Do you respond to "Lol, I'm not paying for this" emails?
I run a community with about 500 paying members. I get few new signups every day and 99% of the time the feedback is very positive.
But every once in a while I get an email that sucks all the joy out of creating something for people.
It usually is a response to "Your trial ended" email and goes something like:
Lol, I'm not paying for this.
Is this a joke? Do people really pay for this? What a bunch of losers!
What bothers me the most about those is that there's no constructive feedback. Just pure spite. I'm surprised people even take time to write those emails.
Do you get such messages as well? Do you reply to them? Try to explain the value of your product? Or just ignore the jerk and delete the email?
I've gotten (and get) those. Almost everybody who has an online/software business get these.
Never take it personally! Just look at your healthy numbers (99% positive feedback!). You can never satisfy everybody, so don't try to.
Every now and then, I'll make it a sport and try to convince them. Saying I need to make money to 1. run the service and 2. get a salary out of it (just like they do)—just an honest story. I've been able to convince some! Others continue their nonsense—those I simply ignore (create an email rule to send their emails straight to the bin).
Nice, thanks for the tip!
Pieter Levels from Nomadlist said on the IH podcast that a lot of people give him hard time for making them pay and he responds by saying that he is doing this for a living and needs to make money.
"Lol, that's the beauty of capitalism. You don't have to. You also don't get to use it. Lol."
Haha! Tempting, but that would just be lowering myself to their level.
Sure. We can always dream. It just sounds mental to me though. Nobody goes into a restaurant and gets the bill and goes "lol I'm not paying for this". If you don't want to pay, don't eat! Or make more money so you can get the gadgets you want. That's it. Don't complain to the gadget maker.
Obviously if your pricing strategy is wrong and it's sub-optimum then that's one thing. But that doesn't mean you will stop getting those emails. You will always get them.
Also I'd rather charge more and have fewer well supported customers than less and have more customers. Making the same money either way. But by charging more you're going to get more "lol not paying" emails. In which case it would be an indication of health. 🙂
Checked out the site. Looks great. Keep it up 👍
As a rule of thumb, you should avoid as much as possible to engage in a negative way. I've had a few angry customers in the past and the best thing was always to reach out to get more feedback about why they were upset. And if that person was trolling you can see it right at the beginning and simply disengage.
At the end of the day we're building things for large communities and it's just impossible to satisfy everyone (you can always find someone that hates chocolate cake). Some will genuinely feel bad about your offer, regardless of what it is.
As @eelcoj said it here you should focus on the positive first and accept that statistically, you'll get some negative. But what I can guarantee is that if you respond negatively you're 100% going to regret it.
I get that at times too, they would say it is not fair to charge them a recurring fee, etc when they very well know that it is a subscription based.
Try probing further on why they won't pay - might help you rethink your value proposition or even target audience.
Ya, i'm with Derek on this one @pawelkadysz. Turn this into an opportunity and ask what needs to change for there to be value enough to pay for the product. You may also try to get more information on why they signed up to begin with, and try to learn if this is the right target audience.
It's always difficult to get negative feedback. But don't let it get you down. Remember, in your own words usually its more positive. That's a good thing. And those people are paying you. They are the ones that matter most.
Good luck!
I respond because I enjoy being petty, and enjoy the ability to insult my own (prospective) customers on occasion. I find it cathartic to respond in-kind to bad behavior. I once went out of my way to exhaustively dispute a fraudulent chargeback, and then send the resulting victory to the customer. This brings me joy. If it doesn't bring you joy, I strongly recommend archiving these emails unread.
This is a big part of running a online business, especially since people are not physically in touch with you they can be rude or don't care about their action.
When I receive such emails I simply let them know I appreciate they have taken their time to reply to email (payment reminder) instead of ignoring it and from there I ask if they could give me some feedbacks.
In some cases I've let the people to have 1-2 to months of free service when they have given me constructive feedbacks.
People are cheap. Some are fickle. If they see something on trial, they may try it and will never pay for it anyway. That is ok. They are not your target so just file it away as "cost of doing business". Since 99% of your feedback is positive, that is good enough.