Word from Sarah Carr !!

It's about time.

I've heard from another Earth Class Mail user who feels betrayed by their outrageous price increase. While Earth Class Mail President and COO Sarah Carr has been too cowardly to post to Twitter or comment to this Blog about Earth Class Mail's vile price hike on loyal users, you can imagine my amazement to learn that she replied directly to one of the loyal users she betrayed. That user contacted Earth Class Mail directly about ECM's reprehensible actions, and received a reply from none other than Sarah G. Carr herself.

Here are some choice words, straight from Sarah Carr:

Thank you for being a loyal customer of ECM. I am sorry that the price increase is causing you to reconsider continuing your service.

Come on Sarah, are you really "sorry" that loyal customers are reconsidering? With a price increase of over 100%, what did you expect?! And if you you really want to thank loyal customers of ECM, you would grandfather them in at a reasonable price. Actions are louder than words. They should have taught you that even way back at Lehigh. Carr continues:

Unfortunately we cannot continue to serve our customer base at the size it is without raising our prices.

Funny, here is a whole list of alternative online postal mail services which offer their services at sometimes half of what you now do! So clearly it is possible.

Our cost to serve our customers is out of line with our current pricing and we need to bring them more in line.

Unfortunately we cannot grandfather our existing customer base, as we could not maintain that base at current pricing and stay viable.

Well, that's the heart of it all right there. Fine. But why then did Earth Class Mail allow users - and worse - encourage users, to change all our addresses over to Earth Class Mail? You sell us the service at one price, then lock us in by having us change all our addresses over to your service, and then you brazenly more than double your prices? Is that even legal?

Again, you have this great concern about staying "viable," but St. Brendan's Isle, Bongous, My RV Mail, Paperlessmail, UK Postbox, Private Box, Virtual Postal Mail and Zumbox all seem to be viable companies without shafting over loyal customers. Earth Class Mail stands alone at having betrayed the trust of their loyal customers and raising prices on them over 100%.

I hope that you will continue to value our service and stay with us, but I also understand that you may no longer see the value in our new pricing plans.

You MUST be kidding. What did they teach you at Lehigh? Actions speak louder than words and any "hope" you have would be far better placed in being reasonable with your loyal customers. We valued your service tremendously at the prices we originally signed up with. We valued it still when - at Earth Class Mail's encouragement - we changed all of our addresses over to our Earth Class Mail addresses. We stopped valuing your service when you indecently raised prices on us over 100%. Your actions are reprehensible, so yes, you had better believe that we "no longer see the value" in your new pricing plans.

Sarah G. Carr, you should be ashamed of yourself and the way that you have mistreated and misled the loyal customers who helped Earth Class Mail get started. You remain a fine example of what's wrong with corporate America and how not to treat customers.

Chris Anderson's "Free" - A Solution for Earth Class Mail?

Earth Class Mail have betrayed their loyal customers with a massive price hike of over 100%. This is obvious and has been well established.

Chris Anderson, the editor of the exceptional publication, "Wired" has written a New York Times best seller called, "Free: The Future of a Radical Price" - addressing the Freemium economics that technology has helped accelerate (and which clearly no one at Earth Class Mail has paid any attention to). One of the Freemium Economics models could perhaps rescue Earth Class Mail from their price hike scandal.

So, Sarah Carr et al, how about it? Give us loyal individual customers a break, and charge the companies and businesses that want to use your service and need all of the extra features? We've all lost a tremendous amount of faith in you, but here is a chance to make this right.

Sarah Carr and Earth Class Mail VCs, I challenge you. You can of course buy a copy of "Free" and read it that way, or you can preview it below. Also, the audio book is available complete and unabridged entirely for free, here at iTunes - put that in your iPod Sarah Carr!

