During my recent job search, I signed up for a ‘free’ 1 month trial to LinkedIn’s premium ‘job seeker’ package, designed to provide me with more tools to be noticed by recruiters/companies looking for new staff. The message came to me through my primary email address. In fact, up until this point everything has been coming to my primary email address:
- Requests to connect on LinkedIn
- Updates to any of my contacts (who has changed jobs, updated experience, etc.)
- Updates/comments/posts in any of the Groups I am part of or conversations I am involved in
- Special Offers (such as the 1-month free Premium membership)
I decided to cancel the premium membership after 3 weeks, due to a combination of finding a job as well as not needing the service (and not needing to pay the ongoing monthly fee for Premium features). I’d set a calendar reminder to look into this for Tuesday this week (2nd Aug). I went onto the site and cancelled my Premium membership, which was straightforward.
At around the same time, I received an email in my secondary email account (see below) extolling the virtues of the Premium Service, and that if I do nothing, they will begin to charge me the monthly fee. It’s not even a message confirming that I want ‘out’ of the Premium service – it’s an FYI (Information) email only! Did this email arrive because I cancelled, or is it just coincidence that the email arrives on the day I cancelled, (albeit it to an email address they’ve not used before)? Alarm bells went off in my head at this.
I have contacted LinkedIn to ask them how this happened or why this message went to my secondary account – I am wondering why they sent any communications to my secondary account when everything else has been going to my primary account? I understand why they ask you to provide a secondary email address (for security/access reasons), however I have removed my secondary email address until such time that LinkedIn can explain what happened and whether it could happen again.