Intercom.io withholding information from my website as hostage.

3 points by jturolla 11 years ago | 1 comment

So I just got an email from intercom.io that stated they received a message in my website, but I would only be able to see the message if I renew their service.

What happened here is that I didn't uninstall their gem from my website for the lack of time I have. Therefore, I would expect them to not allow my customers to send them messages anymore, but unfortunately they do, and they are keeping the messages as a hostage.

It's interesting how they market this. They say I have "A message from a potential customer", and then they send me to their subscription page.

I find this type of business approach DIRTY and NASTY. It's terribly immoral to collect data in my website, from my customers, and withhold that as a hostage to get my money.

I hope intercom gets this message. I already ranted for them in a long email. I find this approach illegal, as our business contract is over and they are still collecting data from my website.

I understand many companies have a very aggressive way to get old customers back, but that should never bear the immorality barrier.

Thank you.

MalcolmDiggs 11 years ago |

> I find this approach illegal, as our business contract is over and they are still collecting data from my website.

Did you really mean to say that you think this is illegal? That's a pretty strong claim, for what seems like a standard business practice.

You said it yourself that you left their code installed on your website. Many customers would prefer the code to remain active even if their subscription lapses...because subscriptions lapse for all kinds of reasons, often by mistake...and many webmasters would prefer that the end-user experience not be affected because of a simple billing misunderstanding from a vendor.

If you really wanted to convey to intercom.io that you wanted message-collection to cease entirely then uninstalling would be the easy way to do that.