Dr. Stefan Gross-Selbeck on 01.03.2012 at 19:33h CET
Yesterday evening we published our provisional figures for the 2011 financial year (press release), and I’m really happy to announce that it was an excellent year with revenue growth across the board, e-Recruiting hitting the ten million euro mark, and new records for both revenues and operative results.
The Company’s overall revenues for the 2011 financial year increased by 22 percent to €66.2 million. We also achieved record operating results (EBITDA) of €22.2 million, which is 33 percent higher than 2010 and equates to an operating margin of 34 percent.
These excellent results can be attributed to every part of the platform. Revenues in e-Recruiting grew by 65 percent to €11.7 million while Advertising turned over €7.1 million, an increase of 35 percent. Our Events segment, whose revenues are generated by our subsidiary amiando, appears in the financial statements for the first time in the Company’s history and achieved revenues of €2.5 million. Our core business also made good progress with Premium membership revenues rising by seven percent to €45.6 million (2010: €42.4 million). We also want our shareholders to benefit from these excellent results, which is why we’ll be suggesting a shareholder dividend of around €0.56 per share at the next AGM.
These excellent results aren’t just down to our great team, they’re also attributable to a highly active community that uses and generates the added value of a professional network. I’m very happy that we managed to acquire 800 thousand new members in German-speaking countries (D-A-CH), which was also an increase over last year’s signup rate. As of December 2011, XING had a total of 11.7 million members.
And we’re not done yet. We want to carry on growing and double our member base in D-A-CH over the next few years. In other countries, ten to fifteen percent of the local population is a member of a professional network. In Germany this figure is somewhat lower, meaning that there’s plenty of scope for us in the future. As a result, we intend to hire another 100 employees, taking the total to over 500 so we can drive our growth at full speed.
As part of our focus on German-speaking countries, the company’s management conducted its annual impairment test which led to an adjustment of values resulting from corporate transactions between 2006 and 2008 that amount to €14.4 million. This value adjustment does not affect non-cash items, but impacts on the Company’s consolidated income statement under IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards). As a result, the Company reported consolidated earnings of €-4.6 million (2010: €7.2 million). Following the value adjustment, the Company reported consolidated earnings of €9.4 million, which represents an increase of 31 percent.
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Mr. Stefan Gross-Selbeck, CEO of Xing.com,
I don’t know where to post this comment, but as I see this is the last post you published, I hope it is OK.
Here is some, hopefully useful, feedback from an extremely dissatisfied customer.
I have been a premium (paying) member of Xing.com, and this year I decided not to renew my membership. Among other reasons for not renewing was the way Xing.com is handling private data from members. For example, in my case, I have configured all my address information to be private, yet, when anyone searches my Xing.com profile via, for example, Google, you can clearly see the city, zip code and country where I live. I requested technical support help on this and they informed me that this could not be changed.
But I guess such things happen, not to be satisfied with a website’s privacy data handling, just like something similar may happen with any other product a consumer purchases. In many cases, when customer dissatisfaction occurs, often the normal thing is to get your product returned, and in Xing.com’s case, the normal thing should be that if you are not satisfied with its data handling policy, we should be free to cancel our paid subscription any time.
Unfortunately, little did I know that, because I decided to communicate to Xing.com my cancellation after their second email notification about my pending renewal, I was already late for this notification, because Xing.com does not include, in their first reminder, any note informing you that you have to notify the cancellation at the latest 14 days prior to the date of membership expiration. They inform you of this AFTER you have been notified a second time (about a month later). Next, when you do not reply to this, they start a legal payment process via a local payment business, in this case in Spain, not only claiming the corresponding membership fee, but an additional delay charge!!!
Besides the obvious inconvenience you are causing to an already dissatisfied customer, I wonder, Mr. Gross-Selbeck, if you realize that not only will Xing.com be losing a customer, but it might also lose quite a good number of others as a consequence of such renewal policy, because such kind of negative incidents/policies are hardly ever kept to oneself and often word-of-mouth or word-of-Internet is the best marketing for such cases.
This cancellation policy based on some fine-print you specify when people pay the membership is a good example of the rather abusive business attitude that some other websites/companies practice or have practiced. In Spain, for example, the mobile companies and their “automatic” contract renewal policies. Such abuse ends up, sooner or later, being known by the general public and may thus become the cause of losing customers or lack of prestige or even the downfall of a company.
