I woke up this morning and decided to see if I could log into Gowalla for shits and giggles. Well looky looky here. I was able to log in! It seems they’ve finally unbanned me for NOT CHEATING. I’ve been checking every few days to see if they have or haven’t unbanned me, again for shits and giggles. It’s been over 4 weeks since they banned me for just picking up an exclusive item.

After a few emails back and somewhat forth with Gowalla CEO Josh Williams (and never a response back from their main support email), I didn’t hear back from him for over 2 weeks. Last he said that my account would be reinstated with a group of other accounts & I would be able to start checking in again “soon.” That was over 2 weeks ago. Like I said in my last post on this matter, “soon” is a few days to me, not a week and not 2 weeks.

I have been knocking Gowalla hard on Twitter the past few weeks for their lack of communication skills and their terrible customer support. Gowalla and Josh Williams really need to work on these. Over the past few weeks I’ve heard from other Gowalla users (current and former) that have the same complaints about Gowalla’s customer service. It’s pretty pathetic that such a company in these days, especially one that is involved with social networking, has horrible communication and customer service skills.

I’ve mentioned this news on my Twitter feeed and I’ve been asked by several people if I’ll start using Gowalla again. In my last post I did say “Goodbye & Fuck You Gowalla.” Right now I don’t know what I’ll do. I still haven’t received an email from Gowalla or Josh Williams apologizing for banning me when I never cheated. I still think what they did was wrong and it’s been compounded by their lack of communication, terrible customer support, speed to resolve the issue (see posts 1, 2, 3), and the lack of any form of apology for the entire situation. And I still haven’t heard why they never selected me as a STE (mentioned to Josh Williams in our emails). Great communication skills! I still need to think about using Gowalla again. My anger towards them has not changed yet. Maybe someone at Gowalla will grow some fucking balls!

I would like to thank Lucas and JefCon1 for showing solidarity with me during the past 4 weeks (I think they were the ONLY ones to do so publicly) and anyone else that stopped using Gowalla because of this. Thanks to everyone that retweeted my posts on this. And to anyone else that didn’t feel like showing your support, “Go fuck yourselves, you cunts!”

Well, it’s been over three weeks since I was banned from Gowalla. If you need to catch up on what’s been going on, check out post 1 and post 2.

Here’s the latest. Since last week I have not heard back from CEO Josh Williams or Gowalla support on the matter. Josh said my account would be unbanned “soon” with a bunch of other accounts that were to be unbanned also. Well, “soon” to me means a few days. It’s been a week. Josh could have just had someone unban me right then, but it’s obvious that Gowalla doesn’t want me as a user.

Well, all I have to say to that is…

I don’t care if Gowalla unbans me or not any more. It’s been over 3 weeks and it took them only 3 hours to unban the person that was cheating. They consistently ignored my emails on different instances. And it appears they really don’t care about their once dedicated users.

Normally I can be a patient person. Shit, I waited 7 months to hear back about becoming part of your Street Team Elite so I could help other Gowalla users. Never heard back from them. They had set up other, less dedicated, less knowledge NEW users as STEs the very next day they sent you an email (go look on GetSatisfaction.com). FUCK YOU! Their support email never responded to my emails when I got banned, but the person I know that cheated they had unbanned in 3 hours. I didn’t cheat. Let me repeat that… I DID NOT CHEAT! FUCK YOU!

Josh Williams, you lied to me. That just makes it worse. You should not ignore your users. You really need to fix your communication skills and you need to learn some customer service skills too.

So now I’ll be using their main competition, Foursquare.

Goodbye Gowalla. Maybe you’ll learn from this.

If you follow me on Twitter or read my last post, you’ll have a good idea of what’s going on. Since whoever handles Gowalla’s main email contact doesn’t respond to my emails, I went to the top of the company by emailing Gowalla’s CEO, Josh Williams last week.

Josh seems like a very nice guy, but seems to lack the authority to get things done right away. This is what I’m getting from our correspondence, but I could be wrong. Being the CEO of any company one would think all you would need to do is bark out some orders and your employees do as you say. Doesn’t seem like that at Gowalla. Josh said that last week he’d have someone look into my situation. Nothing happened so a week later I emailed Josh again. Josh’s reply last night said that “We’re going to be reinstating several accounts that were turned off a couple weeks ago do to Terms violations and I’m sure your account will be included in that group. You’ll be able to resume your check-ins soon.” Ummmm… “soon”? Why not just tell someone to reinstate my account now? Why wait? What are you waiting for? What’s the hold up? It should be a very simple process to do.

My email to Josh on Wednesday mentioned in great detail on how they have ignored my emails on requesting to become a Street Team Elite member since January and with being banned for doing something less than cheating, while the person that cheated was unbanned within 3 hours and was sent a pleasant email from their main contact email. Josh said in his reply to me “Thanks for your patience for a reply. I know you’ve been disappointed with our response time on this one.” All I have is patience for lots of things and sometimes, just sitting and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting (like waiting to become a STE after 7 months) just erupts like a volcano.

Josh also mentioned that he was saddened with the fact I’ve taken my “frustration public in such a lengthy manner. It seems very unnecessary to me.” So now, it’s obvious that they are watching my Twitter feed (or just looking for mention of “Gowalla”) and maybe reading my blog. I’m not always the one to complain, but after being ignored with my request to help make the user experience better for all Gowalla users for 7 months while others got a 1 day response & acceptance and with no response as to why I was banned & someone that did something worse than me was unbanned very very quickly, just has finally pissed me off enough to scream my frustration to the world. This happens a lot. People need to voice their opinions about how they’ve been wronged by companies that didn’t do the right thing at first or just ignored their customers.

Although I have loved Gowalla since day one and made the entire state of Delaware and everyone else that follows me know this, I fell that I’ve been wronged so I made myself very vocal about the situation.

Companies should never ignore their customers/users. Never! They need to listen, find out what the issue is, and promptly try to fix it while communicating to their customers/users what’s going on. Gowalla got a lot of heat back in March during the item drought and when GowallaTools creator Ben Dodson gave up developing with Gowalla’s API a few months ago. Negative reviews and press are heard 5 to 10 times more than positive press. It’s a fact. Look at the issues with Apple’s iPhone 4. What a cluster-fuck that was. A simple issue that’s in every other smartphone blown out of proportion by the blogsphere, tech sites, and making all the news outlets in the world. Apple’s first few replies about the issue where received with a lot of shock, but they bounced back by trying to make the entire situation right with their customers and letting them know what was going on and what their plans were. And because I know that negative press is heard 5 to 10 times more than positive press, I went very public with the situation.

Josh, please don’t let your users be ignored. Communicate with them. Don’t give them the opportunity to become this frustrated with Gowalla that their only outlet/recourse is to be very outspoken & public about their issue.

Oh yeah, I am still banned from Gowalla. I’ve been playing with foursquare a lot in the past 2 weeks. I’ll have another post soon about all of that.