Automattic Kismet / Akismet: the little company that dropped the ball

Earlier this year I looked at installing a third party spam-filter for my blog. One of the filters I looked at was Automattic's Kismet or Akismet program but decided against it because a search showed that  users complain about the high percentage of false positives it creates.

A few months then go by during which I completely forgot about Automattic Kismet (or Akismet). Then a few  weeks ago I notice that some of my comments to other people's blogs are not being posted. Being inquisitive by nature, I emailed the bloggers in question as to the reasons for this. They apologized and explained that Akismet / Kismet had flagged me as a spammer (a false positive if there ever was one!).

Now here's where it gets interesting. I look up the Akismet site and contact them through an online form to request an explanation. A few days go by and I hear nothing back. Since there is no telephone number for them, I then attempt to contact them with a v-mail left with the secretary at their venture capital backer True Ventures. More days go by and again I hear nothing. Early last week I discovered that the president of Automattic has a v-mail box at the True Ventures. So I leave a message asking him or someone else involved with Akismet/ Kismet to contact me.

It's now a week later and I still haven't heard a peep out of them. I don't know why this is. (Maybe they are feeling shell-shocked from all the complaints? Not just mine.)

I run a number of sites selling an array of products. If just one customer in 500 is not happy, it's a cause for concern and a situation we rectify immediately. If a customer were to leave a message about a problem, their call would be returned promptly and in many cases by the CEO (yours truly).

On the other hand, Automattic doesn't appear to give a hoot about the bugs in its filter.  My advice to bloggers is to not use Akismet / Kismet  if they don't want to risk having their regulars flagged as spammers.

Comments

[Jerry]

LOL! I used it for six weeks before dropping it due to the false positives you mention. It still needs a lot of work. True Ventures needs to hold a "come to Jesus" meeting with the Automattic boys.

[Shea]

I am not a secretary. If you looked at our website before linking, you would see that.

[Matt]

We have no record of you in our support system or as an Akismet false positive.

If you ask the blogger to report you as a false positive the system will learn, and feel free to email me the blog URL in question and I can double-check their logs.

[Peter]

Matt,

Thank for responding! Finally, I get a response. I will email you shortly with further details.

[Zathrus]

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

[Akismet Blows]

Looks like Akismet is pissing off even more customers.

http://optempo.com/2007/12/23/akismet-heading-toward-failure/

[drmike]

It's interesting that Shea is more interested in complaining about the "secretary" label, if in fact that's who you called, than dealing with the issue.

Automattic has a history of poor customer service and lack of follow up. It doesn't surprise me that you had such a poor experience with them. I have a complaint about a couple of their employees from back in June and I'm still waiting for a response.

edsit: As a sidenote, my comment just got caught with a 'invalid url' error due to a typo. (Not enough coffee) Would love to know what you're using to make this check if you could email me. :)

[Akismet Blows]

Peter, did Akismet fix the problem for you? You haven't made any further mention of this.

[Mark Andy]

Akismet is dangerous it impedes free speech and causes problems among people thinking that the person does not like them and does not want to approve their comments!
I think bloggers should focus more on non-akismet blogs than on dofollow blogs. A comment seen on a nofollow site is better than blocked on a dofollow site. That’s nothing against this blog. Just akismet. If it was a watchdog it might bite the owner instead of the prowler :)

[India Forex]

I’m having problems with Aksiment. It says that it caught 5 comments, but it’s only displaying two. I want to just go and delete those other three but I can’t view them. I’m going to have to disable Akismet, pathetically bad

[lpn to rn]

This is the exact same thing that happened to me. I was commenting on blogs(mostly news blogs) to promote the url attached to this comment and all of a sudden my comment stopped going through. I have already contacted akismet support and I hope they will fix it for me. Otherwise i will stop comment promotion once and for all its big waste of time to see my comment evaporated into thin air after making a legitimate comment.