It’d be great if Netlify could implement a better support method for the veritable torrent of people that come to the forum daily and post concerning their account being blocked/suspended and having issues logging in or verifying their identity.
Surely the messaging being provided to the users could be clearer regarding what recourse (if any) they have and what is required from them, and push them to a non-public support stream, which would be better for everyone involved:
The user with the account issue
Netlify’s support staff managing the flood of requests via multiple channels
Active community members who cannot assist with these issues
I understand that users encountering these issues can use the Support Form and select Login/Signup for What kind of help do you need?, but a large number appear to do that and then immediately post on the forum due to an unsatisfactory automated response.
Tweaking the messaging alone may cut down on the clutter, but a dedicated support page with a simple form requesting precisely what is required upfront would be great (it could even post to exactly the same location as the existing form).
The following screenshots demonstrate just how much noise is frequently generated by these threads.
Another thing to point out is people have to share the email address they are using to sign-up/-in with in a public forum. These email addresses remain in the topic. At best users could hope to find themselves added to (yet another) spam list. At worst… I hate to think.
This information (IMHO) needs cleaning from topics when no longer required (i.e. issue resolved.) A system that doesn’t require sharing of such information in a public forum is a must better option.
Add me to the list. Honestly, I only turned to the forum after realizing my support emails weren’t going to get a response because Netlify killed all my DNS settings, which means I have no email either!
I would very much like to know what process results in wiping someone’s entire website off the Internet without any notification to them or fair warning or ability to reinstate it in a reasonable amount of time (hours and hours later still no response!)
Thank you for the feedback. We in Support agree some changes are needed in this process. We are meeting this week to discuss the issue and will bring these comments to the meeting. Thank you for starting this thread, @nathanmartin .
I might have thought this is something one or more people could/should/would have raised internally long before a community member raised it publicly @laura.
@dig I’d like to imagine it was, but as it does currently “work”, it’d be a low priority behind raging fires and new features that the higher ups are fixated on bringing to market.
Hopefully the post can spur some action though to save everyone’s time and sanity.
Related post from @travistravis whereby they encountered the sign up block and couldn’t readily continue despite contacting support and instead proceeded by self-diagnosing and disabling their VPN.
As always, better messaging/support would have helped reduce the inconvenience experienced and time wasted.
Having some decent messaging would be a good start, but I think a lot of issues could probably be solved without support staff being directly involved.
My situation is a good example, because having my VPN on/off was the difference between my new account being immediately suspended or immediately active. I don’t really see why there would be any security problem with automating the process by showing a message about the user’s IP address being suspicious, offering a few suggestions on solutions (disable VPN, etc), and providing a button to recheck the IP address.
I’m not sure what the other causes are for account suspension, but if they are as frequent as this post suggests, I assume there are probably a handful of common reasons which may be possible to offer automated solutions for.
This seems especially important in cases like @JeremyWasHere mentioned, where they had a live site taken offline and waiting on support could be costly.
