Substack Reviews 

I am being charged for a subscription that I cancelled and am unable to get through to customer service either via email or their chat. This is sad for authors as it will now stop me from subscribing in future

Substack's customer service was so bad that I wrote a blog called '3 Reasons Why Substack Sucks'.

It's Tim Denning's fault. I love the guy; his emails are the only ones I always read, his work ethic is inspirational, and he shares tip top advice… except with his recommendation of joining Substack. This company may help Tim grow his readership and put a few more Ozzie dollars in his pocket, but they lack the most important part of a business: Good customer service.
Notice how I used a simple adjective to describe what they're lacking. Not 'exceptional', 'incredible', or 'mind-boggingly magnificient'. Businesses that offer that type of customer service are rare oddities. So rare that they deserve a blog all of their own, which I will write and add a link to it here once it's complete. No, Substack is quite the opposite, and are definitely in my top 5 businesses with the worst customer service (this will be a link too).
I don't ask for much, just simple good manners and being there for your customers when they need help. Do Substack offer that? Not even close. Quite the opposite. They take abysmal customer service to a whole new level.
But it's not just one reason this shambles of a company suck. There are three. And I call them a shambles despite their success. Me harping on about their ineptitude will hardly bring them to their knees. If anything, people reading this might not know about Substack and join them! Alas, as we all know, the most powerful companies in the world are the most unethical, unscrupulous, vile behemoths, with so much control it can be depressing. However, all we can do is spread the word, as many have done recently concerning companies supporting Israel, and it has made a small dent in their income and customer loyalty.
So, here are the 3 reasons why Substack sucks:
Banned without telling me why

I joined Substack earlier this year and added my blog posts that I started in December 2023. I added many and scheduled them for weeks into the future. I also added my email subscribers list.
Not long after I received an email from Substack saying that my account had been deactivated. All of the blogs I scheduled were gone. They didn't explain why. I appealed this decision. This is the reply I got:

Hi there,
Tex here from Substack Trust & Safety. Thanks for submitting this appeal.
Upon additional review we've determined that your publication is in violation of Substack's Content Guidelines and will not be reactivated.
Best,
Tex @ Substack

Right. Thanks 'Tex'. I replied asking 'How is my publication in violation of Substack's Content Guidelines?'

This brings me to my second reason to why Substack sucks…

2. No response

Their customer service is so knuckle-bitingly bad that not only do they deactivate your account without telling you why. They also don't respond to your emails asking them to explain why they deactivated it. This is lazy, unethical, and ruddy rude!

However, they did send an email asking me how I rated the support I received. Two options: 'Good, I'm satisfied.' and 'Bad, I'm dissatisfied.'

Here's the chance I've been waiting for. An opportunity to tell them what I really think about their so called 'support'. I clicked my knuckles and wrote the most stinking report about their shocking service. Which brings me to the third reason…

Rant into the abyss.

You know the question 'if a tree falls and nobody's there, does it make a sound?'. Well, a similar question could be made about Substack's support. I tapped the hell outta my keyboard, ranting and raving about their non-existent support, that this kind of behaviour is unacceptable from any company. I spent a good 20 minutes giving it my all and working myself up again about their disgraceful non-support.
SEND!
Ahh, that's told them. It felt satisfying; a weight off my shoulders.
I imagined it would be sent straight to the CEO and they'll be left with no choice but to buck up their ideas and start treating their customers with more respect. Customers, in fact, that are the lifeblood of the business. Without us writers there would be nothing on Substack.
So, I wait for their response.
In fact, I've been waiting for it since 10th February.
So thanks Tim. And thanks to myself, for wasting my time and expending my energy writing to an irritatingly successful business with atrocious customer service. Maybe the clue is in their name. They announced it to the word that they're a SUB business. A SUBstantial waste of time. A SUBstandard excuse for a platform. What a STACK of s**t. Avoid.

I needed to put in a request that was simple but required a human support person to do it. The only way to contact them is through their chat feature.

When you contact the chat, you speak to an AI bot, not a real human. The AI bot cannot actually do anything except forward you to articles in their help center, which I had already read. The article said to contact customer support, since this request must be handled manually... and that's what I was doing! The AI bot said they would forward my request to a human, and I should hear back from them in a few days.

A week later, I still had not heard anything, so I went back to the support center, and repeated my request. The bot gave me the same answer: it would forward my request to customer support, and I should get an email in a few days.

A week later, still nothing. I went back to the chat and demanded to speak to a real human right away. The bot said that was impossible. The only thing they could do was put in a request that a human contact me by email, and I should get that email within a few days.

Weeks later, I still have not heard back from anyone, and my request has still not been handled. I regret signing up with them.

No customer service. The app works great but just hope you never have a problem.

No matter how many times I unsubscribe, no matter how many filters I create to auto delete their emails, they find away to put their junk in my inbox. It’s like cancerous tumors that just won’t stop spreading. And it is by design. They hide, or don't even offer "subscribe from all" because retaining as much newsletter subscribers is core of their business model. but if you force people to stay, obviously the numbers are worth very little, because half of subscribers have mentally checked out a long time ago. Very shady practice.
I'm a very kind and giving person, but I truly - from the bottom of my heart - hope your business model fails horribly.

