I’m a long time customer of Topica (nearly 10 years!), an email service I use based in California. I am constantly amazed at how a company that so despises their own customers remains in business. Topica offers no phone support and takes days, if ever, to get back to email requests for help. Try calling their San Francisco offices and all you get is a voice telling you what email addresses to write to. It's a joke!

That’s why when I started my company, Samson Media dot net and was looking to build new email marketing lists, the first thing I did was to phone up Topica competitors to see what the tech support experience would be, after suffering for so long as a Topica client.

Lo and behold, companies like Constant Contact and iContact, the company I now use for my own email marketing, all answered the phone with a human being who spoke English and was located right here in America! I was astonished! This was in stark contrast to the “Don’t call us, we’ll email you” approach that Topica embraces.

So it amazes me that with all the competition out there in this space, a company like Topica continues to keep their customers at arm’s length and will go out of their way to avoid providing support for what is generally considered a commodity product. It’s a helluva business model, especially in these tough economic times. If I could move my list without losing the opt-in value of all my thousands of subscribers, believe me—-I’d be so gone. But for now, I’m stuck.

problems perceived:

* "invite suscribers" do take a lot of time, some people is not invited
* LOT of offers during suscription aceptation, SI LA PERSONA QUE SE SUSCRIBE NO SABE INGLES SE ASUSTA Y NO COMPLETA la suscripcion

Topica is always looking for more money sneaking in extra expenses. The interface is so complicated you need an inhouse person to manage it for you. Then they tell you that inhouse person cost $500 per month.
Nice, huh?