Woke up this morning to a suspended account from Twitter. Since they didn’t bother to notify me that they suspended my account, I have no idea what happened. I clicked the “head over this way” link on my profile page to find out why I was suspended. It displayed the following: “Entry not found. You do not have access to entry #14362. It may have been deleted.” Nice.
Per their direction, I filed a support request. Then, I noticed that their support policy states that they have up to 30 days to research my request and decide how to respond. 30 days? Really?? Do they actually consider that an acceptable level of customer service? If they suspend you, they should tell you why immediately.
I suppose I could sign up under another username. But, I don’t want to. I like my username. Changing usernames also feels defeatist since I can’t think of anything I did wrong. For now, I’ll just remove the feed I had in the right rail.
Chalk this up as a lesson learned on why you shouldn’t place complete trust in third party apps for communicating with customers and colleagues. If you do, make sure you back up your posts somewhere. Because right now, everything I’ve posted on Twitter is no longer available. I am not pleased.
Update: Day 2 of my Twitter account being suspended for no known reason. Apparently, they don’t need a reason. A Google search on “twitter account suspended” returned almost 2 million results. Most of these seemed to be similar experiences: account suspended, request for help sent, no response. One person claimed that accounts are being suspended for not using bit.ly as a url shortener. They think Twitter is being paid by bit.ly. Hmm, I do tend to user tiny url. If that’s the issue, Twitter should be up front about it and say they require you to use bit.ly.
Supposedly my support ticket was assigned to delbius. Since she hasn’t responded, I guess the only action I can take is to open more tickets.
Day 3: I finally received a response from Twitter after posting a complaint on Get Satisfaction. Twitter’s reason for suspending my account is “At some point, the link that you had put into your web or bio spot on your Twitter profile or a link you updated with was classified by either Google or Firefox (or both) as having some form of malware attached to it.” They said they removed the link and restored my account. Of course, they didn’t tell me which link it was. It wasn’t this site because the bio link from my Twitter profile to here still works. I went through all my Twitter posts that had links and they all appeared to be there. The only change I’ve made was to remove my Twitter widget. I guess I won’t be putting that back.
The experience as a whole has changed my opinion of Twitter. Used to love it. Now, it’s lost some of its luster. Customer service really does affect how you feel about a company.
