Hate Ezinearticles.com? Check out my new article...

Article In Problem Status

General Error - Please contact us to find out more.

Click to expand...

barca said:

I used to be a premium member too, biggest waste of money ever, in my opinion.

I then went on to use hubpages, which is much more user friendly, they don't keep throwing rdiculous rules in your face and don't charge you an arm and a leg to fill their site with content.

Hell, they evrn pay you a little bit from adsense earnings.

I took most of my ezine articles down and moved them to HP. A box comes up asking why you are deleting it "Required" - some of the articles hadn't even been accepted...I replied if I were to keep my articles there, it is 'required' that they publish them.

I'd never use them again, and I hope it's true they are going down the pan and the greedy owner gets what he deserves.

Click to expand...

Subject: I'd Love to find out more!

Body: While I'm busy evaluating new article syndication directories, I'd love to hear what you have to enlighten me of.

Just to give you a clear picture of the importance I place on your reply, you need to know this critical fact. The chair I'm sitting in has grip marks on either side of it from the excitement building inside my body and soul as I'm about to get your divine message.

Please honor me, please give it to me... please whip out your big ole' knowledge stick for me.

Click to expand...

I am responding to the article that you submitted to us titled,
"Ezinearticles Lacks Any Consistency in How They Enforce Rules".
Please look for your comments made, then mine that follow in [...].

"Let's examine their policies. Specifically let's examine their
linking policies - you are permitted two links in the body of the
article below the fold, and two links in the resource box. The two
links in the body should not be for promotion, and the two links in
the resource box can be."

[This is not true. You can include a total of 4 links in your
article. 2 self-serving links and 2 non-self-serving links. We would
like to see both of your self-serving links in the resource box
however, one can be included in the article body. We suggest that you
reserve them for your resource box to prevent your article from being
viewed as overly promotional. This is merely a suggested guide for
you. You can choose to place one in the article body so long as it is
near the end so it naturally flows to the resource box.]

"That's fine, except what happens when an article of yours is
distributed through their network and your resource box isn't
included? After all, they strictly prohibit such behavior but when it
occurs will do nothing to help you. An example of such activity can
be found HERE [out] where Ezinearticles.com has clearly let private
content be reproduced without the inclusion of the resource box. That
article now produces 0 benefit for it's author as a ranking website
has stolen the content through the Ezinearticles.com network, and
because the author wasn't permitted to include any self serving links
in the body of the article Ezinearticles has created the condition
under which such content could be stolen without any reward."

[We have no control over who publishes your article content. When you
signed on with us, you agreed to the posted terms of service for all
our authors. In this specific issue, I would strongly recommend that
you contact the webmaster and ask them to fix their oversight where
someone ripped your article content and did not attribute you as the
author. This will normally fix the problem. If after you contact them
and no action has been taken within 48 hours, contact the site's
ISP/Host and ask them to enforce their AUP (Acceptable Use Policy).
We expect them to follow our posted Publisher guidelines, however it
is up to you to take action if they don't.
http://EzineArticles.com/terms-of-service.html]

"Do you like to correct all of the errors within an article that was
turned down to only have it turned down for an entirely new reason
not originally listed during the first submission?"

[Each article is human reviewed by 2 editors. Sometimes, this brings
different outcomes, however every editor is trained to make educated
decisions by enforcing our editorial guidelines across the board and
we work hard at remaining consistent. If you have a specific issue
that we can address with you, I would be more than happy to go over
that issue with you. Our front line editors do not have the ability
to communicate with you 1x1. We reserve this for our more experienced
Senior editors and our Member Support Team who will assist you with
anything that you have a question on. It is through them, that you
will receive a more thorough response.]

"Refund my membership fee, or allow me to compete with everyone else
in my niche who puts affiliate redirect links in their article
bodies. I'm not doing anything that anyone else hasn't already and I
haven't complained about the atmosphere for theft and abuse that your
rules promote and give an open avenue to - but I will, now."

[ What problems are you experiencing with affiliate links? The same
rules apply to all of our authors. The affiliate link guidelines are
as follows:

Affiliate links will be allowed if the link is a domain name you own
which forward/redirects to the affiliate link from the top-level of
the domain name. For example, it is permissible to forward to an
affiliate link from:

http://your-company-name.com/

...but it would not be permissible to forward to an affiliate link
from:

http://your-company-name.com/page.html
http://your-company-name.com/subdirectory/
http://your-company-name.com/subdirectory/page.html
http://sub-domain.your-company-name.com/

Any article with an affiliate link that does not adhere to this
guideline will cause the article to be rejected.

Do you wish to have your Premium Subscription cancelled? and
Refunded?]

Thank you,
Penny
Managing Editor
http://EzineArticles.com/

------
Important Information: If you wish to reply to this message, please
keep the tracking number in the subject.

