Cancelling online memberships and accounts

I am currently in the midst of having the sad duty of cancelling various online membership accounts of my dear sister-in-law, recently deceased. Like most internet users, she had an account with various online stores, she used Skpe until she was too ill to do so, she bought books from Amazon, used ebay, etc. I had all her passwords so I was able to access all these accounts and attempted to use them to cancel her accounts and memberships.

You will NOT believe how difficult it is, to have accounts of some of these places shut down. The information and photocopies which some of them demand before they are willing to cancel a membership and stop their email advertising is not only personal, insulting and intrusive, but also very upsetting.

Official Swiss institutions such as the Post Office, Swiss Rail, Swisscom were very fast, efficient and caring.

A “bonus point” collecting scheme by the Jelmoli department store was very bad – they needed – according to a man on the phone - a copy of the death certificate, a copy of my Power of Attourney, her credit card number and even her security code (!). I did not give them any of these and sent them a very angry email of complaint.

Ebay was by FAR the worst so far. A week after I started all this, I thought the account was closed, but then the ebay advertising started rolling in to her email account. I checked, and the account hadn’t been closed at all.  I filled out the form again and received an email from ebay Switzerland asking me to send a copy of the death certificate and a covering letter to a fax number in Germany. I did that and received an email on Nov. 13th saying that the account was being closed. A week later yet more advertising came in.

I checked the ebay account and sure enough it was still open. I then sent another fax to Germany asking what was going on and on the 18th November I received another email, saying it was being closed down. 6 days later yet more advertising for “Christmas gifts on ebay” came in and by now I was REALLY angry. I sent a furious fax to the number in Germany and demanded that they shut down the account IMMEDIATELY. Their reply was that they would “initiate” the closing of the account from the 24th.  And so it goes. Today is the 9th December and the account is still open. It is an absolutely intolerable  and distressing situation.

Amazon have what looks like (but really isn’t) a link somewhere on their website (you have to hunt for it) to cancel an Amazon account. Via numerous corners and clicking, you can eventually send them a message asking for an account to be cancelled. I got an email back saying that they needed the account name / email address (which I had already entered into the online message form). Replies to the email address that they sent it from bounce back as invalid, so you need to either use their online message system or to call them by phone in Germany.  I did both and explained the situation yet again, giving her account no, email address etc. They also demanded various photocopies per fax. (I really do not know where online shops find the impertinence to demand copies of death certificates). Anyway I sent the faxes to Amazon.de as requested and received an email saying that the account had been cancelled. A week later yet more Amazon advertising appeared in her inbox. I was absolutely furious and sent them an email demanding the cancellation of her account according to Swiss Data Protection Laws and saying that, at the same time they can cancel my own account because I am not prepared to support a company which breaks Data Protection Laws by obviously avoiding cancelling accounts on written request. The account was closed a week later.

The Swiss online supermarket LeShop was very quick and understanding.

 

Skype sent an automatic email saying that the money she had as credit for calls to normal telephone numbers was now “forfeited” (!) and that they would be booking the next “payment” from her credit card again. I think I managed to stop that by hunting around the Skype website trying to discover where to cancel automatic debiting.

Lottery24 (“Euromillions”) had also been taking money from her credit card every week. It looks like I was successful in cancelling that, online on their website.

Some newspapers and magazines also seem to be unwilling to end subscriptions. One, (“Haus & Garten“)  was very nice and said I could throw the renewal invoice away, despite it being 3 weeks overdue. Another newspaper has sent a renewal reminder since I cancelled the subscription…

There are others – I could go on all day. So my advice to everyone is, don’t be too quick to sign up for online companies. Don’t be too quick to allow money to be booked off your credit card automatically. Memberships and automatic debiting are not as easy to stop as you may think.

Comcast does it again

Well, your favourite (NOT!) US email provider has just lost ANOTHER company in the US a $2,000+ order.

I have been in contact with a supplier for over a week now – they have a comcast address and – surprisingly –  all went well for 4 emails sent and received – until today, when I sent an email with the definite order information. As to be expected from that pathetic excuse for an internet provider – the email bounced with the message:

xxxxxxxx@comcast.net (reading BANNER): 554 IMTA05.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast 195.186.18.61 Comcast BL004 Blocked for spam.  Please see http://www.comcast.net/help/faq/index.jsp?faq=SecurityMail_Policy18628

I am not going to bother with that company again. No wonder the US financial situation is in such a poor state. As long as companies use a service which blocks perfectly legitimate emails – which contain ORDERS FOR GOODS – as spam, well, you can’t expect much else, can you ?

The email had no advertising in it, no links, no words which could possibly be construed as spam unless Comcast’s atrocious filter considers “we would definitely like to purchase”…. as evidence of spam.

So yet another US company loses business. What a pity.

Comcast

Well, Frank was very kind to post his comment. But it doesn’t help.

…indicates the user name is invalid or there is trouble routing it to the Comcast.net server by the ISP or mail provider you use

he writes.

Well, there is a very well-known numismatic organisation in the USA and they use comcast. The CEO of the organisation has two comcast.net addresses. I needed to reply to an email which I had received from him – both emails bounced. This was from my bluewin.ch address. Then I tried using my gmail.com address – both emails bounced. I then tried my old web.de address – both emails bounced. I asked my brother in England to send the mails from his BT (British Telecom) address in England - both mails bounced. I asked an English numismatist living in Germany to send them from Germany – both mails bounced even though he tried sending them from two different addresses on two different mail servers, one of them being aol.com, the other t-online.de. The same applied when the emails were sent from the Professor of Numismatics and Archaeology at an Italian university. Both mails bounced. Finally I asked my friend in the US to send them – the emails got through.

