What I Learned From Mailchimp Deleting My Account for Life

Random bans make me want to create a new type of user experience — one finally built on empathy

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Last week, I was banished from my Mailchimp account that runs my email list, for life. After turning my $373 per month subscription back on to help two writers who asked to share their message to my mailing list, I received a bizarre message in morse code that made no sense.

This is what the message said:

The screenshot of the reason for my account being deleted. (Screenshot by author)

Now I realize that I’m nothing more than a rounding error for a huge company on a spreadsheet somewhere in Atlanta, but something felt wrong.

I’m still not exactly sure what went wrong when I tried to email a link to a Medium article to my email list. It caused me to be banished after being a Mailchimp member for five years without a hiccup previously.

Living in a world of rules you don’t know you’re breaking, hidden in lengthy terms of service documents that no one reads and that requires a legal background to understand, has become something that many of us have to deal with.