At 02:48 PM 6/29/2010 Tuesday, you wrote:
>
> Your policies allow your site to act as a fence for stolen intellectual property. What are you doing to stop this or does it have to be subpoenaed?

Click to expand...

Penny,
Your comments are in the [] brackets, and mine will be in the {}.

[ What problems are you experiencing with affiliate links? The same
rules apply to all of our authors. The affiliate link guidelines are
as follows:

Affiliate links will be allowed if the link is a domain name you own
which forward/redirects to the affiliate link from the top-level of
the domain name. For example, it is permissible to forward to an
affiliate link from:

http://your-company-name.com/

...but it would not be permissible to forward to an affiliate link
from:

http://your-company-name.com/page.html
http://your-company-name.com/subdirectory/
http://your-company-name.com/subdirectory/page.html
http://sub-domain.your-company-name.com/

Any article with an affiliate link that does not adhere to this
guideline will cause the article to be rejected. ]

&

[This is not true. You can include a total of 4 links in your
article. 2 self-serving links and 2 non-self-serving links. We would
like to see both of your self-serving links in the resource box
however, one can be included in the article body. We suggest that you
reserve them for your resource box to prevent your article from being
viewed as overly promotional. This is merely a suggested guide for
you. You can choose to place one in the article body so long as it is
near the end so it naturally flows to the resource box.]

{The problem I was experiencing was with a previously submitted article. Since your response was much less than timely, the article can't be shown to you in a draft format where your staff clearly did not follow the policy you outlined above.

At the time of the article's original writing it clearly followed the guidelines as your laid them out. Perhaps if you want anyone to feel as if you actually take anyone seriously your response's would be more timely. Nearly 2 weeks after the incident is hardly a reactionary gap that any business entity would represent as timely and proactive. Clearly your response was was timed to either ensure insult to injury or ensure that I would have moved on with the article by now, as I have. Hard to prove you wrong if I'm on a timeline and have no clue that after a week you would even respond at all. Well done - you have figured out the dark side of customer service, the original owner of Enzyte became very rich with similar tactics.}

[We have no control over who publishes your article content. When you
signed on with us, you agreed to the posted terms of service for all
our authors. In this specific issue, I would strongly recommend that
you contact the webmaster and ask them to fix their oversight where
someone ripped your article content and did not attribute you as the
author. This will normally fix the problem. If after you contact them
and no action has been taken within 48 hours, contact the site's
ISP/Host and ask them to enforce their AUP (Acceptable Use Policy).
We expect them to follow our posted Publisher guidelines, however it
is up to you to take action if they don't.
http://EzineArticles.com/terms-of-service.html]

{When your response is unreasonable in it's timeline this becomes a much harder issue to contest. Another failure of timely response.}

[Each article is human reviewed by 2 editors. Sometimes, this brings
different outcomes, however every editor is trained to make educated
decisions by enforcing our editorial guidelines across the board and
we work hard at remaining consistent. If you have a specific issue
that we can address with you, I would be more than happy to go over
that issue with you. Our front line editors do not have the ability
to communicate with you 1x1. We reserve this for our more experienced
Senior editors and our Member Support Team who will assist you with
anything that you have a question on. It is through them, that you
will receive a more thorough response.]

{No again, your lack of timely response makes this another impossibility to bring up and take advantage of your statement of: " If you have a specific issue
that we can address with you, I would be more than happy to go over
that issue with you."

If that was the case, your response would have been far more proactive, and I would have been able to clearly demonstrate to you that your own policies are not being followed by your editors.

Your lack of timely response ensures that I can't show you a specific instance, and that you AREN'T anything close to happy, let alone "More than" happy to address it with me.}

{In closing, if you think I'm so foolish as to not see the wisdom behind reply far after the situation, than I am speechless as to your perception of people. If that wasn't your intention - I suppose that it's just "Bad luck" that the very same concept is taught in every basic college level business related degree at some point. The topic is typically "Dishonest sales tactics" but it's not really a customer service tactic that is part of what is considered an overall picture of "Dishonest sales tactics." And if that's the case, and that wasn't your intention - I hope that you will keep it in mind because you executed the dishonest tactic flawlessly.

We are finish the year out as agreed upon purchase, but will not be renewing. This should come as no surprise to you at this point. But it's not entirely because of your miserable customer service failure, as much as it is this:

Code:

hxxp://siteanalytics.compete.com/ezinearticles[dot]com/

Not wanting to put a backlink someplace I'm not supposed to I suppose you will just have to copy and paste it. Compare your site to your competitors.

Turns out a lot of webmaster's share my concern's over your editorial inconsistencies and customer (dis)service. Maybe read some forums, and get to know your customer a bit. It's our content that keeps adsense ads up after all.....}

Click to expand...