After my previous posts I filed the following letter of complaint with the Better Business Bureau of Santa Clara Valley:
Dear Sirs, Re: Everyone.net, Inc.
I would like to register a complaint regarding Everyone.net withdrawing our email sending capability without any notice and for no reason to do with us or our actions. For someone who has a mobile lifestyle, such as a pilot, it is not much use having an email address with an email service if one is unable to reply to or send new emails through that email service in large parts of the world and particularly in the whole of the country in which one is currently based! The main reason for using a supposedly world-wide email service such as PPRuNe email, which is provided through Everyone.net, is so that a user can send and receive emails wherever they might physically be in the world.
Please find enclosed copies of my letter of complaint to Everyone.net and of their response. This is unacceptable. The contents of my letter to Everyone.net should be self explanatory. My wife and I have been using the PPRuNe email service for some years. During this time all our business and personal contacts have become used to using our email address at PPRuNe email. It would be a massive task to notify all these contacts and to persuade them to record and use another email address to contact us. Although we are on an emergency basis using Yahoo Mail to send emails we would like to continue with being able to send and receive emails through our PPRuNe email address just the same as we did in XXXXXXXX until late last year.
Other free email services such as Yahoo Mail and Microsoft’s Hotmail have not blacked out large parts of the world. Their users are able to send and receive emails wherever they might physically be in the world. If there is a spam problem from certain users then the answer is to block the problem email addresses, not to arbitrarily block all users of an ISP, innocent as well as guilty. This particularly applies where a whole country is served by only one ISP or a small number of ISPs. Yahoo Mail and Hotmail show that in spite of the spam problem it is possible to maintain worldwide full email service to their subscribers so Everyone.net should be able to do the same. Indeed, you will note that although Everyone.net has withdrawn our email sending capability for its free service through PPRuNe email it is quite able to restore sending capability if we are prepared to pay for its premium service! This indicates that there is another motive behind Everyone.net’s action.
It seems that Everyone.net is operating a Bait and Switch scam. Users are enticed to sign up with the free email service. After they have been using Everyone.net’s free email service for long enough to build up large lists of contacts and make switching to another email provider extremely difficult, Everyone.net then starts to pressure the users to change to their pay-for-service premium email service! This is not an acceptable way of doing business.
Everyone.net should immediately restore our email sending capability though our existing PPRuNe email service wherever we might be physically located in the world and particularly in XXXXXXXX. Everyone.net should also cease blocking the sending capabilities of all its subscribers, free as well as paid, in large parts of the world. Only known scam problem email addresses should be blocked. There is absolutely no excuse for blocking the sending capabilities of innocent users, particularly if it is part of a Bait and Switch tactic to pressure users into switching to the premium service. If Everyone.net will not cease its whole ISP blocking tactics then I feel the matter should be referred to Federal, State and Municipal authorities to have all of Everyone.net’s business licences and permits withdrawn to protect the public. We will appreciate your help with getting Everyone.net to restore our email sending capability, particularly in XXXXXXXX. Please confirm by email that you have received this and are taking action.
Yours truly
I received an airmail letter from Ms Lena Marie Palacios of the Better Business Bureau advising that they had contacted Everyone.net, Inc. and that the company had not replied. The BBB advised that my complaint had been recorded as UNANSWERED and that Everyone.net’s apparent unresponsiveness had been recorded in the company file and would be made part of the BBB’s report to the public. They advised that if the company should reply in future they would forward a copy to me. There has been no such response. Neither has our Pprune email sending capability been restored by Everyone.net, Inc.
Any company of integrity would give fair notice to its customers to minimise the impact on innocent users. If Everyone.net’s excuse for cutting off email sending capability (only to users of its free service!) was genuine they would have offered a decent notice period to all users so that innocent customers would have been able to make alternative arrangements. Everyone.net did not do so. Obviously the cutting off of service without notice is designed to cause the maximum inconvenience and pressure to force customers to change to Everyone.net’s premium fee-based service! Secondly, a company of integrity that has no problem dealing with spam to users of its fee-based premium email service would have no problem dealing with spam to users of its free email service. Thirdly, any company of integrity would have replied to the Better Business Bureau.
There is obviously a problem with the business ethics of Everyone.net, Inc. In particular Everyone.net’s refusal to respond to a Better Business Bureau is the silence of the guilty! Two actions are needed. First, I ask you all to join with me in filing complaints with the following two organisations:
Better Business Bureau of Santa Clara Valley, Ltd.
700 Empey Way #110
San Jose, CA 95128-4705 USA
Tel: + (408)278-7400 Fax: + (408) 278-7444
[email protected]
Attorney General’s Office
California Department of Justice
Attn: Public Inquiry Unit
P. O. Box 944255
Sacramento, CA 94244-2550 USA
Tel: + (916) 322-3360 Fax: + (916) 323-5341
Next, Pprune needs to change the provider of its email service. Pprune is ethically run and I am sure wants to continue to keep its good reputation. Unfortunately, one’s reputation is to some extent coloured by the company one keeps. The current provider of Pprune’s email service has business ethics of sleazebag standard! I am sure the operators of Pprune do not want to be associated with a Bait and Switch scam so I look forward to learning that Pprune has a new email service provider of decent ethical standards.
Cheers, Carrier