Please do not fool yourselves. You do not earn respect nor customers this way. Should you allow customers, especially dissatisfied customers, to cancel their subscription at any time, or at least after your second reminder, as I did, chances are that people might return to you as a customer and might even recommend your service to other people. The way your cancellation policy is right now, you are clearly burning customer/business bridges.
I. C. López
Dear Ms. Lopez,
Thank you very much for your feedback. While we regret to lose you as a XING member and customer, we would like to take this opportunity to briefly explain the situation. The XING interface indicates which of the personal data you enter can be shared individually and which is public. Moreover, members are given the choice as to whether they want their profile to be available outside XING and through search engines. Information that is generally available merely serves to broadly indicate the business region of a member, which is highly useful within the context of a business network where many transactions are carried out on a local level.
When members sign up for a Premium membership, thereby agreeing to the terms and conditions, it is clearly indicated that the Premium membership is a subscription service. As common practice with other subscriptions, cancellations are processed according to the respective notice periods.
Kind regards, Christian Burtchen, XING AG.
Mr. Christian Burtchen,
Thanks for your reply.
Regarding your comment about which personal data can be shown online via search engines in a Xing.com profile, obviously any user should be able to choose which fields can be shown on searches, as you do, for example, in Facebook.
Your website does not provide this option, but just like you as developer of your website can choose to keep such an outdated interface, I as customer or consumer have the right not to like such interface and, therefore, your website.
Again, this is one of the reasons for not renewing my membership. Little did I know that the other reasons would soon become clearer to me, due to your automatic renewal policy.
Regarding the terms and conditions for renewal, the real points in this respect are clearly the following:
1) Xing.com alleges that a user should know when they have to cancel their subscription because it is clearly stated on the terms and conditions page, yet, at the same time, Xing.com not only hides this information or does not include it in any of the “notifications” sent to a customer when they have to renew their membership, but they send their notifications already “late” in regard to the 14-day period required for cancellation before membership expiration.
So what is the point of such a “notification”? To remind a user that they are forced to pay their membership? Shouldn’t a “notification” be an early and clear enough “warning” that your membership will expire on a given date?
This obviously indicates that Xing.com’s “notifications” are a mere reminder of the delayed renewal period and whose objective is to then force customers to pay the membership fee. Xing.com should consider that paying a membership of their website is a customer’s voluntary decision and any policy that clearly forces the customer otherwise is not a transparent business practice.
2) As if it were not already enough to be forced as a customer to purchase or pay for a service/product that the customer does not want any more, Xing.com then applies an even more abusive practice, which is to start a legal process to claim the membership fee (approximately 70 euros), adding a delay charge (approximately 14 euros), a process which may clearly damage a customer’s credit record.
From the logical expense/marketing point of view, it does not make sense that Xing.com prefers to invest money on a legal process which is usually very expensive (definitely at least three times the cost of the claimed membership fee), for such a low membership amount, instead of simply accepting the rightfully requested cancellation by the customer and increasing the chances of: a) satisfying a dissatisfied customer, and b) regaining the trust of the customer, so that the customer may renew their membership at some other time.
Could it be that one of the reasons why Xing.com is reporting such a profit for 2011 is because they are applying the same abusive automatic membership renewal-cancellation policy to all customers who do not wish to renew their membership and get late “notifications”? That sounds like easy money.
I. C. López
Dear Ms. Lopez,
thank you again for your response. I can assure you that we evaluate all the feedback from our customers to improve our product and services, and have thus passed on your remarks. In addition to our previous statement, I’d just like to add the following. As aforementioned, the XING premium membership is a subscription service, similar to a newspaper subscription. Nobody is forced to pay anything they do not want by simply observing the normal cancellation period.
We do not send out late renewal notifications – I think you are referring to our payment reminders, which are only sent out once the renewed membership has not been paid on time. We issue several reminders – two electronic ones and one by post to the invoice address – before passing on the payment to a collection agency after several weeks.
Thank you again for your feedback.
Christian Burtchen, XING AG.
