many times on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn about how I have made a home for my GTD life within Evernote.  But regardless of all of that, Evernote has let me down.  So while I was once a champion for the service, now I have to question their customer service practices.

Some might say, "Well, com'mon, Evernote is a free service.  What did you expect?"  Evernote was not free for me.  I chose the premium service from Evernote a few months ago, which amounted to $5.00 a month.  Sure, that is not a lot of money, but because I like what Evernote did for me, I chose the pay-to-play option as opposed to choosing one of the hundreds of other free services out there.  Now I am going to completely leave Evernote and never return.  Here is how it all went down...

On March 5th, I received an email from Google Checkout informing me that Evernote was billing my credit card $5.00, just like every month before.  I proceeded to use Evernote, just like normal.

Then yesterday, I received an email (out of the blue) that Evernote was downgrading my account to the free option because they couldn't charge my card.  At this point, I lost some major pieces of functionality that I rely on by using the premium option.  My guess is because I received a new card last month, so my expiration date changed, but this makes no sense because all of my other auto-bill pays are working just fine.

So, no big deal, I thought, I will just contact them to get this all figured out.  Perhaps I could just re-register my account and set-up the pay option, but how about a little customer interaction so I can understand why they opted to just shut me out as opposed to maybe contacting me first and allowing me to update my credit card information.  No, they just flipped the switch with no attempt to contact me first.  Well, there is absolutely no way to contact Evernote.  It is non-existent!  I even dropped them a note on Twitter and Facebook - but no response.  A simple Twitter reply would have kept me as a customer, even if it would have meant that I would have had to re-join Evernote, but now I think I am just going to bail all together.  Why?  Because relationships and customer service are more important to me than anything the service can provide me.  I want to have a relationship with each and every vendor I pay my money to for use of their service.  No phone support?  Fine, I can deal with that, but you can't provide an easy way for me to email you and get a reply?  What if I would have had a major issue with my data?

A big disappointment for a service I really enjoy.  I am sure my $60/year is small peanuts to them, but maybe it is time for all of us to get back to the fundamentals of relationships in business.

I don't do very many video blog posts, but late last night, during my walk, I felt inspired by some of the things that are going on in my life right now.  Hence this video about finding and executing your passion and how I am on my way to fully living it...