How Does MaxEmail Stay in Business?

Gary North

Nov. 5, 2009

Until yesterday, I used MaxEmail. It's a FAX forwarding service. Someone sends a FAX to a number, and the service forwards it to me as an email.

Except for one lonely soul, who FAXes me weekly, and whose FAXes I cannot read -- they are handwritten -- I never use the service. Also, there are free services like eFax. Google "free fax" and "services," and you get a lot of names. So, MaxEmail is in a competitive market.

Yesterday, I got an automated email from MaxEmail. It said that my credit card had expired. To renew, I had to go to the site to update my card's data.

Total attempted charge: $14.85

Your credit card issuer returned a decline message in place of an authorization to charge your credit card:

Decline reason: EXPIRED CARD

To re-submit this charge, please login at https://www.maxemail.com/fax/login.html, where you will automatically be directed to the credit card re-submission form. After you login, a list of any outstanding charges will be displayed for your review. Please DO NOT send credit card information via email for security reasons.

If you have any questions about why your credit card was declined, please contact your credit card company for more information. If you have any other billing questions, please take a look at our Billing FAQs or contact MaxEmail Customer Support.

If you have received this e-mail in error, please reply and let us know.

So, I went to the site, as directed. I could not log on. The software rejected me. It told me I had an incorrect name or password. I tried the usual combinations.

Finally, I had the system send me my missing password. The screen told me that my email address was in their system, and I would be sent my password in a few minutes. Here is what I received.

You are receiving this email because you requested that your MaxEmail account user name and password be emailed to you.

You do not have any active accounts using this email address at this time, although you may have an active account that is registered to a different email address.

If you have any questions, please reply to this email message to contact support.

Thank you, The MaxEmail Support Team

So, I could not pay the company. I was in the system. After all, my expired card was being billed. I had been sent an automated "missing password" letter. But I was not in their system, it said.

The right digit knoweth not what the left digit doeth.

The email directed me to reply: If you have any questions, please reply to this email message to contact support. So, I wrote: "How do I pay? Today, I got this:...." I included the EXPIRED CARD notice and the "not in data base" letter: "You do not have any active accounts using this email address at this time."

I got this as a response:

Thank you for contacting MaxEmail.

To re-submit a failed credit card charge, please go to www.maxemail.com and login to the Account Administration section of the website. You will automatically be directed to the credit card re-submission form, which will list all failed charges for your account and re-submit them all at the same time if there are multiple failed charges. On this page you have the option to resubmit the charge with the existing card or enter a new card if need be. Please be sure to click the button at the bottom of the page to resubmit the charge.

If you have lost the log in information for your account please use the following link. http://www.maxemail.com/max/lost_pswd.html

If we can be of further assistance please reply to this email.

Best regards, Bill MaxEmail

That was what I had already done, as my letter informed him. But I tried again. Same result as before. I could not log in.

I figured I was corresponding with a machine. Clearly, a human being would have seen the automated letter that had told me I was not in the data base. So, I wrote this:

This is so utterly useless that I will let the account lapse. You obviously are a machine. A dumb machine.

I will also publish an article on my site titled "MaxEmail -- or MaxEmess?"

I'll send it to you on Friday. It's a shame a machine can't read.

Incredibly, I received a reply. It wasn't a machine after all. It was a human being who does not understand marketing.

Sorry if you thought that was a automated response, it simply restated what our original email to you instructed on resubmitting the charge.

Your MaxEmail account has been canceled as requested. Your credit card will no longer be charged by us for this account.

Thanks for using the service, and we hope that you'll keep us in mind for your future faxing needs.

Best regards, Bill MaxEmail

He had personally canceled my account.

People with similar marketing skills fill customer response departments around the Internet. Some of them barely speak English. Others cannot read. This fellow was one of the latter.

How do these companies make a profit? The number-one rule in marketing is this: Make it easy for a customer to spend money. You would think that senior managers of on-line firms would understand this. They don't, or if they do, they cannot get the programmers and customer support staffs to implement it.

Nobody tells them. There is no feedback. The digital systems fail to work. The support systems fail to work. Nothing changes until the companies fold.