• 05/31/2009 - 18 More Social Sites Added to SocialNetwork.in
• 05/25/2009 - Run Your Own Remix or Music Project at ArtistServer.com
• 05/22/2009 - AudioBoo.fm and YouNoodle.com Added to SocialNetwork.in
• 05/06/2009 - mp3tunes.com - no option to close your account
• 03/17/2009 - How to run a Remix Project
• 09/28/2008 - My Lovely Wife Lou is Pregnant
• 12/14/2007 - ArtistServer News and a new site: FreeMusicLicensing.com
• 09/18/2007 - AritstServer and ToneThis Serve Up Indie Ringtones
• 09/11/2007 - Running LightTPD and PHP on Windows
• 09/06/2007 - Compete.com -vs- Alexa.com - Comparing Website Rank

When you put a site online where people sign up and create an account, it is very important that you also create a means for people to either close their account or close and extract their data.

Michael Robertson's Mp3Tunes.com site is apparently staffed by smart people, they have a nice looking API, the site is clean looking, etc. - so when I found out today that there is NO WAY TO CLOSE YOUR ACCOUNT, all I can do, is conclude this was a CHOICE made by their upper management.  Why? because competent developers that really like the Web, tend to not do evil things to users unless they are forced by the upper management. A good developer knows the importance of placing the user in control over their information.

I went to their site for the first time in more than a year, trying to locate a means to close my account. I signed in, looked under "My Account" and find nothing. I click on "Support" and try searching their Knowlege Base, again, nothing.

In addition, if you stop paying for your account, it remains active as a free account, and they take the stance that you are also unable to unsubscribe from their mailing list. Then again, even if you are a Premium member, you still can't unsubscribe from their mailing list. Here is the text from the bottom of their emails:

This email was sent to me@notMyAddress.com. If you are a Premium subscriber and do not wish to receive further communications please reply to this message with the subject UNSUBSCRIBE. All company and product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners. © 2009. All rights reserved. We are located at 5960 Cornerstone Ct. Suite 100, San Diego, CA, 92121

If you reply to the email as stated above, it will fail:

Unknown user: no-reply@mp3tunes.com

RCPT TO generated following response:
550-5.1.1 The email account that you tried to reach does not exist.

Yes, I know the address is to no-reply, but that is exactly how they sent it out.

I looked around their site to see if there was any other way to close the account or remove myself from their mailing list, and all attempts were redirected to a page blank page to "Renew" the account: http://store.mp3tunes.com/renew They do have a link for editing my email address, but when I clicked on it, all it does is present me with an option to upgrade.

I'm now trying their contact form, hopefully this will work: http://www.mp3tunes.com/cb/contact/ If that doesn't work, I'll try their phone number: (858) 202-1600.

I have received an automated reply, stating that I now have to wait 3-5 business days, so hopefully next week, I can post an update that they have removed my account.

UPDATE - May 08, 2009 : Apparently the only mention of being able to close your account is buried in their Privacy Policy: "If you would like to close your MP3tunes Free account and stop receiving promotion email messages please contact support: helpdesk@mp3tunes.com"

UPDATE - May 08, 2009 4:00 pm: Hooray! My account is closed:

Hi,
As you have requested, your account has been canceled.
If we can be of additional assistance please let me know.

Best regards,
Kendall

I replied back:

Hi Kendall,

Thank you!

Yes - I think you should be more kind to people by making it obvious how to close one's account - for example, a "Close Account" link or button in the My Account area, and adding a statement in your Knowledge base as to how to close it. The only place on your site that mentions closing one's account, is buried within your Privacy Policy page.

Have a good weekend,

- Gideon

And they kindly wrote back again:

Hi Gideon,

Thank you for the feedback.I appreciate you taking the time to share this with us. We are going to work to get this problem resolved. I do apologize for the inconvenience.

Have a great weekend.

Kendall

Very cool! I'm happy to see a positive reaction.

BTW - I stopped using their service as it was extremely slow uploading my huge music library, so I instead purchased a second external drive and backed it up locally. I don't need my music 'in the cloud,' since my Creative Zen mp3 player w/ a 40GB drive is plenty of music for those times I'm not at home.