Just one Feature can do This...

Warning! This is a Rant!

Over the past several months me and my team have enjoyed free access to Wrike, which is an absolutely fabulous online project management and collaboration tool at www.wrike.com. I love the tool, I love the features, I couldn't manage my projects and my teams without it.

But there is this one feature that I learned about in the past few days that did more than just make me raise my eyebrow - it raised my blood pressure.

About a week ago I added a 6th employee to the system. This meant that I went beyond my quota of 5 free employees and I understood that I would need to pay for this additional user. No big deal. The next day I received a note from Wrike letting me know that I need to update the credit card information. Of course! Because it was free so far I had never input a credit card. Good reminder! I took care of that within 48 hours and added the payment information. Problem solved.

However, yesterday I received a forwarded note from one of my contractors. Obviously the Wrike system had sent out an email to every single one of my users in Wrike telling them that there is a problem with the payment and would they please help resolve it otherwise their access to the system would be shut down. Talk about embarrassing me to my contractors! Talk about an unacceptable action by Wrike in dealing with their customers!

I immediately raised the issue with Wrike support. They listened, they wrote a response, but I can tell from how the response was worded that they aren't going to remove this feature. So I asked the following question:

Just imagine if one of your [Wrike's] vendors wrote to every single one of your [Wrike's] employees asking them for help on getting an invoice paid. I would assume that Andrew Filev [Wrike CEO] would be absolutely furious about such a move by this vendor.

I haven't heard back from them yet and I'll also alert Andrew of this. Let's see what happens...

In the past I have given Wrike 9 out of 10 stars for their product. But as of today I am giving Wrike 9 out of 10 stars for their product but only 4 out of 10 for good business sense. Notices about failed payments need more flair and tact than a simple "reply to all" broadcast message.

And that's the end of my rant.

Now go and purchase your own subscription to Wrike. It really is an incredible tool that will help you manage your projects online. Just make sure you always have your payment information updated...