ActBlue, LLC reviews

Terrible Customer Service!

I have been using ActBlue for two years but never will again. I have had problems with donations showing up on my account that I never authorized. The last one was for $100 on 2/15/20. I contacted ActBlue on 2/16/20, when the charge was still pending and requested that they remove it from my account. Now it is 2/19/20 and the $100 has been removed from my account. I have yet to hear from ActBlue. $100 is a lot of money for me as I am retired and living on Social Security. I can't afford to lose that much money. ActBlue is very convenient when it comes to making donations, but terrible if you have an issue. I will not be using them again.

ActBlue is great - if you can use the Internet

BCA has given ActBlue an F rating based on the standard algorithm - but my review of the miniscule number of complaints completely validated the legitimacy of the high volume ActBlue website, in my informed opinion.

This rating is apparently from a failure of the BCA algorithm because ActBlue doesn't respond to complaints by phone.

All the ActBlue complainants reported spurious charges, in most cases recurring amounts instead of an intended one time contribution. I have experienced this glitch twice out of dozens of donations. In both cases I was notified immediately on screen and by email they had recorded a recurring donation and linked to an on-line means of changing back to a single charge on their website, which took a few seconds.

Their site apparently has a bug that favors recurring charges on my 14 year old laptop running Vista and deprecated browsers, and their bug fix was to provide good notification and modification code - which also covers operator error. I find this satisfactory redress of my grievance in this Information Age. Many well-respected major companies have effectively shut down phone support.

From the language used I think all the complainants are in my cohort - I am a senior on Social Security and don't have money for a new computer. ActBlue only charges 4 percent plus tips. This does not fund chasing down bugs related to .001 of personal computers online.

If ActBlue had anything more seriously wrong, I would expect hundreds of complaints given that they are processing millions of donations a year. They make it possible for political campaigns to jump-start with no upfront costs to set up a donation website and mailing list, which is a great service to our democratic process.

Your information gave me tremendous faith in the the legitimacy and efficacy of ActBlue, I am just glad I drilled down to see the cause of the discrepancy.