We all have our own ideas regarding guidelines and what is/is not acceptable within our directories. We may have differing ideas as to what we deem as acceptable and how to maintain our index, so what do you do when an active listing no longer conforms to your directory guidelines? While we basically reserve the right to add, modify, re-classify, move or delete a listing without notice, what would you consider as proper etiquette? Send the site owner an email message advising them that the site no longer conforms to the guidelines and allow them the opportunity to make any necessary changes and re-include them? Remove the listing without notification and advise them of the reasons when they contact you? Do you offer a refund for a published listing if the site no longer meets the requirements of your guidelines?
Yup thats what i do most of the time if i change my website criteria or get rid of some category, but mostly for featured and paid links and for resciprocal links. I think recently i contacted Richie or someone about a casino site, not sure exactly who , but got him/her options and he/she seemed pretty happy. I do not offer refunds cause come on refund on lifetime link ? I dont think so. Cause i take 1.25 for Regular lifetime link, and only get $1 in my paypal and refund seems so far fetched . But thats just me. If i think a link has stayed on a site for over a year or so and you change ur script or directory or get hacked or loose database i think end user does appreciate the loss and would not mind if they spent onl 12$ or so, not sure about the expensive directories that cost like 50$+ , for them i think it might be an issue, so i think PRICE determines the actions of end user and directory owner
I think is the best option, to send an e-mail. Depends case to case, but in some cases i will refund totally or partial.
If you move to annual fees, you'll somewhat avoid this issue. Also, often people seem to submit with temporary email addresses, so if you contact the owner you'll find the email often bounces back.
I think annual fees for featured links are great and enable the long term survival of the directory. On regular listings I think the market is not ready for annual fees, unless you are providing huge amounts of targeted traffic, thing that normally happens only on niche directories.
I would first notify them and then offer them some options --either request them to conform to the guidelines or their listings should be removed. Refunding --depends on the policy /agreement at the time of listing.
First I would see if there is a way that I could keep them listed, either by moving them to the right category or modifing descriptions then send them an email about the change. If none of these are possible then I would just give a full refund.
I think that email with explanation and offer of refund should take care of this problem in diplomatic way. The option of annual fees seems less appealing because of short life time span as featured link.
I think I will do one of them above, depending on the condition. But ultimately I reserve the right to do anything as I have stated so in TOS already, and I expect submitters to read and agree to it. By this way, I make submitters responsible for their parts for me to be responsible for the services. Unless it's an extreme case, I think I will email them first as I do not like to lose any customer