When a company sends me an invoice with no return address or way to reply, I consider it invalid. And unprofessional.
For example, I just received an invoice from no-reply@ning.com for $24.95. That’s the fee for withholding advertising on the group lukeshosp.ning.com.
I’ve tried to close this account but could not figure out how to do so. I expected Ning to close it when they went to pay-to-play. After all, their site says:
- Deadline for Selecting a Ning Plan Has Passed
We are no longer offering or supporting free Ning Networks. If you haven’t selected a plan for your free Ning Network, you can no longer access the network. To regain access, please visit www.ning.com, sign-in and then click “Select a Plan” for your Ning Network. You can also Archive your members and content or take your Ning Network offline.
If you submitted a ticket related to a billing issue, invoice request or sponsorship application, we will respond to your ticket as fast as possible. However, to ensure that we provide responsive, helpful support for Network Creators with Ning Mini, Plus or Pro plans, we are closing all other tickets submitted by Ning Networks that haven’t subscribed to one of the three plans. If this applies to you, please select a plan and resubmit your question or issue.
Thank you and we hope you choose to continue to grow your community on Ning!
When I go to other Ning sites I’ve closed, this is what I see:
It appears that Ning closes accounts automatically unless there’s a for-fee service attached to them, even if it’s a service they no longer offer.
This reminds me of the bad old days when AOL made it drop-dead simple to sign up for their service but nearly impossible to drop out. For a while, you could not leave AOL online. You had to telephone customer support and wait while “Our operators are serving other customers.”
When I sign into the Ning site, the first thing I encounter is a page asking me to select a pricing plan. This page should include an option to cancel a site.
After 30 minutes of looking, I have not been able to find a way to communicate with Ning’s billing department. No button, no email address, no instructions on how to depart. So instead, I will state my intentions on this post: I refuse to pay your $24.95/month fee for a service you are not providing.
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{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi, Jay. Been reading your blog (or versions of it) since about 2001. Always been a fan of what you have to say. I work for Ning, but way back then I was involved with e-learning. Still follow you.
Sorry to hear you are having problems with this. If it’s not apparent how it works, we have our Help Center, which is where people can contact us if they have issues of any stripe. We give billing issues top priority, so please let us know how we can help. If possible, I’ll try to help you with a refund if you have chosen a plan in error, or for whatever reason.
You can also reach me on the Creators Ning Network: http://creators.ning.com/profile/EricSuesz53
E
ERIC SUESZ
Senior Community Manager
NING, INC.
I followed up my note and Ning’s response on Twitter with a request in their help center tab.
On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 7:27 PM, Ning Help Center wrote:
Hi there,
If you would like to deactivate your entire Ning.com account, you’ll first need to delete any Ning Networks you’ve created and cancel any monthly or annual subscriptions you’ve purchased.
If you’ve created a Ning Network prior to July 20, you can take it offline by heading to My Network > Settings > Privacy and clicking the “take offline” button. We’ll automatically delete these networks after the August 20 deadline. If you’d like to archive your Ning Network’s content before taking it offline, you can use the Ning Network Archiver (My Network > Content > Archive). Once your network is taken offline, please let us know and we can proceed with deactivating your account.
If you created a network after July 20 and want to cancel your free trial, please reply to this message with your Ning Network’s URL and confirm that we can cancel your free trial. After canceling your trial, we can go ahead and deactivate your account.
Best,
The Ning Team
I wrote back,
Ning,
I want to delete the account http://lukeshosp.ning.com/ Throw away the content.
I do not want to delete other accounts at this time.
I followed your instructions to take http://lukeshosp.ning.com/ offline. I hadn’t thought to look under the Privacy tab to cancel the account.
However, I still have not found out how to delete the monthly Run-No-Ads service. I keep getting asked to select a pay-to-play plan. Enough already. Please cancel the service and credit me the amount you’ve charged my credit card.
jay
Jay Cross
I’ll keep you posted.
I’m still quite suspicious of Ning’s motivations. They’re good at UX. Why hide the “I quit” button under Privacy Settings?
Ning has resolved my issue to my satisfaction. Eric Suesz was so polite about it, I can buy that perhaps what happened to me was inadvertent rather than malicious.
Eric sent me this email:
Hello, Jay. I appreciate your patience while I look into some of the details here.
First, my apologies for you having been charged. I am forwarding along your experience to our engineers to see if this might have been an error in our billing system. As you are probably aware, we have been making a very big change to our business, and that includes a brand new billing system and three new plans. Most Network Creators have chosen a new plan, but we do have a few folks who have not chosen a new plan for a network, and this network appears to be in that “use case.” My hope is that your experience is an isolated one, but in any event I wanted to thank you for bringing it to our attention.
I have cancelled the service you were being charged for for this network: http://Lukeshosp.Ning.com
I have also refunded you the $24.95 you were charged. You should see that appear in your account within the next 1-2 business days.
If there are any further issues or if you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to call on me at any time.
E
ERIC SUESZ
Senior Community Manager
NING, INC.
