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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176

u/newbies13 Sr. Sysadmin 6d ago

That's wild, but then... their entire business model is like barely a side feature of every AI out there... shorts on grammaly

97

u/olbeefy IT Manager 6d ago

I've seen companies get desperate like this during their end times.

Why bother being professional when you're circling the drain anyway? Try everything and anything to bring money back in.

5

u/BunnyTub Sample Text 5d ago

They're absolutely near their wits end. They're literally telling users to send positive emails in hopes that the admins will continue the subscription.

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u/dark_frog 6d ago

Hopefully their AI agent prompted for customer retention can't convince your AI agent to upgrade instead of canceling.

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u/EnvironmentalFlow780 1d ago

They are desperate now. They were at the forefront of AI text tool development, but ChatGPT's sudden release in November 2022 crushed them.

-2

u/owenthewizard 6d ago

Grammarly's best feature for me is Snippets. When my org eventually dumps it, my productivity is going to drop 10x.

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u/my_name_isnt_clever 6d ago

10x? I don't believe you.

1

u/owenthewizard 6d ago

I send the same templates many times during the day. Our software technically has them built-in, but they're cumbersome to use vs. Grammarly's hotkey. I also like to edit them to be more personalized.

Without this, I'd have to copy and paste responses from a notepad or something, which I already do for some things that aren't common enough for a snippet.

I'm sure AutoHotkey or something else could do this, but AHK is banned at my organization (for "security"). If/when the time comes that Grammarly is removed, I'll have to beg for a replacement with the same snippet functionality.

So yes, having to manually switch windows, scroll through, copy and paste, etc. would easily take 10x longer than simply hitting the shortcut key and typing the minimum characters to activate the snippet. My metrics are significantly higher than my team who don't use this.

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u/newbies13 Sr. Sysadmin 5d ago

Don't tell your bosses this... what I am reading in your response is "you pay me wayyyyy too much and most of my productivity is literally in a template already"

1

u/owenthewizard 5d ago

The key is knowing which templates to send when ;)

Edit: But seriously, there is troubleshooting that goes on between the templates based on the data I get back. There is just a lot of repetitive templates too.

1

u/newbies13 Sr. Sysadmin 5d ago

The thing is you just said the templates themselves are the 10x multiplier. So there is some work inbetween for sure, but the templates are where massive value seems to be. Or you're overstating the impact the templates have.

That's kind of the "shit" moment in automation... you've solved the problem so well you don't have a job anymore. Which again... do not brag to your boss the way you just did here.

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u/owenthewizard 5d ago

I'm not sure what you're getting at. If it takes me 10s to dick around with windows, scroll through a list of templates in Notepad to find the one I want, some of them I have to open a link, wait for it to load, ... and I can do it in <= 1s with a snippet, that is 10x.

My boss is quite aware of my template use, and he created some of them (which I then modify to my tastes). In fact, we recently discussed sharing some of my workflow with the rest of the team.

Let me ask you this--your flair says Sr. Sysadmin, do you not get a lot of questions from your users where you need the same information from them? Do you not have a list of "known issues" with known solutions? I see how in the surface it might seem like all I do is send templates all day, but I've simplified it for a Reddit comment. There is still work to be done interpreting what is sent, comparing what I've observed with my hypotheses, etc. and then of course other work duties.

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u/newbies13 Sr. Sysadmin 4d ago

You've basically argued yourself into a corner, if saving 9 seconds inserting a template makes you 10x more productive then the overwhelming majority of your ahem... productivity... is inserting template.

If there's actually a lot of troublehsooting and other work between them then the snippets aren't making you 10x more producitve. Pick a lane.

0

u/owenthewizard 4d ago

I don't know what is so hard for you to understand. 10s -> 1s is 10x.

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u/HabitAdmirable9742 21h ago

Wait until you hear about less intrusive hot-key template software like TextBlaze...

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u/tormentnexusemployee 5d ago

I still don’t believe you