Christian Burtchen on 15.03.2012 at 18:10h CET
Update: All available spots for the conversation view are taken for now. Of course we’re working hard to increase the future availability of this feature.
XING Beta Labs was launched in December 2011. Since then, we’ve been working at full speed to develop features like polls so we can roll them out to our members as soon as possible. Now we want to take things a step further by making it even easier for you to find out which features we’re currently working on, i.e. what we’re likely to ship to the platform in the future.
So what does this change involve? If you go to the sidebar on the left of your screen, you’ll now see a conical flask icon that you can click on to go to the XING Beta Labs. As this is a laboratory, everything listed here is currently being experimented on so you may see projects disappear or change considerably during the development process.
One of the projects now available is the conversation view, which we’re initially only rolling out to 10,000 users in order to limit the amount of required resources. The conversation view summarizes your personal messages so that you can see your entire written correspondence with one or more people on a certain subject. Individual messages are listed below one another in a compact view that just shows the first few lines of each message. To view a certain message in full, all you need to do is click anywhere in the compact message view which will then expand to display the entire message. You may well have come across this before if you have a smartphone or email program that already has this feature.
Happy testing in the XING Beta Labs and have fun with the conversation view!
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Xing just xinged me for over $100.00 in automatic renewal fees. They refuse to work with me on reversing the charges that I did not want and are threatening to send me to collections
Beware they will do the same to you Xing is a good place to stay away from
I’m very much looking forward to the conversation view. Any idea when that will be rolled out platform-wide?
Thanks!
Sue
Hey Fred,
They are doing exactly the same to me. XING is trying to charge me for a subscription I didn’t buy. they problem for them is my credit card expired so they couldn’t take money from my bank account. When they sent me the invoice, I told them I didn’t want to buy their subscription and they refused to accept my decision of not buying their product. They said that by their rules subscription was automatic as my previous subscription had expired. I told them to show me proof of purchase and they didn’t send me any (obviously because there is any) but they just got in touch with a debt collections company. I have also got in touch with a third party to seek professional advice as this is totally unacceptable. Trying to charge me for something I didn’t buy. I had never experienced anything similar. However, I am going to get the bottom of this. Could you let us know how things progressed on your end? That would also be much appreciated.
Many thanks
Dear MC
I am a business man, as such I understand the reality of least cost solutions. When bottom feeders like Xing insist on treating their customers like this, I would rather pay them the small amount necessary to alleviate credit problems and time wasted having to deal with it. I will however spend my time making sure the world knows how Xing treats people. My opinion is that this is low level extortion. I dont believe that xing will be around for the long hall. They make their money by going after low hanging fruit, and taking advantage of people. There is no future in that kind of business philosophy.
Good luck my friend
Dear Fred
I really appreciate your feedback. I am not going to stop that easily. The amount is very low, it’s not mainly for the money, it’s about values. People cannot force me to pay for something I don’t want to buy. Accepting that is accepting the rules of the game are over. I am also a businessman, and I still believe in the rules of the game. I am going to get to the bottom of this for sure, no matter what. Considering the current business environment, these people cannot get away with this for much longer. For sure, I am going to fight til the very end. (In my view, this time will not be wasted at all) Please have a look at the link below, because it looks like there are some people that actually got their money back from XING. On my side, I am seeking in touch with several parties seeking professional advice (including a EU body) so I will keep you posted on how this ends up.
In the meantime please see below:
http://blog.assarbad.net/20110624/beware-of-the-xing-premium-membership/comment-page-1/#comment-390316
By they way, I think you call it very well, extortion. I agree 100%
Speak soon
MC
hahah, Fred, they’ve deleted our comments! This gang of XING dont’ want people to know the truth about their practices…un-believable XING…..
This seems to be a common trend – I must agree with you both EXTORTION – i to dislike paying for a service i have no intention of using.
It is a common trend. Apparently it’s the supervisory board that does not want to change those terms even if some other people in the organisation understand it’s unfair practice. I am not making this up. When making the complaint, people workign for XING told me they agreed with me it’s unfair business, but cannot do anything to change it(!!). Of course, I deleted my profile from xing website. Fool me once shame on you fool me twice…
Dear MC, Marc and Fred,
thank you for your comments. We regret you no longer wish to use XING – in general, however, when each user registers on XING they are required to agree that they have read, understood and accept our terms and conditions before the registration process is completed.
By accepting these terms and conditions each user has agreed to the following term 6.2 Premium Membership shall run for the period selected by the user when purchasing the membership. After this term, the membership will be extended by a term of the same length as the original term, unless terminated in due time by the User or XING. The User and XING may each terminate without cause Premium membership to the end of the initial term chosen by the User in the course of the registration process, or to the end of any renewal period after said minimum term expires, by giving notice of fourteen (14) business days.
If a cancellation is not made in due time, the renewal will take place for another term.
Kind regards, Christian Burtchen.
Dear Christian,
We are all well aware of those terms. What we are saying here is that by trying to make a few extra quid on incautious people you are losing business. It’s not my problem anymore. I’m out of it, but the most interesting part is that one of your colleagues told me they also think this automatic renewal is not fair and it would be better to warn people just before term is about to expire. Again, never mind, I don’t have anything else to do with you, I am only expression my experience so hopefully other people will read this and will be more aware of what Xing is like before they give you their credit card details.
Just to reiterate, i would not want to discuss this with you either, because the likelyhood is that you Christian, just like your colleague, also think this is unfair, but it’s just the “rules of the supervisory board”. Time will tell where that will lead you guys. On my side, I was planning to use Xing other times in teh future, but only as and when I wanted, not because I had to agree with autmoatic renewal without courtesy warning a few days prior using my credit card….so yes, time will tell…
Simply for the record, I’m another XING non-user subject to the automatic renewal controversy as of this week. We’ll see where this takes Xing and its financially-responsible parties.