Geeeeeez-US!!! Tonight reminds me why I almost never do “research” in order to find “answers” anymore … and where is my Business Overwhelm tapping video when I need it?

My head is spinning. I have been using Aweber for my email service for several years. To be honest, I don’t use it that much. I continue to be wildly unimpressed with the commitment level of most users who sign up for “free” email newsletter lists. Of course there are exceptions, and that’s the only reason that I use an email service at all, to reach the people who really do want to benefit from Holistic Belief Reprogramming (HBR). Although, honestly, most of them somehow find me without me having to do anything at all …

Anyway, I digress … right now I am just baffled by Aweber’s pricing policies. It turns out that the monthly fee they charge continues to rise based on NON-ACTIVE SUBSCRIBERS — yes, that’s right, if someone joined your list three years ago and opted out two days later, AWEBER IS STILL BILLING YOU FOR THAT EMAIL CONTACT THREE YEARS LATER!!!

As someone who has many repeat customers — in fact, the strength of my business relies on it — this absolutely baffles me. Why would Aweber PENALIZE its most loyal customers by setting its billing rates in this way? In other words, the longer you stay with Aweber, the more people who will leave your list over time, and the more years you stay with Aweber with even a normal attrition rate, the higher your billing rate will get, regardless of whether your REAL SIZE OF LIST is increasing or not. After ten years with Aweber, you might be paying for a list ten times bigger than your actual live list.

THIS DOES NOT MAKE ANY SENSE!!! Who is setting these policies?

(I really do NOT mind paying a fair rate, it’s the principle of being billed for inactive leads that gets my goat. And the problem will just increase over time. I may be using my list less and less and being charged more and more.)

Thus, I set off on a “research” expedition of Aweber’s competitors, but damn is it a challenge to figure out who is actually offering a better service that is more fairly priced.

And if you transfer your list over to a new provider, you have to get double opt in from your entire list AGAIN? Annoying people with useless emails when they have been on your list for three years and obviously want to be on your list?

Thank goodness HBR has helped me (mostly) transcend this kind of nonsense. I rely very little on most of the gadgets and gizmos of internet marketing, and rely far more on pure magnetism to bring me financial abundance. I think if I had to deal with ridiculous bureaucracy like this more than a short time each week, I would have given up on my business long ago. For those of us who value “KEEPING IT SIMPLE,” this really is not fun.

I really hope Aweber will consider revising these silly policies and not drive its most loyal and long-term clients away. I would rather pay a somewhat higher monthly rate that actually tracks with the size of my real audience than risk paying for 10 times my real audience a few years down the road.

But if they won’t revise these silly policies, then I’d rather start my list over elsewhere now instead of facing an even starker dilemma two years from now.

Any thoughts on how to solve this dilemma are welcome. It’s been a while since I’ve been this fired up about something like this.

[UPDATE as of March 13 – Wow, that problem got solved fast, and it turns out the solution was easy. After I forwarded this article to him, the Aweber representative deleted my unsubscribed contacts for me, and he says my billing for the next cycle will reflect this change. In which case, I have been satisfied with Aweber, so there is no reason to switch providers. Nice and simple, this makes me happy :) ]