Sending lots of spam email, unsubscribe does nothing

No customer service. There is a bug on the podcast page that is limiting my reach to listeners (it is not showing 3rd party links). I have reported it more than 4 times to support and have been told by the AI bot that someone will look into it and get back to me but no response after weeks. I even wrote people on Linkedin but nobody seems to care. I am moving away from Substack now.

Extremely dodgy practice of stealing emails. My email has been used to subscribe to their web pages. Never heard of them, the more reviews I read the same is happening to many others, they even have a section directly highlighting this in their privacy terms so it's clearly a problem. So not only are they breaching privacy laws and stealing your information like scammers, you can't trust their stats and reviews as they're most likely fake. I wouldn't go near this site, being associated with scamming email lists and false information speaks for itself

Waste of time. The feelings is only the same: to write in a space where no one can ear you scream. "But if you give us 8 $ months we promise you the Moon and the Stars." Your writing does not appear on the search engines. Don't waste your money. It is the usual site for great business man, famous journalists and corporations with 1million contacts. No one care what you write. And the system of newsletter fake that you can be paid for it.

I never created a Substack account, yet I've had to delete two different accounts associated with my email, and I've just gotten a third email from them confirming my subscription to a random page on this scam site.
Try and keep your information as far away from them as possible, as hard as that is.

We used substack to launch our maiden newsletter for existing customers. Content comprised 1 original infographic and 2 original articles based around industry & product insights. None of the content was upselling/marketing considering it was an EXISTING customer base. We received positive responses & good engagement from our readers. A day later Substack deactivated the publication saying it was spam.

We appealed this because we could not identify any violations in our content as per Substack's guidelines. Substack's response gave no further explanation as to what the violation was, simply refused to reactivate the publication. This meant the content that our readers enjoyed and were likely to revisit (especially the infographic) now led to a "TOS Violation" page.

Massive disappointment. Especially given that we received positive feedback from our actual audience. We would have readily and swiftly amended the content if Substack were willing to let us know what the violation was, but Substack clearly wasn't willing to give us the time of day. Will not be returning.

They prevent me from signing up due to an email with AOL server. For no reason.

Substack has no actual customer service for subscribers. If you have an issue, they have a chat bot and an email bot who merely regurgitate three or four stock answers, and then end the chat with "a specialist will contact you", but no one ever contacts you again. Substack charged me a full annual fee for a subscription that was supposed to be charged monthly, and they then told me to cancel the subscription to get the refund for the remaining amount (11 months), then change to a monthly fee or just cancel forever. I cancelled as they suggested (through their chatbot and FAQ), and then had my subscription cancelled and a message was sent saying I wasn't "eligible for a refund". So now $96 was stolen from me AND I don't even have the product!

Abysmal, nonexistent customer service.

Customer service not present. I am trying to contact customer service for weeks now and they won’t respond. They have disabled my posts without any explanation. This while I do not even have any subscribers yet and my only post is an ‘About my substack’ post. Be careful and think twice before you start writing on this platform.

Substack has had plenty of feedback (Trustpilot) and I've just provided a posting to your call for new year 2024 solicitations. Plus, 10-12 email exchanges with your so-called support team. So, how much more feedback do you need? I don't think your relentless pressure for paid subscriptions is panning out. Writers just want a self-evident easy-to-use platform. And by the way, I don't need promptings from Substack about how to write a useful review -- I just need an easy to use site. People are providing you with useful business information, but you're not listening.

I was charged for a subscription for MEN YELL ATME $50 ran on my AMEX 12/8 I’ve never been able to gain access I’m still showing as a FREE user repeated emails with SUBSTACK no resolution I am now going to dispute the charge with Amex even though the last email from substack asked me not to

Absolutely impossible to log in, the login is in multiple steps for some reason, the support page is not working freezing on:

support.substack.com
Checking if the site connection is secure
support.substack.com needs to review the security of your connection before proceeding.

They basically externalized everything so nothing is working anymore. what a shame. the "Cloudflare" is well known to be defective, they protect you from all the users wanting to login. Basically ppl just abandon the website. This cloudflare is spreading like a virus and all it does it blocking legitimate connections. no, it's not the browser, I tested on 5, it's not the computer, my colleague has the same issue. And you cannot call anyone, they just block the page. Well, good riddance ! If you do not need visitors today, you must not be on the market at all ! And the writers will go to a different platform in time.

I have a screengrab but cannot see how to attach it. The comment was deleted by substack. The original writer even liked, and replied. But that did not matter to the Overlords and Censor running substack. Substack also uses bots to Like, like Twittr 1.0, to fool commenters. There are also many fake stacker accounts that had Notes from years ago in unrelated areas, suddenly commenting in hot current news stacks.

I'm really suprised by all these bad reviews! I've found substack create and fun to create contact. I've had no problems so dar