Tag Archives: docusign

Update: DocuSign threatens me – but does an awful job

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A couple days ago I got this email in my inbox:

To Whom It May Concern:

It has come to our attention that your company has registered docusignsucks.com (the “Domain Name”). You are currently operating a website (the “Website”) at that location and, as of the date of this letter, you are using the famous and distinctive DocuSign trademark in connection with the domain name and website without DocuSign, Inc.’s authorization. We request that you transfer the Domain Name to DocuSign, Inc. and refrain from any further unauthorized uses of our Mark.

DocuSign, Inc. is the owner of numerous federal trademark registrations for our DocuSign mark (the “Mark”), including, Registration No. 4049334, registered on November 1, 2011, Registration No. 2939871, registered on April 12, 2005, and Registration No. 2845169, registered on May 25, 2004. The DocuSign mark is well known among the consuming public and embodies substantial and valuable goodwill. As such, the Mark is a valuable asset, and its protection is very important to DocuSign, Inc.

Your unauthorized use of the Mark constitutes trademark infringement and dilution in violation of federal and state trademark laws, and is likely to cause confusion, mistake and deception as to the potential existence of an affiliation, connection or association between you and DocuSign.

Your actions with respect to the Domain Name violate the ICANN Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (the “Policy”) to which the Domain Name is subject, since you have no trademark rights or interest in the Mark and are using the Mark for commercial gain. In addition, your actions with respect to the Domain Name also violate the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (15 U.S.C. §1125(d)) a federal statute which provides a cause of action with respect to those who, with a bad faith intent to profit, register, traffic in or use domain names that are identical or confusingly similar to the trademarks of others.

DocuSign, Inc. demands that you cease and desist from any and all use of the Domain Name; you are directed to immediately cease and desist from using the DocuSign trademark or any misspellings of the trademark as your domain name. You are further directed to remove any and all references to DocuSign or its misspelling from any Meta tags, HTML code, text, or content on your website (s) and transfer the Domain Name to DocuSign, Inc. and refrain from any further unauthorized uses of our Mark.

Please confirm in writing that you will agree to resolve this matter as requested within ten days of the date of this e-mail. If we do not receive confirmation from you that you will comply with our request, and receive full cooperation in transferring the Domain Name to DocuSign, Inc. we will take the necessary legal steps to protect our rights.

Sincerely,
DocuSign, Inc.
Brand Protection Department
enforcements@mm-docusign.com

Here was my response:

Hey there Docusign,
You have reopened an old wound.
http:://www.docusignsucks.com.

Originally (back in 2011) I set the domain via GoDaddy to forward to a blog
I had at http://docusign-sucks.blogspot.com/
but something was wrong in the blogspot settings and I could never figure
out how to fix it, and eventually I got bored and moved on to other things.
Your latest threats have motivated me to correct the issue, renew my domain
registration, and repost my original blog. Assuming you sue in Federal
Court your discovery will reveal I directed GoDaddy to forward to the
blogspot blog at the time of writing. So good luck with proving bad faith
or any sort of profit motive.
Should you pursue this case with WIPO I will laugh my ass off at the waste
of time and money. “Sucks” cases are well established policy at WIPO, and I
won’t even need to bother responding in order to prevail. See here:
http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2008/d2008-0647.html

Shortly I will upload all of your written threats to Scribd, and embed them
in my blog. Then I will post my honest and truthful account of my
interactions with DocuSign on every bit of social media (Yelp, Twitter, FB,
Reddit, etc.) I can find. Once completed I will do an email blast to all my
friends in tech press, many of whom were so supportive as I struggled
through chemo while your company angled to get and keep my money without
ever doing any actual work.

While I understand the person receiving this email is likely just doing
their job, your company’s approach to me at a time I did not have the
strength or resources to stand up for myself was shameful. And your latest
threat is a very helpful reminder to me that this ridiculously poor conduct
by your company was never fairly presented to the public. I actually feel I
have a duty to let people know. Given the many choices out there I know I
would never want to do business that saw human beings as just wallets
needing to be emptied, regardless of any extenuating personal circumstances
like cancer.

Thanks again for the reminder, the domain would have expired next month if
you hadn’t brought it up, and your latest threat helps make it newsworthy.
Well done.

Sincerely

Me.

DocuSign – My story

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I run a small business. We deal with a lot of contracts with our customers, and one day I thought it might make life easier for everyone if we had some sort of e-signature solution. That way they could sign the contract right from their computer, and we wouldn’t have to shuffle paper around.