Mr. Christian Burtchen,
Thanks again for your reply, for allowing me to post all my comments and for following up on this. In spite of my current negative image of Xing.com, at least you are playing fair in regards to allowing public customer feedback.
After reading your above reply, I believe I then have discovered the source of the problem here: Xing.com NEVER sent me any email messages prior to the 14-day membership cancellation period.
I can provide PROOF of this, as I have all the notifications I received and they are all, as you have just commented, “post-expiration date” or “on-expiration-date” reminders of the non-payment , not any early warnings of the 14-day membership cancellation period.
Therefore, I hope you can now understand better my position, because I was not interested in renewing my membership and I did not receive the adequate “warning” notifications as you have pointed out.
On the other hand, you should also consider that if a given customer does not wish to renew a membership, there may be a number of reasons involved, not only the ones I have already pointed out.
For example, a lack of sufficient funds. If you start a legal claim against a customer in such a situation for a product this customer does not wish to purchase any more, you are clearly causing an extra financial stress on that customer for a voluntary purchase of a product. Have you considered that? Have you considered the economic crisis situation some of the European countries are going through?
I find it extremely abusive for Xing.com to start a legal claim for a voluntary membership, given all the negative effects this may have on a customer’s credit record and possible financial situation.
I insist, I firmly believe that you will lose more clients with this automated “negative option” renewal policy than if you gave the option to cancel the membership any time. Please read the following article:
Negative Option: When No Means Yes [negative-option marketing]
http://ow.ly/cdbN6
I. C. López
Dear Ms. Lopez,
thank you again for your answer. Of course we take the time to listen to the issues of both satisfied and critical customers – after all, that’s what social media is all about
XING customers can review their existing membership as well as billing information at any time by simply accessing the respective section in our options: https://www.xing.com/app/billing?op=invoices
As aforementioned, it is always possible to cancel the subscription on time without giving a reason to do so. Please understand that we do not discuss individual payment issues and financial situations of members publicly – however, my colleagues from customer care, sitting just a few meters away, are always willing to do what is necessary to find a solution with a customer. It is only when there has been literally no reaction on the customer’s side despite our repeated payment reminders that the agency is automatically called upon.
Again, thank you for your comments.
Kind regards, Christian Burtchen.
Mr. Christian Burtchen,
I am glad Xing.com takes social networks seriously (though your Twitter involvement is basically non-existent), as complaints like mine, of dissatisfied customers, will probably become more and more common, thanks to the power such networks have finally put in the hands of consumers.
I want to clarify yet another comment of yours. I replied about not being interested in any membership renewal after the second (post-14-day-expiration reminder) notification I received from Xing.com, so I am not sure what you mean by having reminded me several times. It was after notifying Xing.com that I was not interested when I suddenly received a legal claim via a local Spanish debt company.
On the other hand, I was not suggesting to discuss personal finances publicly. I was only commenting this because, although luckily it is not my case, the point is that I find it unacceptable and abusive that Xing.com pushes membership fee claims to a legal extreme, as if we were talking about some kind of tax requirement or health insurance contract, causing such a surrealistic financial stress, for a mere voluntary professional profile membership, on customers who may or may not be in a good financial situation.
If Xing.com is supposed to be a “people-oriented” company, you should start by showing a lot more business sense in regard to how to deal with fee claims, but, above all, considering the situation of ALL the real people behind the Xing.com profiles.
When a customer does not wish to purchase a product, NO means NO and that should be the end of the story.
I. C. López
I have exactly the same issue, I get an email saying that a debt collection agency will now pursue me as i did not respond to a very vague email. Linkedin have a much more sensible approach to this. I will be interested in seeing how the English courts react to this.
another interesting point that EU law now raises is that is reasonable for the consumer to assume that if they have not renewed the contract that the supplier ( Xing ) then stop providing the service. To not supply the service and then sue for a service they are not then providing is contradictory. this has been enforced in the UK courts. I think the best approach is to see what the internet will generate in terms of interest on this.
Unquestionably believe that that you said. Your favorite reason seemed to be at the net the simplest factor to take into account of.
I say to you, I definitely get annoyed at the same time as people consider
issues that they plainly do not realize about. You
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out the entire thing with no need side effect , people can take a signal.
Will likely be back to get more. Thanks