Dear Jay
I have exactly this problem. and I’m not as good at maneuvering these sites as you are. You described me to a T. How do I contact Eric Suesz? I don’t see an email on his blog to do this. I have exactly the same problem. I went to the site and I have no idea! how to go private, etc. Please tell Ning I feel like their site deliberately causes you not to be able to throw away the site. You are stuck, once you sign up. seems that way.
I am having the same trouble. I submitted a trouble ticket a week ago – eight days before my billing date – requesting to cancel my network. An email that I automatically received told me that cancellations received second priority after billing issues, but it’s been six days and no word.
As polite and helpful as the Ning staff was to you after reading your post (no doubt in the interest of preventing further negative comment), it is clear Ning has no intention of making cancellation easy. I understand their need to retain customers and revenue stream, but making it hard to quit will only create more negative buzz for their product. I certainly won’t go back to Ning if I have need to develop another social network. Not after this.
i have the same issue as jay and mary . i have tried for 2 months to delete this and stop charges to this account which has twice causes my checking account to go 0on the neg. side i really want those charges returned and that account for ning mentioned to be deleted and please stop chargeing my card thanks Dru
Hello,
Reading this blog post is quite discouraging as I too have had the same issues as Mary, Jay and Drudar. I’ve tried since early August 2010 to delete, deactivate and cease all payment for our inactive account. I’ve tried sending emails to their info@ning.com requesting help in deactivating it and cancelling any packages we selected and I have yet to hear anything from them. On top of it all I still receive these monthly charges.
I received a notice on August 16 stating the following:
________________________________
5 Days Left to Choose a Plan
Friday is the final day for free Ning Networks
On 6/9/2009, a new social network popped up on the Internet. Yours.
Your network has grown up a bit since you started the ball rolling. You have grown to 202 members who have collectively helped you add 512 photos, 14 videos, and 48 spirited discussions. Well done!
We’d like to see you continue
We’re contacting you today to remind you that you still have time to choose a new Ning plan. But, time is running out. If you do not choose a new plan by this Friday, August 20, 2010, the community you built will ultimately be lost.
_________________________
With this this type of messages I was left to believe that our account would be lost and charges would then stop. However they haven’t.
I have found this to be extremely frustrating and dishonest on the behalf of ning.com
Who can I email to have this issue resolved and monies refunded, as I am part of a non-for-profit organization and this type of wasteful spending is not being a good steward our monies.
Ning.com has given the worse customer service when it comes to deleting the networks. That should have been a no-brainer. I left Ning.com months ago before the pricing plan took effect. I deactivated all networks and put all of them in offline mode prior to all of that months ago. I just came back to Ning.com today to look at the Mini package..and all of my old networks were still up…and some of them were in the online mode..even though I specifically put them in offline mode. Why were they not deleted by Ning.com? Why were some of them still in online mode? Ning stated that if you deactivated and put the network in offline mode.then they will delete the network. Okay, so my network should have been deleted in August or at least by mid-September since I left before the pricing plan deadline. I put out several messages today to Ning.com about this…my Ning Creators account was also still working..so Ning.com did not change my status at all…they still had me down as a creator I received one message back from one of the Ning moderators a few minutes ago that just said
“Hello! The Creators Ning Network is now designed to be a place for Mini, Plus, or Pro subscribers. I’m not seeing you listed as having one of these three types of accounts, so I may simply close out your Creators membership. If, at some point in the future, you rejoin Ning with a Mini, Plus, or Pro subscription, I hope you’ll re-apply to Creators! E”
Yes, exactly that is the point..I left Ning..but the networks are still up. I put them in offline again just a few minutes ago, so that no one will see them. I was actually coming back to try the Mini package..and consider coming back to Ning.com full time.
I found this thread after experiencing the worst customer experience of my lifetime in the software industry. I have tried for this past month and especially over the past few days to cancel my NING account and I can’t cancel it. There is no Cancel button. NING, in my opinion is doing something very unethical, and I plan to post a screencast video on YouTube to show people what NING is doing. They don’t allow anyone to cancel their accounts on NING. I can’t even update my credit card information and now I have to contact my Credit Card provider to make sure that NING can’t bill me again for a service that I have tried to cancel for the past month.
Why should a person have to jump through hoops to cancel an account?
Outrageous……..
If anyone has any suggestions, please post so I can avoid this stress and hassle. It is appreciated if anyone has any suggestions.
Randy McCallum
Hi all,
I have been sat at this computer for 3 hours trying to cancel my ning subscription, I’ve just completed a university degree yet why have you made such an easy task so impossible? Am led to believe that you don’t have to be Einstein to work out what really is going on here.
Ning, all i get is a form reply to questions, if you do happen to see this blog, please cancel the subscription to http://www.aaai2009.ning . PLEASE CANCEL & DELETE THE SITE, DO NOT TAKE ANY FURTHER SUBSCRIPTION FROM MY ACCCOUNT. Julie Whicker
After three months of attempting to cancel my ning network up to and including changing my debit card: Ning continues to try and charge me dispite the charge being disputed by the bank each time
Simply do not sign up to their service.
Its clearly automated and if enough people refuse to pay their bills
?