So what Frank is again suggesting is that the DNS of all these mail servers, in Switzerland, England, Italy and Germany – are all set up wrong. The suspicious thing is that the email sent from Germany from an aol.com address was bounced, whereas the emails sent from the US from an aol.com address got through. So that puts paid to any DNS excuses and puts paid to any nonsensical “user name is invalid” rubbish.

• Fact is, emails from most European servers don’t get through.
• Fact is, comcast needs to stop blaming the error on European mail servers - where, by the way – email was invented (by CERN in Geneva, Switzerland).
• Fact is, no other mail server in the world acts in the same way that comcast.net does, by bouncing emails with such depressing regularity.
• Fact is, I am fed up with being humiliated by having to ask friends in the US to forward emails to comcast.net addresses.
• Fact is, US companies are certainly losing business and will continue to do so. (We finally gave up on ordering $12,000 worth of bicycle components from a firm in Arizona because emails to their comcast.net address kept bouncing).
• Fact is, that our (European) mail servers can find every other mail servers all over the world. But Frank says they can’t find the comcast.net server. So where is the error, hmmmm?
• Fact is, even a reply to Frank’s  @cable.comcast.net address bounced !!!

Comcast blocks emails from Europe

The USA is blessed (not!) with an internet provider called comcast.net. Apparently a lot of people who get TV through comcast are happy with them but more and more people – especially businesses who sell internationally or those wanting to sell their goods to Europe – are getting really really angry with comcast’s email service.
The problem is that comcast.net’s primitive anti-spamming filters check the headers of arriving emails for the sender’s IP. AND THOUSANDS OF HUNDREDS OF LIGITIMATE EUROPEAN IPS ARE BEING UNNECESSARILY BLOCKED BY COMCAST.NET’S ANTI-SPAM FILTER. Emails sent from most European countries to your comcast.net address will be bounced as undeliverable. This applies at the very least (and to my certain knowledge) to senders of emails from Germany, Switzerland, Holland, France, Italy, some British IPs, Sweden, Ireland and Austria. It applies to ALL comcast.net email addresses.

So say you are a European buyer on ebay and – after purchasing something – you attempt to contact the seller at his/her comcast.net address by email. Your email will be bounced back and the seller will not receive your email. This can lead to a lack of communication and possibly to poor or bad feedback.
Or you are a European seller on ebay and want to send an email to a buyer who is a comcast customer. Hard luck – the buyer will not get your email.
Or say you are in the US and have a business. A potential customer in Europe wants to order several thousand dollars-worth of goods from you. He copies the email address on your website to his email program, writes you an email asking for a quote – but within seconds, the email is bounced with the following message:

>xxxxxxxxx@comcast.net;
>
-> Failed
>Error-Code; 5.1.2 (bad destination system address)

Did you write the email address wrong ? NO! The address is correct and if you ask a friend in the US to send the email for you,  it will go through.

Comcast appears to have a personal grudge against European IPs. Even Europeans using yahoo, gmail, hotmail or other US freemail system will have their emails bounced, because the European IP is included in the header lines.

Comcast.net steadfastly refuses to revise its list of blocked IPs and ignores all requests from IP staff in Europe, preferring instead to apply its “why use a scalpel when you can use a sledgehammer?” policy.

And the really ludicrous part of it all is the lack of knowledge of their so-called customer service. I wrote to them explaining the problem that Europeans have. The first “solution” was that I …. wait for it…. clear my Internet browser cache (this is like telling a car driver whose engine has just blown up to empty the ashtray to solve the problem). Their next reply was that none of the 20+ addresses I gave them as examples, were valid. Utter nonsense! I asked my friend Don in the US to write to those addresses explaining the problem – and all the emails got through.

The last intelligent (not!) missive I received from comcast staff was that EVERY SINGLE MAIL SERVER IN EUROPE – plus yahoo, gmail, hotmail etc. WERE ALL SET UP WRONG and only comcast was set up right. Apart from shaking one’s head in disbelief at the sheer arrogance and ignorance of such a reply, it appears that nothing to be done.

So if you have an online business and use a comcast address and wonder why you don’t receive any enquiries from willing customers in Europe – or why you don’t receive replies to YOUR emails to Europe – you know why. Your insular provider apparently doesn’t think you have the right to receive emails from Europe and bounces them all as undeliverable.

Maybe it’s time for you to change your comcast.net email service to an email provider with a little more IT knowledge and customer-friendliness?

The voice prostitute

There is a series on English TV, it’s been going for years, called “Time Team”. A small team of genuine archaeologists plus one other person spend three days excavating a small area of the British Isles, talk about finds (if there are any) and show computer-generated reconstructions of what the houses, pot, or whatever will (possibly) have looked like. It’s sometimes a bit far-fetched when they find a 1″ square piece of pottery and suddenly you see the computer generated picture of an ornate bowl overflowing with fruits.. but it’s good entertainment and to give them the archaeologists’ due, they have to date discovered one example of the rarest Celtic gold coin ever found on British soil.
Well, this would be a great program except for an annoying little man by the name of Tony Robinson, whose main role appears to run around fields waving his arms about, shouting in his nasal, whiny voice in order to attract the onlookers’ attention to himself and away from the archaeologists doing their work. The man is so annoying and so patently false, that he spoils the entire program with his continual whine.
The income he receives from this program is obviously not enough for Mr Robinson – he has now begun to prostitute his voice to all and sundry companies for TV advertising – so we hear his whines and shouts in adverts for things from toilet cleaner and washing aids to soft drinks. I will NEVER buy the products this little man advertises.
And now he is doing a new series on one of the British Four channels, about the history of British Law. What a pity, I would have enjoyed the series, but with this horrible little man doing the talking – no thankyou, I’ll stick with Heartbeat and Judge Judy.