AWeber Will Sock It To You on Your Bill Every Time
Aweber has been praised a lot by a lot of people. I have done my share doing the praising as you can see by going to my older post on the first list building step.
As good as AWeber is, it will sock it to you on your bill every time even for subscribers you never knew you’d had.
Would you believe that AWeber and likely any other reputable autoresponder service, will charge you for people in your opt in list that are not even subscribed to you anymore?
In fact AWeber and such email list service companies will charge you for subscribers that have never been your real subscribers except for the fact that they’ve opted in to your list with a fake email address just to get something for free from you.
Even if that fake email address given by them doesn’t exist, never existed and likely will never exist, AWeber will unsubscribe a subscriber like that which will have lasted half an hour or less but AWeber will keep charging you for such non existent subscriber forever unless you remove it from AWeber yourself.
AWeber will not even notify you of such short lived subscribers. You will therefore never know that such a subscriber is kept by AWeber as an unsubscribed and that it is charging you for it.
If you don’t notice it on your bill or if you won’t question the size of your bill it will be charging you for those fake subscribers forever.
Apparently it is beyond AWeber’s capabilities to notify you of such subscribers. I would add that it is in AWeber’s self interest not to notify you because unless you are checking the number of such unsubscribed people yourself, they will profit from it.
I do not, for one minute, believe that it is technically impossible for AWeber or any such company to notify you of those things but Aweber customer help stated to me that they don’t do it, can’t do it and won’t do it.
They say that it is your responsibility to check your account monthly before your billing date and to delete all such subscribers.
So, please do it. Don’t be like me until today. I will be doing it faithfully every month as long as I’m able to. Neglecting it will cost me and you money and it will end up in AWeber’s pockets irretrievably.
Well, you may be lucky like me if you don’t take it lying down and ask repeatedly for a refund of such charges. AWeber has given me a refund but only this one time. Thank you AWeber. A part of why I got it, I think, is that I was able to catch it within an hour of being billed by them.
But there is no guarantee that you will be able to get a refund, even a one and only refund which they gave me. Thanks again AWeber.
Try AWeber’s Autoresponders for $1
It takes a lot longer to plead your case and try to get a refund than it does to keep your opt in lists clean.
The fact is that it was my own fault that I haven’t kept my list clean. On the other hand AWeber could do better in notifying me about the sudden flood of subscribers who in fact were not real subscribers at all.
Have you known all this all along or is this a new information to you?
How often do you clean up your opt in lists?
Do you know of any other reputable autoresponder company that does the same thing as AWeber when it comes to charging for fake unsubscribed subscribers?
Do you know of any reputable autoresponder company that will notify you of every subscriber as they subscribe regardless of whether they are genuine or fake?
Please respond to these questions, any one or all of them in the comments section.
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P.S.
Having made my point about AWeber not being perfect, I still think that they are providing one of the best services in their industry and I still choose to use them.
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Authored by Vance Sova
Filed under: Email List Building, Opt In List
I had heard of this, but my list is not big enough yet to have any worries so far.
[Reply]
Vance Reply:
August 17th, 2013 at 10:25 am
Hi Andrea,
Thanks for the comment. You’d be surprised how quickly this can happen. I had almost 300 subscribers like this within a month to 6 weeks. They were useless, not serious but grab all you can for free kind of subscribers with fake emails that AWeber usubscribed within half an hour because of their fake email. But they charged for them as if they were genuine subscribers anyway. I had no idea all these fake subs joined my list because AWeber didn’t notify me of any of them. They only email their customers when a genuine subscriber subscribes. I consider that to be very sneaky of them. It’s like they use illegitimate subscribers like this to make extra money.
It may take just one of these fakes to take your billing to the next level sometimes. If it’s hundreds of them within a month and you don’t check your account it could be a thousand and more pretty soon.
If you have an account with AWeber, regardless of how many real subscribers you have, even if you have none, it’s important to clean your subscriber list at least once a month before your billing date. Look at your AWeber page closely because they count all subscribers, not only the active or currently subscribed ones. Look at all the columns and subheadings and delete all unsubscribed and undeliverable subscribers.
Your wallet will thank you.
Cheers,
Vance.
[Reply]
I am new to aweber. I have heard about this wonderful tool. Will be looking to use it soon. Need to become aware of this.
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Hi Vance,
Thank you for sharing this. I was not aware of that problem.
Best wishes.
Roman
Roman´s last blog post ..Backup Your Data !
[Reply]
Vance Reply:
October 30th, 2013 at 11:18 am
Hi Roman,
Yes, it’ can cost you a lot if you don’t stay on top of it. I think that AWeber could easily eliminate the problem but it gives them extra money if people don’t watch it so they don’t bother doing anything about it. The reason they give for keeping these fake subscribers who aren’t subscribers anymore in their system is that you may need to use the information. That just makes no sense at all and only an idiot would want to use that information because it’s completely useless. It’s a false reason they give and they know it.
Cheers,
Vance.
[Reply]