I too am experiencing a no-reply, no way of contacting scenario with Ning. I have tried to contact them through several avenues most of which are dead-ends with no actual direct contact. They have obviously and unethically made this near impossible to cancel your account once you have handed over credit card details. I am even going to the extent of saying this is a scam. I too have to revert to speaking to my credit card company to make sure Ning do not debit me again for something I dont use, I dont want and have not made active at all. Ning, come to grips with the fact that people need to be able to cancel easily.
Yes, Ive been trying to cancel my ning minis for three months now. and theres no way to cancel. So i have to be charged 2.95 monthly for life, lol
I have been trying to cancel my account since the 30 day trial. each time I try to access the page that shows me how to do this I get a message “you do not have permission to access this page’
I have e-mail the help center and just got billed again I want to cancel my account and Ning to refund me the money. I assumed after the 30 day trial cancelling would be an easy process it is far from that and I keep getting billed.
It seems rediculus that legal action is necessary for $2.95 per month but perhaps this is the strategy that people will give up and continue to be billed.
Mike Newton
I have the same situation as described:
“After three months of attempting to cancel my ning network up to and including changing my debit card: Ning continues to try and charge me dispite the charge being disputed by the bank each time”
and i tried to find contact e-mail or ticket system, wrote mail but no effect. I’m so disappointed of that, and don’t understand what to do now. My network must be canceled: vgraffiti.ning.com
It’s interesting to see I’m far from alone in my experience with Ning. Glad to hear you witnessed some resolution to your problem.
Ran a couple of truther sites on the Ning network… for about three years… pared it down last winter and finally threw in the towel mid October 2010. More money, no service. I won’t belabor your post with the rather lengthy list of repeated technical issues encountered, let alone the member fleecing. As we’d built up a pretty close network, we began paying for Pro, and getting naught but No,… as in no-reply and no resolution to technical issues. I finally gave in.
Advised members of shutdown, set the remaining network offline, requested deletion of account, DNS pointing to another server… and all was supposedly done.
Until February 2011 rolled around.
Invoice magically appears, and some nutter (or programmer) decides to try processing the charges against the listed card (an empty pay per) 4 times over the course of two hours. A day passes as I attempt to resolve the matter – no phone number, no email address on the invoice, not sound business practice and certainly makes matters more difficult – what business doesn’t list a phone number on their invoices? The following morning, no less than 6 email notifications from the card co advising of repeated attempts to charge the card. Laughable.
Still dealing with this matter – reared its ugly head again with yet another invoice issuance – downright silly. One might consider taking a closer look at why an inactive, unused, offline networks may be accruing such a large AR account which hasn’t been paid in months.
Would tend to agree w/many here – take the money and provide poor support regardless of how much you pay a month – pro my posterior – probably funding their college tuition. Try and leave? It’s like the mafia – once you’re in it, you’re in it for life.
Been interesting watching the ‘devolution’ of Ning… a shame really – it once had quite the potential. Does Eric still work there?
If you’re looking at starting your own social website, check out open source platforms. Then you know your network is yours – and no magical invoices from Never-Never.
Hi to all
Eric seems a really nice fair guy and sadly he is on the front line of it all trying to deal with customer issues.
However I have not got any resolution to my issue as being discussed in the creators forums.
Does anyone recall seeing this message on your network?
“To continue using your network and retain your content please choose a plan by Aug 20th”
… I did NOT choose a plan , and I could not find a way to cancel my bank card with them but they stopped billing me so I presumed that was the end of the matter and started my own blog site with same domain.
NING left my network dangling as ethicalaffiliate.ning.com ( which was my originall sign up to them)
7 months later NING took 6 consecutive payments out of my bank account totally over £120 in one day. You can imagine the shock I had.
Ning now defends itself saying I should have taken down my own network or mailed them to ask them to remove it and these are costs for ethicalaffiliate.ning.com which NONE of my members would find anyway.
I’m not knocking NING for taking business decisions for new payment plans but I am very dismayed at this unethical conduct and not returning my money back to me as I did NOT choose a new plan and therefore as per their statement my network and content would no longer be in use.
I wonder if this happened to anyone else and if they got refunded if it did?
I have had a horrific experience with Ning and find them to be very unethical in the way they handle account cancellation and dispute resolution. I just got off the phone with one of their agents who told me point blank that he still could not cancel my account unless I paid my past due balance first. I have tried for 7 months to cancel this account sending e-mail after e-mail only to get no action and trying dozens and dozens of time to contact the number provided on my bank statement to no avail. The phone number leads to a mailbox that is full and doesn’t accept messages, and even though their rep had gotten my e-mails he admitted to not taking action to stop any continuing charges for a service I never wanted, and attempted to do everything I could during their free trial to cancel. Their website made it in my view purposefully difficult to figure out how to cancel and their monthly charges to me of $49.95 in my opinion amount to theft. Had they wanted to make it logical and intuitive to cancel they certainly could have given their core capabilities, but that is far from the case in my view. I would never recommend Ning to anyone as the experience I have had has felt like rape.
Think that’s bad, Ning just took the money out of my paypal account without my permission and when I persuaded the matter they told me they would cancel my account but would not refunded the money they stole from me!