Free Coupons can lead to account suspension!!

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Free Coupons can lead to account suspension!!

Hi there!

 

I just wanted to share my story with you so we can discuss together why this happened and how to avoid similar results in the future.

 

Long story short, I made a free coupon on my course "How to read chest x-ray - from zero to hero" for three days and published the coupon link on a Facebook page that is followed by thousands of doctors and medical students. So, many of them were interested in the course and there were more than 2000 enrollments in the course!

 

A few days later, I received about 90 reviews most of them 5 stars and I was happy that the course which took me four months to finish is now paying off. By the way, I didn't ask any student to even leave a review "whether good or bad".

 

Three days ago, I woke up to find an email from Udemy Trust and Safety saying that they "found reviews on my course that were flagged by our spam filter" and this was " a Strike 3 in their Escalation Process. This means that my courses are suspended from enrollments and my announcements suspended for one calendar month".

 

I tried reaching out to Trust and Safety but they said that the decision was final.

What I am afraid of now is that they mentioned in their first email that:
"If there’s another policy issue, we’ll unfortunately, have to move to permanently suspend your account and courses."

 

I still don’t know what did I do wrong, please would you help me?

What are you doing with free coupons? Have you had similar cases? How to avoid being suspended again?

 

Thank you.

15 Replies

Well this is clearly unacceptable. 

Amazon deals with fake reviews by just removing them. 

Why? 

Imagine the following scenario: 

1. You know that fake reviews would result in account suspension.

2. You buy fake reviews for your competitors. 

Their accounts get suspended and you rule. 

I hope Udemy realises that soon. 

I see what you say. This should be taken very seriously.

 

 

Hello Ayman,

 

Well, i have just faced an almost identical issue. My only course, "Audit and Forensic Data Analysis with MS Excel" was already doing good. About 10 days back, I generated two free coupons for enrolling my friends and colleagues. About 60 people who showed interest were enrolled using those free coupons. From these, i believe not more than 2 people would have given rating / review. 

 

Before this, my course, over a period of about 5 months since launch, already had over 200 students, about 50 reviews and a rating of 4.2., none of which came from free coupons.

 

Today, I got an email from Udemy trust and support team, saying that action in accordance with "Strike 3" of their escalation policy has been taken and that my course has been suspended for 1 month for enrolments and announcements. 

 

I have replied to their email stating that: 

 

I am shocked to receive this email stating "Strike 3" of your escalation process and consequential suspension of my course from enrollments and announcements suspended for one calendar month. In this regard i need to draw your attention to the following:

 

1. I am 100% sure and assure you with a clear conscience that I have done nothing wrong to manipulate reviews of my course in any manner whatsoever. I have no idea of the findings or the basis on which the reviews on my course were flagged by your spam team.  
2. I have never received even a "Warning" message, or strike 1 or strike 2 communication from the Udemy trust and safety team.
3. The "strike 3" communication that i suddenly received out of nowhere is nothing less than a shock for me.
 
I am sure that there is some false positive triggered by some automated mechanism that directly sent me this "Strike 3" communication, which is completely undeserving & unacceptable to me.
 
I would earnestly pray to look into this at earliest and having done so, I am 100% sure that the findings will merit restoring normalcy to my course with immediate effect.
 
Since i have submitted my above contention to Udemy today, i am awaiting their response and i do hope that they would treat this issue with fairness and consideration that it deserves.
 
I shall keep this space updated with how my matter unfolds and concludes.
 
Thank you,
 
Nikunj Shah

that's eccellent

A thought that i would like to share is this: If Udemy believes that (some) instructors may distribute free coupons to "buy" reviews / ratings, then, instead of using a blanket, system based rule to suspend accounts of ALL instructors who have issued free coupons to promote courses, cant Udemy simply prohibit students from giving ratings / reviews who have enrolled using free coupons? Wouldn't this be easier, fairer and simpler for Udemy to do? 

Hi All,

Same happened with me today. Still wondering what policy I have violated. They haven't mention any evidences/screenshots of policy violation, Directly they have suspended and also still no responses of my emails. This is complete shocker for me since my courses were really doing good.

Can anyone help here? Can I escalate this to Udemy higher management?

Any suggestion would be appreciated!

 

Thank you.

Durga

This is now 2 1/2 year after your post, and I still have the same questions as you had. 

Have you ever received a reply from Udemy?

This is what exactly happened to me today. I mean it's the month of November where we get more revenue and exactly this month i have received strike 3.

 Udemy needs to seriously fix this issue.


@Ayman_Taji wrote:

Hi there!

 

I just wanted to share my story with you so we can discuss together why this happened and how to avoid similar results in the future.

 

Long story short, I made a free coupon on my course "How to read chest x-ray - from zero to hero" for three days and published the coupon link on a Facebook page that is followed by thousands of doctors and medical students. So, many of them were interested in the course and there were more than 2000 enrollments in the course!

 

A few days later, I received about 90 reviews most of them 5 stars and I was happy that the course which took me four months to finish is now paying off. By the way, I didn't ask any student to even leave a review "whether good or bad".

 

Three days ago, I woke up to find an email from Udemy Trust and Safety saying that they "found reviews on my course that were flagged by our spam filter" and this was " a Strike 3 in their Escalation Process. This means that my courses are suspended from enrollments and my announcements suspended for one calendar month".

 

I tried reaching out to Trust and Safety but they said that the decision was final.

What I am afraid of now is that they mentioned in their first email that:
"If there’s another policy issue, we’ll unfortunately, have to move to permanently suspend your account and courses."

 

I still don’t know what did I do wrong, please would you help me?

What are you doing with free coupons? Have you had similar cases? How to avoid being suspended again?

 

Thank you.


 

I realize that your post is a couple of years old, but it remains very real as I just experienced the same issue.

The most irritating aspect is that they cannot tell me what is really wrong. Their communication seems to be using a "copy and paste" type of  reply(ies). No straight answer.

I saw great suggestions in other posts, but I'm not sure Udemy is really paying attention.

Until this issue happened I was totally happy with the platform: I'm not convinced I will keep using it.


Did you ever get an answer to your question: "How to avoid being suspended again?"
If so, I (and I'm sure many fellow instructors) would greatly appreciate your feedback.

Hi, is this problem solved by Udemy team? Is anybody facing the same issue?

Unfortunately it has not been resolved.

That issue just happened to me. I think they (Udemy) keep their head in the sand with this one.
I'm finding out that many instructors are encountering the same issue but Udemy refuses (based on their replies) to acknowledge that their system might not be as perfect as they'd like.

It's very unfortunate because it is a great platform otherwise.

Dear Ayman

 

I just saw your "How to read chest x-ray - from zero to hero" course and it is online. So what did you do to get it back online?

Priyanto

Maybe he didn't cheat a second time...

 

There's always more to the story. Remember that Udemy has a lot of stats and logs of IP addresses, cookies etc. I doubt they would suspend an account if they weren't sure.

 

JB

I agree, there's always more to the story.

But the point is that, based on my personal experience, Udemy does not tell you what you did wrong when they claim you did! They must have a good reason to suspend an account, so why not helping the teacher to resolve the issue by telling him/her what they found? I'm just not getting it!

So how to escape the strike?
Is post free coupons not allowed in agreement now?

 

Best Yan

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