Substack Shenanigans - deleting entire accounts, and refusing paid subscriptions

You're sick of reading it, I'm sick of writing it, let's scrap it all and begin again

Are you sick to death of reading about Substack shenanigans? I know I’m terribly tired of writing about them. All I want is a peaceful place to create, in a space designed to support that. Instead, Subparstack are throwing up one roadblock after another.

The latest fiasco is that my paid subscribers can’t resubscribe using their original email.

You may recall that when I first discovered I’d been shadowbanned, I wondered if it might have been some sort of tech glitch, as I’d disabled paid subscribers at the same time.

I’m increasingly convinced that my shadowban stems from incompetence and shoddy design rather than deliberate malice, as it’s hard to believe they’d block payments to any creator. Given that they take a cut, that would be the epitome of cutting off your nose to spite your face.

So, is it better that, rather being spiteful, Substack turns out to be a sub optimal site with virtually no tech or customer support who took two months to answer my emails and have still not fixed any of the issues?

I am guessing this poor woman wouldn’t think so—she lost 500 paid subscribers and 13k actual subscribers in one fell swoop. There are no words.

Deleting my podcast wiped my publication

As you know, I’ve been thinking about renaming The Celtic Chameleon - and thank you all very much for your thoughts on that, they’ve been genuinely helpful, though I am still undecided.

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But the lastest jiggerypokery has helped me make up my mind.

I will create a new account, new newsletter, new name, and port my subscribers across, to try to escape the Substack design flaws that have caused such issues with my newsletter.

Those of you who are currently paid subscribers don’t have to do anything, I won’t be closing this account, it will just go into stasis with a link to the new account in the bio, and I’ll still make sure you get exclusive content once a month no matter which account you are subscribed to, you’ll simply get the new emails from the new account.

It’s going to take me a bit of time to manage all this, thanks again

Substack Team

for your stellar work on fixing my broken account (sarcasm font enabled).

The takeaway seems to be - never, ever tweak anything on your Substack account. Don’t touch paid subscriptions or try deleting your podcast, or anything else. Who knows what apparently simple adjustements might throw a spanner in the works?

And for the love of Thoth, back up everything regularly by exporting your posts and subscribers.

All of this leaves me wondering, are there any solid alternatives to Substack* out there?

I have to say, it’s not really living up to the hype.

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*Obviously, not Tedium, which I left a year ago of my own free will, never to return.