The bloggy kindness of strangers

Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. [Blanche DuBois, in Streetcar Named Desire 1951]

I am going to do something I very rarely do: boost a commercial product. In the running of this blog I incur a number of recurring costs (NB: see “Donate” button or menu item, hint, hint) to do with various services, subscriptions and plugins. One of the most critical is the spam filter, Akismet. I used them at the WordPress.com site, and when I set up this self-hosted server edition, I transferred it. I must have clicked on something because about a week ago I got an email saying that I had been charged money for the service.

I was concerned, since the Paypal receipt didn’t say what it was, but I tracked it down and found that it was for Akismet. But their site said that private users were given a free subscription. I contacted them and they informed me I had set up a paid account. Oh well, I thought, they are doing a great job, so I don’t begrudge them the $5 a month, and it’s my responsibility for having not read the destructions.

But they, off their own bat, not only set my account to free, they refunded me the money. Now that is corporate citizenry. If you use their service and are in anyway income generating (as ET is not) I urge you to cheerfully pay them the fee. They are making blogging safe for commenters and are a great company and service.

There. I promise not to promote any further commercial products until Pepsi offer me gobs of money.