SubstackReviews of substack.com

I paid for 1 year plan of a newsletter. I canceled auto-renew. It just cancelled the subscription and I lost access to paid content. I tried emailing. I tried chatbots. I couldn't get a hold of real person. So I filed a charge-back. Substack team sent a bunch of logs to the credit card company and now I lost the dispute. I didn't have access to any of the paid content and I still don't. Go see check my account. and check the logs closely. I just kept reading free content. I am going to re-open the dispute. This is a huge inconvenience. Go with another publisher

I am being charged for a subscription that I cancelled and am unable to get through to customer service either via email or their chat. This is sad for authors as it will now stop me from subscribing in future

Substack's customer service was so bad that I wrote a blog called '3 Reasons Why Substack Sucks'. It's Tim Denning's fault. I love the guy; his emails are the only ones I always read, his work ethic is inspirational, and he shares tip top advice… except with his recommendation of joining Substack. This company may help Tim grow his readership and put a few more Ozzie dollars in his pocket, but they lack the most important part of a business: Good customer service. Notice how I used a simple adjective to describe what they're lacking. Not 'exceptional', 'incredible', or 'mind-boggingly magnificient'. Businesses that offer that type of customer service are rare oddities. So rare that they deserve a blog all of their own, which I will write and add a link to it here once it's complete. No, Substack is quite the opposite, and are definitely in my top 5 businesses with the worst customer service (this will be a link too). I don't ask for much, just simple good manners and being there for your customers when they need help. Do Substack offer that? Not even close. Quite the opposite. They take abysmal customer service to a whole new level. But it's not just one reason this shambles of a company suck. There are three. And I call them a shambles despite their success. Me harping on about their ineptitude will hardly bring them to their knees. If anything, people reading this might not know about Substack and join them! Alas, as we all know, the most powerful companies in the world are the most unethical, unscrupulous, vile behemoths, with so much control it can be depressing. However, all we can do is spread the word, as many have done recently concerning companies supporting Israel, and it has made a small dent in their income and customer loyalty. So, here are the 3 reasons why Substack sucks: Banned without telling me why I joined Substack earlier this year and added my blog posts that I started in December 2023. I added many and scheduled them for weeks into the future. I also added my email subscribers list. Not long after I received an email from Substack saying that my account had been deactivated. All of the blogs I scheduled were gone. They didn't explain why. I appealed this decision. This is the reply I got: Hi there, Tex here from Substack Trust & Safety. Thanks for submitting this appeal. Upon additional review we've determined that your publication is in violation of Substack's Content Guidelines and will not be reactivated. Best, Tex @ Substack Right. Thanks 'Tex'. I replied asking 'How is my publication in violation of Substack's Content Guidelines?' This brings me to my second reason to why Substack sucks… 2. No response Their customer service is so knuckle-bitingly bad that not only do they deactivate your account without telling you why. They also don't respond to your emails asking them to explain why they deactivated it. This is lazy, unethical, and ruddy rude! However, they did send an email asking me how I rated the support I received. Two options: 'Good, I'm satisfied.' and 'Bad, I'm dissatisfied.' Here's the chance I've been waiting for. An opportunity to tell them what I really think about their so called 'support'. I clicked my knuckles and wrote the most stinking report about their shocking service. Which brings me to the third reason… Rant into the abyss. You know the question 'if a tree falls and nobody's there, does it make a sound?'. Well, a similar question could be made about Substack's support. I tapped the hell outta my keyboard, ranting and raving about their non-existent support, that this kind of behaviour is unacceptable from any company. I spent a good 20 minutes giving it my all and working myself up again about their disgraceful non-support. SEND! Ahh, that's told them. It felt satisfying; a weight off my shoulders. I imagined it would be sent straight to the CEO and they'll be left with no choice but to buck up their ideas and start treating their customers with more respect. Customers, in fact, that are the lifeblood of the business. Without us writers there would be nothing on Substack. So, I wait for their response. In fact, I've been waiting for it since 10th February. So thanks Tim. And thanks to myself, for wasting my time and expending my energy writing to an irritatingly successful business with atrocious customer service. Maybe the clue is in their name. They announced it to the word that they're a SUB business. A SUBstantial waste of time. A SUBstandard excuse for a platform. What a STACK of s**t. Avoid.

I needed to put in a request that was simple but required a human support person to do it. The only way to contact them is through their chat feature. When you contact the chat, you speak to an AI bot, not a real human. The AI bot cannot actually do anything except forward you to articles in their help center, which I had already read. The article said to contact customer support, since this request must be handled manually... and that's what I was doing! The AI bot said they would forward my request to a human, and I should hear back from them in a few days. A week later, I still had not heard anything, so I went back to the support center, and repeated my request. The bot gave me the same answer: it would forward my request to customer support, and I should get an email in a few days. A week later, still nothing. I went back to the chat and demanded to speak to a real human right away. The bot said that was impossible. The only thing they could do was put in a request that a human contact me by email, and I should get that email within a few days. Weeks later, I still have not heard back from anyone, and my request has still not been handled. I regret signing up with them.

No customer service. The app works great but just hope you never have a problem.

No matter how many times I unsubscribe, no matter how many filters I create to auto delete their emails, they find away to put their junk in my inbox. It’s like cancerous tumors that just won’t stop spreading. And it is by design. They hide, or don't even offer "subscribe from all" because retaining as much newsletter subscribers is core of their business model. but if you force people to stay, obviously the numbers are worth very little, because half of subscribers have mentally checked out a long time ago. Very shady practice. I'm a very kind and giving person, but I truly - from the bottom of my heart - hope your business model fails horribly.

Sending lots of spam email, unsubscribe does nothing

Extremely dodgy practice of stealing emails. My email has been used to subscribe to their web pages. Never heard of them, the more reviews I read the same is happening to many others, they even have a section directly highlighting this in their privacy terms so it's clearly a problem. So not only are they breaching privacy laws and stealing your information like scammers, you can't trust their stats and reviews as they're most likely fake. I wouldn't go near this site, being associated with scamming email lists and false information speaks for itself