3 Reasons I Deleted My Triberr Account

I recently wrote about Triberr in an article titled, “Triberr: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” in which I outlined a few good things about Triberr and followed it up with a few things about Triberr that weren’t all that sexy to me. At the time I decided to keep pushing forward with Triberr, and tried to put some of the Triberr tips that were left in the comments to use.

I’m not going to get in to the how to’s and what is Triberr in this post, if you would like a better idea of what Triberr is about and how it works, check out Mavis Nong’s article, “Triberr – Do You Really Know What it Is and How it Works?” In Mavis’ article you’ll see she has a very different opinion in regards to Triberr than I do.

Why I Stopped Using Triberr

As I mentioned above I continued to move forward with Triberr, and that lasted until last week when I decided to pack up my Triberr goods and head out the door. Here’s why I deleted my Triberr account.

Poor Customer Service

After reading my examples of the customer service I’ve encountered while being a Triberr member I’m sure you’ll see why I have a hard time agreeing with those that say Triberr’s service is great. It’s important to note that upon signing up with Triberr I immediately purchased “Bones”, a form of Triberr currency. I believe I paid $35, which in my book makes me a paying customer.

Example 1

I’ve seen a lot of rave online about how quickly Dino and Dan respond to feedback on blogs in my reader, all though my personal experience is much different. My first example would be how quickly Dino and Dan jumped on to comment in my good, bad, ugly post. I thought that was great and they both addressed specific points that I brought up, I responded to each of their responses, especially since Dino was curious as to what my response would be. Neither party returned to that post or responded to my comments.

Example 2

Seeking customer service and not getting it is one thing, being falsely accused of something is another thing, when a business accuses a paying customer of something without doing their homework it’s a major fail. I intended to write a post based on this one email alone and feature it in my email bag series, but never got around to it. With the recent developments in regards to Triberr and this post there’s no better time than now to address it.

Here’s a look at an email I received from Dino Dogan on June 29th.

Since it was VERY clear to me that Dino didn’t do any homework in regards to this matter I had a lengthy response that proved how unfounded the “tribes” claims were and how I felt about him assuming anything in regards to this. Here’s a few snippets from my response to Dino.

Facts I included:

Dino responded with:

I even went as far as to tell Dino that I was seriously considering leaving Triberr , Dino never responded. Here’s what I said.

I can’t help but think there’s a much better way of going about these things, and I honestly can’t imagine taking this stance when the premise of the entire system was built around “automagically” tweeting updates through people’s feeds.

Example 3

I would imagine that Triberr would have a good idea of what users are free users and which users are paying customers. Where I’m from and in my small business EVERY customer matters, regardless if it’s a customer that’s taking advantage of free tanning or a VIP Club member. EVERY customer matters, and losing a customer is NEVER acceptable. I forget sometimes that not every business operates with that same creed in mind, and that’s understandable as every business is different. I do however have a different feeling when it comes to dismissing a customer, dismissing an existing or previous customer in any business is a bad move. When I tweeted that I was leaving Triberr here is the series of tweets that took place between Dino Dogan and myself.

Dino’s reply to my tweet:

If that’s not dismissing vs fixing I don’t know what is. I don’t run Triberr, I’m not the founder and I have no idea what their ultimate goal is, but I do know that if I were in the Triberr drivers seat I would try to see if the issue can be resolved, and certainly never dismiss any customer. What made this response more of a shock to me was the fact that Dino personally invited me to Triberr not once, but twice (I didn’t do anything when I received my first invite).

Questionable Bugs

I’m no rookie when it comes to the internet and web development. I’ve been at it on the web for well over a decade now with experience in everything web development related. I’m not one of those types to refer to myself as a guru, I’m just one of those guys that knows enough to get by. I understand that bugs happen when making changes and I fully understand that they don’t always take two seconds to fix.

Earlier in this post I mentioned that I didn’t do anything when I received my first Triberr invite, the reason behind that was due to the fact that at the time Triberr only offered a “auto-mode” which meant that everyone in your Tribes articles would automatically, or as Dino puts it “automagically” be tweeted through your twitter feed. If you’ve followed me on Twitter @extremejohn or read my blog for any length of time you probably know that I don’t do “auto” anything. I want to see everything that’s going to my Twitter feed BEFORE it gets there, I read every article I retweet and I don’t retweet things I don’t read. Everyone has their own personal Twitter policy, that’s mine.

