One of my businesses sells WP plugins on an annual licensing basis… its a subscription that auto-renews each year unless you cancel. An extremely common and well known business practice in the WP world.
Well… we had this one German guy cancel his subscription before the year was up — as some people do, and that’s totally fine — but as the end of the year approached he got an automated “your license is expiring soon” email from our website. He absolutely flipped a lid.
We thought maybe he was worried about getting charged, so we replied and confirmed that, not to worry, his subscription was already cancelled and he wasn’t going to be charged anything. We explained it was just an automated email letting him know his license is expiring.
Then he replies with this gem (word for word):
Hi [name],
i didn’t worry, but you should.
What kind of company you are working for? Is this a garage sale?
If i cancel a subsription then i will never receive any further messages!
If you need advice to review your internal processes feel free to ask me for a proposal.
Alex
So much anger over an email!
I don’t see anything upsetting about a perfectly normal, commonplace reminder email. I’ve received the same kinds of emails from other companies and have never been bothered.
I wanted to reply something like “I’m sorry our email caused you emotional suffering. Please do send us your proposal for what process we should use to deal with rude customers who are triggered by automated emails. Sincerely, The Owner of this Garage Sale”…. but I didn’t.
Instead… Welcome to the blacklist!
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