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Comment by Maxious | Hacker News Reader

See also "Meetup.com kills Vim London without warning" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4698541 particularly http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4698718

> This was a mistake on our part. We're reaching out and rectifying things now. Sorry guys.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, hello Eventbrite!

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Not saying that Meetup is great, and Eventbrite might be vastly better. But a simple 2-strike rule is worthless. You need to look at the actual error rate (in this case, essentially a spam false positive) to determine if Meetup is truly a poor service. Otherwise, any smaller service will look better because they will have less complaints in absolute terms.

> But a simple 2-strike rule is worthless.

If paid service unrestorably deletes data without first getting in touch with client, it is worthless, as you should have moved away first time it happened.

So far both cases were for events promoting a specific product. They were in the grey area for sure (this one less so) but they were both in the same grey area.

So yes, now I will definitely not use them for anything related to me trying to sell something, but I wouldn't have anyway, and continue using them for actual meetups based on common interests.

I am not questioning whether OP did something wrong; If he did, as a paying customer (and first offender), I would anticipate some kind of notification email, or something at least.

Sure, for repeat offenders: repeat notifications, then close account, refund adequate part of payment and that's it. You should never irreversibly delete someone's data. Moreover when he's paying you.

If Meetup's error rate was public information, your point would be sound. Since it is not, it is reasonable for the author to look at his experience only. Giving them two chances and experiencing a 100% failure rate seems like reasonable cause to abandon them.

The Vim Meetup was rightfully shutdown. It was the first meetup, and that meeting was intended to promote a product. In the end, the meeting and it's intended purpose was against the ToS. Moreso, it amounted to using Meetup as a way to spam people about said product.

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