Plenty of Fish

Well, that’s a pretty blunt headline, isn’t it? This is one of the reasons I like having a blog: I have a platform to complain LOUDLY about companies that do wrong. This is what my old colleague, Keith Dawson, calls the “Super Empowered Angry Customer.” And that’s who I am today.

There’s a free online dating website called Plenty of Fish, at plentyoffish.com or pof.com, and for reasons that should be obvious, I decided to create a profile there. The site is fairly lame, frankly, but it’s free so I figured I would try it, anyway. Much to my surprise, within a few days I received the following “friendly” email with this Subject Line: Your Only Warning!

You have received this email because one or more of our rules have been violated.

If any of these rules are violated again, your account(s) will be removed from our website permanently.

1. Harassment – harassing or offending other users will result in your account being deleted

2. Nude/Inappropriate images – if you upload nude or inappropriate images, your account will be deleted

3. Duplicate/Fake Accounts – if you created more than one account for yourself or create a fake account, all of your accounts will be removed from our website

4. SPAM

5. Age – if we have reasons to believe you are under 18 years of age, your account will be deleted.

http://www.plentyoffish.com/terms.aspx

You’ll just have to trust me on this, but I did nothing offensive, harrassed no one, uploaded fully-clothed normal-looking pics of me and friends, did not spam anyone, and I sure as heck am older than 18.  I also only created one account, but the crummy website interface gave me a cryptic error message while I was creating the account and then it forced me to change from the username I had originally selected. I complied with the inane request and finished setting up my one and only account.

So, why did I get that email? I have no idea, unless the glitch when I signed up caused their system to create two accounts for me. More to the customer service point, what is any customer supposed to do when they get this email?

The fatal flaw that lands Plenty of Fish in the “sucks at customer service” column is their clear assumption that their users are bad people. The email they sent could only be effective when received by people who knowingly did one of those forbidden things. Plenty of Fish appears to hope that by acting like a stern and angry parent they will get creeps to stop acting like creeps. I really wonder how well that works.

My guess is that a very high percentage of people who get that warning email subsequently get banned from the site, as I did. Yes, I tried to log in a few days later and could not. Whatever sin Plenty of Fish thought I had committed, they must have thought I did it again, so they kicked me out.

Since I’d already decided after being treated like a criminal that I’d prefer to use another site, this did not bother me, but it sure did amaze me. See, when I got that threatening email from Plenty of Fish, I replied and asked what had triggered it, explaining that I was not aware of violating any of their policies.

Guess what the reply from Markus, the guy who runs Plenty of Fish, said? That’s right, nothing, since he did not reply. But that’s okay, Markus, you don’t have to answer email from me, since I have a blog and can tell you right here what I think of the way you treated me. And can at the same time tell my friends and anyone on the Internet who wants to search for Plenty of Fish, plentyoffish.com or pof.com and customer service. I’m happy to let you know right here what a lousy job you do with customer service.

You see, I’m not a criminal, I don’t intentionally violate terms of service, and I sure don’t act like a jerk on a dating website. So Markus’ “Your Only Warning!” email both insulted me and failed to give me any avenue for correcting whatever issue had caused my account to be flagged. If you’re interested in losing customers and visitors, Plenty of Fish sets a great example:

• assume your customers are out to get you
• threaten them the first chance you get
• refuse to tell them exactly what it is you think they did wrong
• ignore their responses and questions when they offer to make it right
• kick them out with no further explanation soon after.

We all could learn a great lesson in how NOT to treat customers from Plenty of Fish. That’s plentyoffish.com or pof.com, for those of you who haven’t been paying attention. After all, there are plenty of dating websites, too.

Well, good old NPR has explained it all, clearly and simply. Take an hour to listen to this episode of This American Life and you’ll understand it, too: The Giant Pool of Money. It’s not only educational, it’s entertaining, too, as they have interviewed the people who actually made the loans and bundled the  mortgages into securities. They’ve asked the questions we all want to ask, such as “What were you thinking?!”

Luckily, I woke up in time (at almost 2am) to see the Phillies bat in the ninth inning, though I saw none of J.C. Romero’s shutdown of the Rays in their half of the ninth. It was great to see Bruntlett sneak across home plate on Ruiz’s feeble hit down the line. I smiled wearliy and went to bed, and when I eventually woke up this morning I couldn’t quite remember at first if I watched the game or dreamed about it.

Luckily it was a good dream.

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In fact, the image of Bob Cratchit keeps coming to mind, when I notice that my hands are cold and debate whether it’s time for another log or not. Don’t want to waste my wood (it’s quite pricey, in fact), but I need to be comfortable to work effectively, too. I can bundle up in layers, sure, but gloves don’t work with keyboards.

I don’t have the best stove, either. It’s certainly not airtight, so it’s not as efficient as it should be. I’m learning how to regulate the temperature with it. At first I roasted the place by putting too many logs in. They just burn hotter, but not any longer. Better to stick with just a couple of logs and keep adding another when the fire dies down enough. I only have to light the fire once, in the morning, and after that I just keep adding logs when needed and the embers start the flames up.

Boy, that stuff must really smell and taste good to them.  As my landlord says, the weather is turning colder and the mice are seeing my little cottage as awfully cozy.

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And I’ve been watching one horse’s odd reaction. Rather than seeking shelter in her run-out shed, she started running wildly all over the field. I wonder what was going through her equine brain.

The storm seems to be letting up now, after maybe ten minutes of intense downpouring and wind, not to mention thunder and lightning.

Very strange to see essentially an ice storm in the middle of the summer!

In the late 1980s, Internet users adopted the word “troll” to denote someone who intentionally disrupts online communities.

Here’s a glimpse of how this aberrant community thinks:

clipped from www.nytimes.com “Lulz” is how trolls keep score. A corruption of “LOL” or “laugh out loud,” “lulz” means the joy of disrupting another’s emotional equilibrium. “Lulz is watching someone lose their mind at their computer 2,000 miles away while you chat with friends and laugh,” said one ex-troll who, like many people I contacted, refused to disclose his legal identity. The author interviews and stays with several prominent trolls, showing what they are like in person as opposed to the way they act online. While that is interesting on one level, I liked more the exploration of what the prevalence of trolls says about human beings and society. For example: clipped from www.nytimes.com Does free speech tend to move toward the truth or away from it? When does it evolve into a better collective understanding? When does it collapse into the Babel of trolling, the pointless and eristic game of talking the other guy into crying “uncle”? Is the effort to control what’s said always a form of censorship, or might certain rules be compatible with our notions of free speech?

Here’s a glimpse:

For the past few hours, the wind has been rising and falling, the precursor of a storm coming in from the west. When the wind climbs, a kind of elation blows through the house — it’s the hushing sound of the leaves outside and the way the breeze sweeps the floors and lifts the curtains and slams the doors. The dogs snap to and look around when it gusts. And when the wind drops, it seems to drop us — the dogs and me — into the trough of an ordinary summer day.

I’m loving the rural lifestyle, myself, here in my cottage on a horse farm. It’s nice out here