Well right around this time I bought our first home, and the real estate agent was using a company called DocuSign for all of the real estate documents. I thought if it was legal for large real estate transactions, then it was probably going to be alright for my business. I also wanted to take things a step or two further and automate the contract generation process using the DocuSign API. So I contacted DocuSign, and the salesman assured me I could do everything I wanted to do and more. “It’s easy!” he said, “and we have great customer support”.
The way DocuSign works, you have to pay for all of your contracts (they call them “envelopes”) in advance. They call the whole process a “subscription”. In theory you have to use all your envelopes during the year long subscription. But there’s flexibility: “Don’t worry,” the salesman tells me, “if you don’t use up all your envelopes we’ll just roll them over to the next year”. So with his assurances I paid $5,400 for my subscription, and another $500 so I could use their API.
A couple days later an account manager assigned to me called and asked when I would get going, and I said I was going to need a couple months to write the code to integrate their API.
So far so good. But this is where everything goes horribly wrong.
I spent some time reviewing the API. It was a lot more complicated than the salesman had led me to believe. I was going to need some serious help to implement what he had described as “easy”. I have decent enough web programming skills (I wrote every line of code for the PHP/MySQL asset management system we were using at the time), but this was way over my head. I debated whether I should hire a programmer. But then things got worse. A lot worse.
About two months after signing up, I started having what appeared to be minor health issues. However over a period of several months these issues kept getting worse until finally it was discovered that I had cancer. This was a devastating experience not only for myself, but also my family and my young children.
Throughout this time the account manager kept calling and sending me emails, and I told him I just could not focus on DocuSign at the moment, and after a few of these conversations I had to point blank say don’t call me anymore, I’ll call him when I’m ready. The calls stopped.
At around ten months in it was clear I was in a battle for my life. I moved our quote and billing system to an outside company so I could focus on treatment. Since we were no longer handling quotes and billing on our own servers, there was no way we could use DocuSign. So I called DocuSign, and I very politely told them I had never used their service that I had paid thousands of dollars for. I want to make this part clear: I never used their service. Not one single time.
In light of this fact I asked them if they would consider issuing a partial refund. And I want to make this part clear: I told them even a partial refund would be fine. I just thought it was a bit much to pay close to $6k for nothing.
The account manager was sympathetic and said he would get back to me.
A month went by and I didn’t hear back from them. So I sent an email to the account manager saying very politely that I had not heard back from him as promised, that I had never used the service, and would they please consider issuing a partial refund? I even said I would be willing to make some introductions to several decision makers I knew who I thought might be interested in their service.
A DocuSign manager responded the next day by saying it is their policy to not issue refunds. Period. He acknowledged I had never used their service. However even though my subscription wasn’t over when I made my initial refund request, it was nearing the end of the subscription period, and as a result they didn’t feel I had any “leverage” (their word) to request any money refunded (not even pro rated for the month or so remaining!). They said they could offer me a discount on future services if I ever decided to use them again.
So I wrote another email, and I said I was unable to use my subscription during the term because I had cancer, and I was battling for my life. And that I hadn’t discussed it with them earlier in the subscription term because I was a little busy with diagnosis and radiation treatments. Frankly I didn’t think my battle with cancer was even relevant as I thought they should consider at least a partial refund if for no other reason than I had clearly never used the service. I certainly did not want to divulge my serious health issues to people I didn’t even know. But since they thought it was an issue I didn’t tell them soon enough, I thought they should know there is a pretty damn good reason why I didn’t tell them earlier. Once again I emphasized that even a partial refund would be acceptable.
They never responded to that email.
A couple months go by. I finish my radiation treatments. I’m talking to my attorney about how wonderful people have been. And then the subject comes up of people that have been less than wonderful. And I mention DocuSign. My attorney gets very angry hearing this story and offers to write a letter to DocuSign. I accept.
A letter is written. We now demand a full refund because it’s outrageous that we have to go to these lengths to get them to do the right thing (but frankly I still would have accepted a partial refund if they had offered). And we put them on notice that I am prepared to publicly discuss my dissatisfaction.
DocuSign’s legal team responds. Not only do they refuse to refund a single dollar, but they actually threaten to sue me if I tell my story online. Think about this for a second: a company who has raised over $56 Million dollars is threatening a cancer patient with legal action for telling the truth about paying them thousands of dollars and getting absolutely nothing in return.
The irony here is that in all likelihood they spent more money paying their lawyers to write that letter than what I was asking for in the first place.
We were flabbergasted, and we discussed taking them to court. My attorney says I have a case. But legal action is stressful, and frankly I don’t need any more stress. And no matter how strong my case is, there is always a chance I could lose even more money chasing them in the court system.
And I’ll be candid: their legal threat scared me. I know truth is an absolute defense, but I also know you can go broke defending the truth. And they have a lot more money than me.
But after sitting on this for a couple months I’ve decided they should not get away with this. So I am writing this blog.
Here are the things you need to know:
  • I don’t care about the money. I’m over it. As far as I’m concerned that money is gone.
  • I don’t personally want any attention. It’s not about me, it’s about them.
  • This blog is not monetized, at least not by me. I can’t speak for Google.
  • Other than the story told in this post I have had no business dealings with DocuSign or any of their competitors. There are no hidden agendas.
So what do I want?
  • I want them to be ashamed of how they acted. The end.
Regardless of the legal ins-and-outs, some things are just wrong. And they deserve to be called out. And it seems like lately there is a trend in tech companies to treat human beings like they are just something in the way of the next funding round.
In my case at around the same time they were telling me they couldn’t refund me a single dollar for services never delivered, they were raising $27 Million dollars.
At the same time they were telling me I would be sued for telling the truth they were signing up to spend $30k+ a month to put up a billboard right around the corner from my house.
Even if you actually think they are entitled to every dollar I gave them, don’t you think it’s an extraordinarily unwise move to play games with their valuable brand in this way over what is at most a couple thousand bucks? Do they really need the money that bad? And if they are this stupid about something small like this, how can anyone trust them to be smart about things that matter?