Acting on feedback from the blogging community Triberr added a “manual mode”. That’s when I went on the hunt for a Triberr invite, @Dino_Dogan was nice enough to send me one. The minute I signed up to Triberr I updated my info and set the two Tribes I was in to “manual mode”. This worked out great for me, I found a few new blogs to subscribe to and met a couple of bloggers I didn’t know before and most importantly I controlled what was retweeted through my account.

Sometime last week Triberr added a new feature that allowed users to set individual users in their Tribes to either manual or automatic mode. There was a handy little message at the top of the screen when I logged in informing me of the changes. After reading some of the comments I realized that I better check my settings, it seems there’s a small bug that sets “random” Triberr members to auto mode even if you had manual mode settings. I quickly went through my Tribes on Wednesday and to my surprise my manual settings did not carry over for all users, random Tribe members were set to automatic mode without me knowing it. I figured, no biggie, a quick bug, I reset and re-verified that all users were set to manual mode including each individual tribe. When I looked at my Twitter feed on Thursday I realized a bunch of tweets that I never approved were sent through my feed. To say it pissed me off is putting it lightly.

I logged back in to my Triberr account to see what was going on. I was pretty surprised to see that the same exact Tribe members I set to manual mode on two previous occasions were set back to atuo. Up until this point I’ve been more than patient with Triberr, bugs, and customer service issues. In one last attempt to get a real answer or resolution to this situation I tweeted Dino back after receiving my dismissal above. Here’s what I said along with Dino’s response.

Sorry Dino, but the first thing to come off of your finger tips should have been an apology for the inconvenience. The second move should have been to address my concern, not tell me about how long a feature has been in development and certainly not to dismiss the issue as a few broken eggs. It’s hard to sell me on a feature that’s malfunctioning and flat out ignoring my settings.

As you can see I’m not the only one that noticed this issue.

Notice the time stamp, 12 hours ago. This means that the issues with Triberr going “automagic” on certain users still exists as I write this post, it’s now Monday night at 9pm which means it’s gone on since at least Wednesday. I wonder how many other users never even notice it. Hmmmm…

Lack of ROI

Based on the two tribes that I was part of during my time with Triberr I believe my reach was extended to something like 65,000 users, about 10x more then my reach would be if I didn’t use Triberr. One thing that didn’t increase with that reach was actual traffic, even with retweets of my articles going out on others Twitter streams and a massive extended reach the return wasn’t anywhere near 10x as the reach would suggest. As a matter of fact there was no noticeable change in my Google Analytics, nor did I see any of the Triberr url shorteners as referrals.

Last but certainly not least is the fact that I personally like to think that tools for social media and bloggers should increase networking. I think the entire number of tribe members that actually interacted and still do till this day is all of about three, hardly a staggering number considering the extended reach.

In addition to lacking any real social networking value and hardly offering any significant traffic, I really never benefited from purchasing the Bones I picked up when I first joined Triberr. I’m sure that other bloggers have all kinds of success stories with Bones and Inbreeding, I personally never got anywhere with them.

Parting Shots

Those of you that read my blog on a daily basis know that I tend to tell it how I see it, sometimes this can come across harsh as much as that might not be the intention. Hopefully Dino Dogan and Dan continue to work diligently on Triberr to improve it’s features and functionality. I also hope that in the future they take a different position when making changes that directly effect their users, and lastly I hope they consider the importance of keeping paying customers vs questioning their ways and wishing them luck when they walk out the door for good reason.

If the Triberr crew can resolve a few of the issues I mentioned and they’ll have me back I’ll consider giving it another run. If not, I’m ok without Triberr and I’m sure Triberr will be just fine without me.

You’re Up

I’m sure there will be plenty of Triberr supporters that want to show their support for Triberr and share all of their success stories, there might even be a few of you that share the same views about Triberr as I do. Here’s your chance to let it fly, leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Tagged as: bloggers, blogging, networking, Social media, SocialMedia, Triberr, Triberr Review, Twitter Tool

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