LockedIn LinkedIn Premium: a US$24.95 rip-off

by Lee Hopkins on December 19, 2009 · View Comments

in PR, ethics, marketing, tools

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“WOW!”

My profile has been viewed by 11 people in the last 30 days, it seems. At least, so says LinkedIn. Or should it be LockedIn

“I never used to be able to see who had searched on me, so purchasing the Premium version of LinkedIn for a month would open a door otherwise closed!” Cool!!

In the email that congratulated me on taking out Premium membership I was promised the following perks:

As a premium subscriber, you get these perks:

  1. InMail™ messages to get the conversation started. [snip]
  2. View the full profiles of all LinkedIn members. [snip]
  3. Find the right people, faster. [snip]
  4. Save and organize new contacts into folders of your choice. [snip]
  5. See who’s viewed your profile. Get more information on who’s interested in you from customers, to suppliers, to recruiters and more.

The button says, "Who's Viewed My Profile" and a pair of binocularsNote that: “See who’s viewed your profile”. There’s even a button on the page about Premium member benefits.

All of which would lead you to assume, quite reasonably, I would argue,  that you can see the names of those who have viewed your profile. That’s certainly why I bought the Premium package for a month.

So here’s today’s ‘Who’s Viewed My Profile’ box:

the box is telling me that my profile has been viewed by 11 people in the last 30 days on LinkedIn

“A-HA!” I thought. Let’s see who in Melbourne, a leader in the Management Consulting industry, is looking at my profile…

Here’s what I saw when I clicked on the link above:

image

Please note that only ONE of them is from Melbourne, and not the first result (which is what I would have expected).

“Okay,” I thought, “let’s see who at Telstra has been viewing my profile.”

who in telstra has been viewing my profile, I asked

image

Well, it certainly gets a bit more helpful here. Andrew Cronin I know, as I do Jono Haysom (fine Adelaide lad that he is!). But I’m not so sure that I know Peter Habib and Nicole Bordne; that’s not to say I DON’T know them, but just that I don’t immediately recognise the names.

Well, let’s see if someone from the PR and Comms industry in Adelaide who has viewed my profile is someone that I recognise…

I decide to check who in the PR and comms industry from Adelaide has been viewing my profile

Now THIS was a bizarre result: no one – the search result came back showing the first page of people were from cities NOT called Adelaide

the search result, showing the first 10 were from cities NOT called Adelaide

So I tried a couple of times more, just to convince myself that there was absolutely no difference between the free version of LinkedIn and the Premium, US$24.95 per month version.

image

To the search for someone in the PR function in the PR and Comms industry from Adelaide came, surprise, no one from Adelaide. I was getting used to this.

image

And when looking back down the binoculars to see who had been viewing me from a Leadership function in the PR and Comms industry in Adelaide, I found out that – you are going to find this hard to believe, but it’s true – no one from Adelaide was looking at me.

image

It turns out – and you only get told of this once you have paid for your premium membership – that names are withheld for privacy reasons. But seeing names was the whole bloody reason for upgrading! Grrrrrrrrr…….

In search of the ‘unsubscribe’ button…

So I decided to cancel my membership. Did you naively think that they would make that an easy process? I laugh at you…

Everywhere I looked, even in my cheery welcome email congratulating me on upgrading my account, I could not find a ‘downgrade your membership’ or ‘unsubscribe’ button.

Sure, I could cancel my account if I wanted to, but that’s being a little bit dramatic!

As we say here in Australia (quoting a TV advert that ran for a while and captured our hearts),

“NOT HAPPY, JAN!”


  • @lee, I'll be glad to walk you through our premium feature set. If you'd like to unsubscribe, I'll let our CS team know and they can help out. feel free to email me with any questions.
  • That's something else!! I recently started re-vamping my Linkedin profile and wondered if the upgrade was worth it. I'm glad I haven't wasted any of my money.
  • you might like to check out XING.com - makes quite a difference in showing who visited your profile
  • That's astounding, Lee. I was just considering the Premium option on LinkedIn recently. I wondered how it would work, if I'd set my own privacy options so that I wasn't identified by others. Now we know!
  • This is where it pays to read some of the LinkedIn books, which explain that having a premium account lets you see a longer list of who's viewed your profile, but not more details; individuals have a choice about showing or hiding that. (You, too: it's in your profile settings.)

    It *is* possible to downgrade your premium account; it says so in the help files. And I'd recommend doing so immediately. Everything I've heard/read suggests that unless you are a recruiter and want to be able to send InMail to total strangers, a premium account has no value.
  • Books, Sallie? Books? I don't have enough time to go to the toilet, let alone read BOOKS!
    :-)
  • Plenty of time to waste your money for lack of asking someone whether it would be worth spending it, though, apparently.
  • LOL - but you're talking to 'Mr Spontaneity' here, Sallie :-)
  • Lee, thanks for sharing and sorry to hear of you less than positive experience. I find it disturbing and upsetting that another business built on social media/networking is doing such a poor job at delivering a fantastic customer experience.

    Why wouldn't LinkedIn offer us long time members a free taste of the premium service? Based on your experience, it might be because there is no real value behind the curtain they have constructed?!

    Best,
    Pat
  • I agree, Pat; the 'Freemium' model would work well here - a 30-day free trial of Premium to create an appetite, with an 'unless you contact us we will beginning charging against your paypal account in 30 days from now' clause. That seems fair for both parties.
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