Open Letter To LinkedIn CEO Dan Nye, LinkedIn's Support Stinks

I hate to call out your company like this in a public forum, but enough is enough. It has been almost three weeks now that I have been trying to get access to my LinkedIn account, yet no one from LinkedIn's support department has been able to give me access. I've left messages twice in the past week for the media relations person listed on your website and have gotten no call back. I've traded nearly ten e-mails with your support staff with no luck. And to make matters worse, your support team tried to get me to change the password of someone else who has a linked in account with the same name, even after I told them I was not that individual.

All I want is to be able to login to my account. Support tells me that you don't have one on record for me and are telling to make a new one. They say you can't find my e-mail in the system and that I should make a new account. Ok, fine, if I have to make a new one I will, but when I try to create a new account I get an  error of:

There is a problem with the email address mail@danrayburn.com. Please contact Customer Service at customer_service@linkedin.com if you are the owner of this email address.

I've contacted your customer service who tells me that e-mail is not in your system and I should be able to create a new account with it, yet I can't. So Instead I try the e-mail of dan@streamingmedia.com and I get the same error message. When I tell support this, their response is "You could also try to join in as a new member." Didn't I just explain to you that is what I am trying to do? Ten e-mails later and still they are not listening to the problem I am having and it has been 19 days now since I sent in the first e-mail asking for help.

Why am I promoting LinkedIn on my blog by letting readers know about certain LinkedIn groups when this is the kind of support that is being provided? It took LinkedIn TEN days to contact me from the first e-mail I sent in asking for help and 19 days later, still nothing is solved. And why do you have a media relations person when they don't call back someone from the media who leaves them voice mail? I even said on the voice mail what the problem was and that I was going to blog about it if that is what it took but that I wanted to give them a chance to solve the problem first.  Still no call back.

So Dan I will ask you to please get involved and solve this. I would like to use my LinkedIn account, or if you can't find it, I would like to create a new one. That's all I am trying to do.

UPDATE: LinkedIn's media relations folks have contacted me and resolved the problem. Thank you.

Comments

[Niranjan Bhatia]

I have been struggling with navigating to any page on linkedin except the Home Page. My login name is nbbhatia@gmail.com. But none of the pages open. Can someone suggest the way to contact Linkedin Support, if there is any.

[Andy]

Linked in service is crap ! I logged in this morning and it said my password was wrong (it was not) I then requested a new password, followed the process to create a new one - THEN went back to log in after it told me my password was successfully created. It DID NOT log me in and told me my account was suspended. Has anyone got any Idea's what has happened ? Could this be sabotage from an outsider? Anyone experience the same thing?

[YaelOlga]

At first I was unable to sign then my profile disappeared and my connections too. Linkedin tech support has not solved the problem as yet. I am so incensed.

[YaelOlga]

Lindsey and Amy at Linkedin were very helpful and solved the problem ( see comments on 10/15 ). I got my connections back as well as access to my profile.

[Michael Seid]

How do you reach someone in customer service?

I have left multiple emails and telephone calls regarding a problem and no one has gotten back to me.

[Charla]

I run a non-profit that uses LinkedIn as a tool to reconnect with our alumni. We identify speakers for our meetings and run a group to let people know about events that are of interest to them. I am actually paying to be an upgraded member - right now even if I wanted to I couldn't log in to cancel. They suspended my account because they thought I "viewed too many pages" and was using some sort of automated system. First of all - I pay $50/month and they have locked me out of my account without a warning or giving me a chance to prove I am a human and not software viewing the pages. In my opinion, if you have an email only customer service you should respond within 24 hrs - period. If you don't want me viewing pages then don't give me search and organization options and CHARGE me for that privilege of searching by city, company etc. etc. Now that I have seen that some people have waited weeks to try to get back into their account I am worried. I plan to call their number tomorrow and hope to get through to a person who can solve this ASAP. I have at least 5 emails that still came to me through LinkedIn today and have no way to answer them!

This is what they say about it on the FAQ:

The information on LinkedIn is provided by our users for usage on the site only. In order to protect user privacy, our User Agreement prohibits automated or manual means for systematically viewing LinkedIn web pages. Your LinkedIn account may be restricted from viewing additional pages if we detect an unusually large number of page views from your account.

This can often occur if you use third party applications or websites that systematically retrieve data from your LinkedIn account on very frequent intervals. Please verify that you are not using such applications or websites. Once you have done this, you can contact Customer Service to request a review of your account and to consider restoring access.

[Paul]

This just happened to me the other day. I have no idea why, and I haven't heard back from my support request yet.

I fear things haven't changed with support there... does anyone have a direct email address of someone at linkedin that might actually help me?

Thanks,
Paul

[Eric Mowrey]

Thanks all who have posted here as I finally understand why L-In isn't working for me. I keep getting e-mails saying such and such a person has contacted you, but when I try to access my L-In account I get spit out for password. They are such comedians at LinkedIn because they put up "forgot your password?" and when you click on it it leads to nowhere. I have actually called several friends, long distance overseas, to explain I was not snubbing them but I can't get my account to function in spite of jumping through all the BS LinkedIn hoops. After reading these comments I will now give up. Blessed are those who have functioning accounts with these jokers LOL.