The very words 'Customer Service' can send a shudder down the spine of even the most hardened of us, we have all at one time or other had to deal with someone seemingly speaking Chimpanzee while hitting a desk with a hammer at Joe Someidiot's and Co Customer Support - But today I had quite a different experience - and it was quite a pleasant one via an unlikely source - PublishOx Support.
To say the day started off well for myself is way off the mark. I have a habit of reaching for my phone as soon as I wake up in the morning to read my emails. Firstly I dropped my cellphone onto the hardwood floor, which is not the best thing to happen to a brand new Sony Experia - then first email was 3 notifications from PublishOx Support Team mentioning three articles of mine that had been flagged. Also that my account had been suspended from authoring content - I would now only be able to tip.
To say I was baffled is a bit of of an understatement - but quickly realised the problem. Two articles had been regarding two press releases, one of which is public domain and has no usage rights, the other was sent to myself via my real life employment, with permission to use as long as credits had been attached. However I may have over-snipped quotes - so admittedly a keen algorithm may catch what 'Copyscape' does not when checking for possible copyright issues - you would be surprised at how may times one can write content thinking it is 100% original - to find that once sent into a program such as Copyscape, 70% might as well have been copy paste... Crazy I know, but it happens a lot in some genres - especially recipes and news content.
The third article is a complete work of my own, promoting an exciting new crypto company - which had been flagged... To this I was completely stumped.
I took the opportunity to reply as invited by PublishOx Support in order to appeal the decision to ban my author account - and so replied.
Two things to note here - something has been suspicious in the flagging of the third article and the other two had been fair play - but it would have been nice to be given the opportunity to edit said content - or delete as appropriate having understood the problem - however the third article gave away a suspicion of sabotage... I know right?
I can tell you from previous employment at large content sites such as Yahoo!, that author sabotage often happens - and it can be a huge problem. Sabotage has many reasons - and must be reported if suspected when appealing... This can be checked quite easily.
Anyway... Within a couple of hours PublishOx had replied, not only to say that my author account had been reinstated - but the third article has been restored and the other two given the opportunity to delete and rewrite - also that PublishOx apologised for this interruption lol... And that PublishOx perhaps could approach authors with a bit more diligence so to speak.
An idea I suggested would be to implement a YouTube type disclaimer regarding copyright and public domain - but let's all continue to shy away from 'fair use act' as it is a very sketchy area and would just serve bad looks towards PublishOx - nobody here, author, creator or reader, wants that.
Within 24-hours I am back writing with lessons learned on both sides - my personal gain is learning just how far one can push quotations and snippets from Press Releases - but for those of us that do have permissions, and for those royalty free, free to use texts, there does need to be room for authors to prove rights... Easily, painlessly and quickly without out the need for overly vetting content.
To finish, I would have had my account back up and running much quicker - but there was a slight delay, and all in all PublishOx have been very polite, understanding and most of all fair in how they have dealt with my contact with them - I am pleasantly surprised, PublishOx have been much more professional and proactive than some of the old content serving sites and such.
5-Stars out of 5 from myself to PublishOx - Kudos and thank you.
*****
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Click here on my Ambassador invite...