It's a bit of a lost cause on my part, I know... but I just wish Sarah Carr would get with the times and learn how to treat customers properly. Instead of moving Earth Class Mail backwards, move it forwards into the future....and treat your loyal customers with the respect they deserve:

Earth Class Mail & the Better Business Bureau

I have yet to contact the Better Business Bureau about Earth Class Mail's offensive price hike, but one commenter to this blog suggested doing so via this link:

https://odr.bbb.org/odrweb/public/getstarted.aspx

I'd be curious to hear if any Earth Class Mail users have contacted the BBB about Earth Class Mail's reprehensible actions, and what transpired when they did. Perhaps it is an avenue for those of us who have been wronged by Earth Class Mail to pursue...

Earth Class Mail Alternatives - Part 2

Sadly, the Wikipedia entry that I linked to in my previous posting was heavily edited within mere hours of my linking to it so as not to show comparisons of Online Postal Services anymore. [Update: the comparison chart has now been restored, but with the names and links of companies surpressed.] Were Sarah Carr and Earth Class Mail behind this? Probably, though I can't prove it. They so can't resist undermining loyal customers that it seems like their M.O.

Anyway, fortunately it's no real problem as I have the handy chart comparing all the services, complete with the names of the companies, that was deleted from the Wikipedia entry. Click here to view it in full:

The Now Deleted Wikipedia "Online Post Office" Comparison Chart (Companies included)

And since the links to the services in the chart don't work in an image, I'm happy to provide them all here, plus some additional services not featured on the chart:

• St. Brendan's Isle
• Bongous
• My RV Mail
• Paperlessmail
• UK Postbox
• Earth Class Mail ( BEWARE of customer betrayal! )
• Private Box
• Virtual Post Mail
• Zumbox
• US Global Mail
• MailboxForwarding
• MailLink Plus
• USA2ME

Those are plenty of healthy alternatives to Earth Class Mail. Again, switching to a new service would not be necessary if Earth Class Mail hadn't treated their loyal customers with such disregard by highjacking prices.

Also, notice how Earth Class Mail's prices on the chart are still old and reasonable and do not reflect the new grossly inflated prices initiated by Sarah Carr. Some poor uninformed soul will be in for a rude and expensive surprise when they sign up.

My advice when seeking and signing up for a new, more reasonably priced alternative to Earth Class Mail is to find a service which openly agrees to:

Grandfather loyal, established customers at a reasonable price.

and /or

Not raise their prices faster than the U.S. Consumer Price Index.

Earth Class Mail has done neither and this is where loyal users have really been hurt and betrayed by Sarah Carr et al. The U.S. Consumer Price Index has plummeted in the last 12 months, yet Earth Class Mail raised their prices on estlablished and loyal customers over a 100% - more than double! Truly despicable actions on the part of Earth Class Mail.

Earth Class Mail Alternatives

When I began this blog, some accused me for working for Earth Class Mail's competition. Rest assured, I do not. I would far rather stay with Earth Class Mail, but I can't pay their new outrageous prices so I am going to need to seek an alternative before my current term at ECM expires. And even then, I will continue to maintain this blog and remind people of Earth Class Mail's abominable treatment of loyal customers.

Recently, I've been hearing from more and more people who would like to know of reasonably priced and less morally reprehensible alternatives to Earth Class Mail. I did tweet about some alternatives at one point, but I hesitate to mention them here (or continually on Twitter for that matter) for fear of being accused of working for one of them, and also because I don't want to give any of them free advertising. I certainly am not getting a thing for steering people to them, and I'd like to keep the focus here on Earth Class Mail and their offensive treatment of loyal customers with their price hike.

Still, with very valid reason, people are asking me for alternatives with increased frequency. So, as a bit of a compromise, I've decided to share this one link to a Wikipedia entry about online post offices:

UPDATE 9/2/2009: Unfortunately someone (Sarah Carr or one of her disciples?) heavily edited the Wikipedia Entry the day I linked to it here. Click here to read a new posting about Earth Class Mail Alternatives that has all the key information that was deleted from the Wikipedia entry.