What Happens When Twitter Suspends Your Account?

Time for the rant rocket.

Yesterday I realized that it was too long since I tweeted. I’m almost 34 years old you know, and I just don’t get in tweets like I used to. So I went to the familiar world of Twitter and started to type my message. I didn’t even read the pink notification at the top until I was done typing my sentence. (I thought it was a notice to check out Bruno Mars or something equally as cool.)

“That’s weird,” I thought, and tried to change my password since it was possible someone finally succeeded into getting into my account. And that wouldn’t be surprising because people (I mean, teenagers) have asked me to hand over my username to them for years now because their name is Kayla too and they see that I don’t tweet very often.

I figured out that I couldn’t change anything about my account so I emailed support. Apparently when you email about account suspension they reply pretty quickly. In the past I have asked a few times if they can change my join date to the correct year and they either say they can’t do it or just don’t reply. I emailed last night asking what happened, mentioned that I’ve had the account since 2007, etc. What I received back this morning (fast!) was a cold, short email that said:

Hello,

It has come to our attention that your Twitter account is in violation of the Twitter Rules, specifically the policy on Impersonation: http://support.twitter.com/entries/18366-impersonation-policy.

Impersonation is pretending to be another entity in order to deceive, and is strictly prohibited. This account has been suspended and will not be restored.

Thanks,

Twitter

That was completely mind boggling to me. I rarely use Twitter and I am definitely not impersonating anyone. Completely bizarre! I replied with:

Hi,
I have no idea what you mean. I have had this account forever, as I said since 2007. At first my account was username ‘memory’ and someone in support changed it for me back in 2007 or 2008 (when support actually talked to people on a personal level). Not sure if you can somehow see that in any history for the account. I don’t use the account as often as I used to. My name is Kayla Selans and this is my Facebook profile http://facebook.com/kaylaselans and this is my website http://lovelightlens.com

Users have often messaged me asking me if they can have my account because their name is Kayla, but that is the only activity I have ever had to deal with. I had not used my account in a few weeks, logged in, and saw the suspended message. Please let me know what evidence you have because this is completely news to me. The fact that it happened and that I have this cold message with no proof of anything is even worse.

Still waiting on a reply. Or maybe I will never get one. Stay tuned!

Kayla

November 4, 20171 viewsLeave a comment

Amazon, Stop Allowing Reviews Given For Free or Discounted Health Products

When I started receiving products for free from random Amazon sellers to give honest reviews, I was excited – like anyone would be. Some of the things I’ve received for free include a selfie stick, baby socks, coconut oil, purses and cayenne pepper powder. This is all and well. But when I see that Amazon has selected a health product as “Amazon’s Choice” and that product has mostly reviews which were written by people who received the supplements for free, that makes me worry. Did Amazon make it a choice product because it has so many reviews and is doing well? How can anyone trust a product with so many reviews when the product was given for free.

The rant rocket is launching.

People usually lean toward giving a more positive review when they are normally receiving free thngs every week from Amazon sellers. I haven’t read many one star reviews for a free product. One star reviews happen when someone is genuinely upset about a product AND the fact they lost money. When you take the money out of the picture, something that didn’t help a person at all ends up getting three stars just because of the positive situation of receiving something for free in the first place.

I don’t care that Amazon allows these reviews for selfie sticks or herbs. But to allow a lot of smoke and mirrors for things like vitamins, medicines and supplements that people are putting INSIDE their bodies? Amazon, you really need to adjust your priorities here. It’s bad enough there’s so many random companies selling this stuff that no one has ever heard of. I only want to see real reviews, from people who purposely wanted a certain type of supplement, etc. and really tried it for months.

Does anyone else out there feel this way?

Kayla

September 17, 201624 viewsLeave a comment

WeddingWire Reviews: Disables and Threatens Vitality of Vendor Account for $66.67

I’m about to launch a tiny rant rocket. tiny-rant-rocket
You see, I’m a very low key customer for WeddingWire. I never ask them for anything or need anything. My sole job is to get client reviews on their website since it ranks high in Google (unfortunately for all wedding vendors in the US of A). I have 21 reviews right now, which is a pretty impressive number considering it can be very, very hard to get clients to write reviews. It’s even hard for me to take time to write reviews sometimes! I get it. So with all of that hard work under my belt, and under the floral sashes of my clients, WeddingWire decides to send me the Most Repulsive Business Email of the Year. This is my review of how unstable and unpredictable they can be from a wedding photographer’s standpoint.

A few months ago my card stopped working but only for them and not for any other website or service I use. There is no way to update the card online and I personally love to do everything online. So that is the first problem with them. Their site is outdated in every way possible, technically and aesthetically, and they don’t have billing options for us which should be a core feature. Eventually they got my card sorted out after I asked them to run it again and the month was paid.

So for some reason it happened again for July. This month happens to be the last month of my package. So they emailed me about it and called, and I figured it will sort itself out again when they run it again. Before I could even get back to them to try again, they sent me an email saying that my account is suspended. I have put the most important line of this email in bold:

This email is to notify you that your WeddingWire account is currently in suspension due to nonpayment in the amount of of $66.67 . You have 5 business days to resolve or your account will proceed to termination.

If your account proceeds to termination, you will no longer be able to login and your Weddingwire advertising agreement will be forfeited due to nonpayment. Should you wish to reinstate your account in the future, you must resolve the balance on your account in full and fulfill a new 12-month advertising agreement. In addition, you are no longer eligible for any cancellation policy as outlined in the WeddingWire Terms of Purchase.

To reconcile your account, please reach out to your Customer Success representative.

I am sure you notice the issue here. And really, can you believe that? I’m in here, the happy world of weddings and they say something like that – over 70 bucks? They are telling someone who has used the site for years, with 21 awesome reviews, who worked hard, who cares about their account being there, to sign up for another year to get the account access back? What year is this, 2006? Who does that kind of thing anymore?

On top of this, there’s the fact that I would hardly get any leads. Then one day I mentioned that I might upgrade or change my account. And I suddenly got a lead everyday for about five days, they just kept popping up. Then when I didn’t take any action, they stopped.

It’s almost as if they can turn leads on or off for any user at will depending on the monetary value of the customer, so that is probably the most EXQUISITE and tweaked part of their system!

If you are using WeddingWire, you probably have already experienced something shady but you just put up with it. And if you are searching Google for reviews or other cases of shady, you’ve found one.

So the end of the story for now is that I received the email around 7 AM on a Thursday, replied an hour later. No reply all day. No reply all day on Friday. So I’m left without access to my account all weekend.

Kayla

July 15, 201619 viewsLeave a comment