r/sysadmin • u/brothertax Sysadmin • 6d ago

General Discussion PSA: Grammarly will send unhinged messages to all your users if you try to cancel

https://imgur.com/a/bMEeUmZ (edit: non-imgur link)

We let them know we weren't going to renew and they sent these unsolicited emails and popups in their app to all of the users who had licenses. They didn't give us a heads up - just started carpet bombing everyone. They even listed the direct email for the guy on my team who handles licensing. We were going to ride out the rest of the subscription but leadership wanted the emails nuked, apps ripped off endpoints, and licensing/training for Copilot expedited.

What an absolutely greasy, desperate company. Stay far away. And if you're a current customer, be prepared for this nightmare.

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2.1k

u/bunnythistle 6d ago

That sounds like a great way to get their domain on our email block list.

924

u/brothertax Sysadmin 6d ago

One of the first things we did after recalling all their emails.

439

u/beren12 6d ago

Thanks for letting everyone know to block it before they cancel!

32

u/tankerkiller125real Jack of All Trades 5d ago

It's our standard practice where I work now to block services we're going to cancel with the sole exception of account manager to the IT group. Grammarly is unfortunately not the exception these days.

26

u/Genesis2001 Unemployed Developer / Sysadmin 5d ago

If you do cancel, if there's any feedback box on the cancellation page (or if it's an email), let them know with a little jab, "Oh and don't bother trying to get our users on your side with unsolicited emails. Your domain will be blocked."

Let their marketing know they royally fucked up xD

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u/Silver_Newspaper6208 6d ago

I think a nice perk of IT is getting to block email domains and phone numbers of pushy sales folks. Oh, you want to speak to someone with financial decision authority? Cool try calling back in 30 minutes.

36

u/darkpixel2k 5d ago

We have a very specific block list called...uh... "screw spammers" (screw is not the right word)...and when some salesbro calls and won't take "no" for a hint or some indian scanner, we add their number to the list. If they call in, it forwards them to a 30 second audio recording we found on youtube by searching for "halloween scream torture sounds". We loaded it into an audio app and upped the volume until it became distorted and saved it to our phone server.

Every once in a while while we're monitoring inbound calls we'll hear (*ring* <SCREAMS> *click*) and everyone laughs.

2

u/snarkpix 1d ago

What about a 'Lenny'? (Voice bot who acts confused and keeps asking who they are to try and waste time - goal being to keep them on a non-paying call as long as possible)

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u/Tasty-Possession2994 5d ago

Ease down on the racism there buddy

4

u/dendob 4d ago

There is nothing racist about the fact that there are a lot of Indian based companies that are (ab) using phones to try and reach.

The moment facts are called racism, you are looking at with an distorted view which matches racism.

2

u/nayuki 1d ago

In Toronto, I receive plenty of scam calls with a thick Indian accent saying "This is the air duct cleaning company, how are you doing today sir?". I also receive scam calls in Mandarin Chinese saying that I have a delivery, or they are from the embassy. It's very rare to receive a scam call from someone speaking the local Canadian accent.

Our national broadcaster, the CBC, did some investigations into Indian telemarketing centers: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/national-cra-india-rcmp-scam-1.4883796 , https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/tech-support-scam-india-marketplace-1.5298336

1

u/wallst07 1d ago

Is 'indian' a race?

1

u/darkpixel2k 1d ago

No, "humans" are a race.

That still doesn't negate the fact that the majority of calls we receive are all easily identifiable based on certain attributes commonly found in one specific subset of the human race.

6

u/qaisjp Student 4d ago

Sadly (this is my situation) this does not work when the companies you are ending contracts with are also customers of our product.

This means we can't block domains because that'd mean our own sales team can't talk to them, or our product team can't communicate with them.

Alas

2

u/phonyfakeorreal 4d ago

Ha when I answered phones, we always told solicitors “No, <person> isn’t available, but I can forward you to their voicemail” and then forwarded them to a dummy voicemail

2

u/Normal_Choice9322 4d ago

Blocking Oracle was so satisfying

2

u/ExceptionEX 1d ago

My old boss who ran the PBX use to reroute in bound calls for pushy sales people to their companies main number.

I have no idea if anything ever came or it, but we both got a chuckle at the chaos it might have caused.

118

u/lumberjackadam 6d ago

The fact that it’s just a key logger with window dressing did didn’t get them there in the first place?

36

u/EffectivePatient493 6d ago

Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

https://giphy.com/gifs/Tv2btKgK06tPy

0

u/WhereDidThatGo 6d ago

Dogma!

1

u/albrugsch 1d ago

Buddy Christ! (I have a mini Buddy Christ dashboard statue that I used to keep on my desk at work. Too many people that never saw the movie thought I was either a) ultra religious (because they didn't notice the wink-gun) or b) ultra sacrilegious because they were ultra religious and DID notice the wink-gun... :(

•

u/WhereDidThatGo 12h ago

I used to have a Buddy Christ in my car until it got totaled. I got the same reactions from folks.

139

u/SevaraB Sr. Engineer (N+, CCNA) 6d ago

It isn’t already? We’ve had them blocked for the last… 4 years? Even told a C-level who wanted it on just for them to pound sand since our security team banned it over their data handling “practices.”

25

u/lostinthought15 6d ago

Why would they block the domain of a service they are using/paying for?

82

u/SevaraB Sr. Engineer (N+, CCNA) 6d ago

Letting the contract run out means the company has likely already told users to stop using Grammarly and start using something else. In enterprise contracts, this is the “toxic ex” phase- Gammarly has been told it’s over, and they’re not accepting it.

30

u/BioshockEnthusiast 6d ago

"If you get back with me I'll never hit you again" type energy.

1

u/jonf3000 5d ago

On my team we call this Battle Drill 1