How Do I Send a Complaint to LinkedIn?
If you’ve been reading my blog or my tweets, you should realize that a lot of people are upset about the changes in LinkedIn Group and Inbox functionality that occurred last week. From the average user perspective the changes may seem minimal, but for those power users and LinkedIn Group Managers who are the best evangelizers for LinkedIn (I love you LinkedIn!) the changes are quite significant.
I am already feeling the pinch. My next Windmill Networking in Southern California So Cal Sushi LinkedIn Group event is tomorrow. I used to be able to easily send an email to the subset of group members that RSVPed me that they could attend. I can now only send out an Announcement OR have to use the very inefficient Inbox to spend a few minutes just to send out an email to multiple contacts. Composing a message to multiple recipients on Inbox, in essence, sucks.
I sent out an Announcement a few days ago to remind people of the event and basically positioned it as a last call for RSVPs. Today I got notified from the restaurant that they might put some PR muscle into this to try to get a lot more people to come to the networking event. Great! And because the common factor of those who are attending is their LinkedIn membership, it further evangelizes LinkedIn.
But, not so fast. The Announcement feature, which allows the Group Manager to send out a message to everyone in the group, can only be used once a week. My last Announcement was a few days ago. I cannot send out another Announcement. And it is just too inefficient to send out mass emails…after all, that is why LinkedIn wants you to use the Announcement feature and NOT email the entire group. So now I only have the option of placing a Discussion on the Discussion Board and hope that everyone sees it in the next 24 hours…I’d be lucky if 5% of my group members happen to be looking at it today.
So now you see how the new restrictions on LinkedIn Groups make it a bad scenario for both the Group Managers and Members. But what to do about it? How do I send a complaint to LinkedIn? And I don’t mean contacting Customer Service as they are the gate keepers and not the decision makers. I’ve been blogging about this all week, but now someone in Mass Media has come to our rescue.
Patrick Kitano of Social Media Today is to thank for taking the call to action. He has written a very concise blog post on what the LinkedIn Group issues are, echoing a lot of what I have been saying, and he also says that we should complain to the source of the problem: Reid Hoffman, the CEO of LinkedIn. He includes Reid’s profile URL and does note that Reid is currently accepting InMails. Now, you do need to have a Paid account to send an InMail, so this is not an advertisement to upgrade (I am still on the free account, by the way 
, but even if a fraction of the thousands of people who read this blog every month will send Reid an email, it may make LinkedIn a better place for all of us. And, I suppose that you can truly now say that paid membership does have its privileges…a chance to directly send an email to the CEO!
Thank you, and Viva La Revolution!
Neal Schaffer is recognized as a leader in helping businesses and professionals embrace and strategically leverage the potential of social media. An award-winning published author, frequent speaker at social media events, and an avid blogger, Neal is President of 
Comments
[...] this Group right after LinkedIn made all of those terrible Group changes which I mention in my How to Complain to LinkedIn? and other posts, so I have seen some pretty passionate conversations from Group managers like me [...]
To my surprise one day i saw that i have an profile on linkedin,that i definitely NOT registered myself.I cannot even view my own profile.Pls help me to remove it
As I am not in any way affiliated with LinkedIn, you will need to contact LinkedIn Customer Service and let them know. They have always been very helpful to me, so I am sure they will be able to address your problem for you. Good luck and do let us know if they were able to resolve your problem or not.
LinkedIn is a terrible company. They misled me regarding getting more traffic on my website and now they are charging my account. Do not give them your credit card info. There customer service is a joke. You may be able to get in touch with a person at 650.687.3555.
LinkedIn is a terrible company. They misled me regarding getting more traffic on my website and now they are charging my account. Do not give them your credit card info. There customer service is a joke. You may be able to get in touch with a person at 650.687.3555.
Neal, I am not sure how you were able to reach customer service at Linkedin. I have sent no less than 3 emails to customer service from my primary email address in the last 72 hours because they have restricted my account based on the number of people who have viewed my profile in the last week. This all occurred because I created a new group that has generated alot of interest and is adding members everyday at a high rate. The one phone number found on the linked in page for customer service just leads to voice mail. So to my group members it appears that I have just abandoned the group and to others who have sent me email it looks as though I am not responding.
I'd love to hear how you found legitimate contacts and talked to real people.
I am sorry to hear about your situation. In fact, I know someone who's account was similarly restricted just because they spent a lot of time organizing the tags of their contacts. Bizarre!
I have usually gotten pretty quick initial response from LinkedIn, but from there the results have been random. I think that since LinkedIn has so many members now, they really are only giving quick responses to paid members, for which they guarantee a 24-hour response. I would keep trying to contact Customer Service by following the on-screen rules every day until they contact you. In addition, if you are on Twitter or Facebook, you can try to post a message on their “Wall” or tweet at them.
Other than that my only other suggestion is to create a new LinkedIn Profile using a different email address in order to mitigate the risk. I realize that this will not get your Group back, but at least you can contact Group members to tell them what happened and have them help you in complaining to LinkedIn. Maybe the public knowing will be the best support you can have.
Best of luck in your situation, and do let us know how it goes.
@NealSchaffer