Automattic Reviews 

Why? I recently went to apply over their website for the “Happiness Engineer, Customer Support & Success,” position at Automattic. Yes... that’s the actual position name that some recruiter is posting for a customer support position.

Right away, I got the impression that applicants are going to be treated like immature two-year olds, via their “happiness engineer” title, but as I needed a job, I continued on.

After uploading my resumé, and answering a number of very time consuming questions that they wanted me to elaborate on; they then required me to have a WordPress account. Even though I have some WordPress experience, I didn’t have an account with them, so I set one up in WordPress. They also gave me a link to see what their wages are for the position, (as they required me to state what I was expecting). The link took me to their initial job description page, that didn’t state the wages.

What worried me after, is that they required three of my references, (prior to being hired, interviewed, or ever approached for the position). Not only is this ask unprofessional for a supposedly reputable company; but references who are kind enough to provide me with their personal emails/ phone numbers, don’t want me flagrantly throwing their information around to companies who (may) hire me on, but haven’t even initiated the first step to do so.

Even a Google AI search verifies that companies that ask this information, prior to any interviewing process with a candidate, are companies that may be trying to simply gather your information, and that of others. In my opinion, they may also be companies trying to see how far they can go, to take advantage of “owning candidates emotionally,” knowing those candidates need a job. A trustworthy place of integrity to work at? I doubt it!

Terrible customer service. Their interface for one is difficult for agencies to find live chat. If there are any issues with your site, they obviously don't care about you. Don't waste your money - you can find better companies to partner with for web host. It's been 7 hours and they haven't been able to assist.

The children who review the plugin codes are taking bribes to help older developers keep their edge, by blocking out new innovative plugins.

This will only harm WordPress and will lead to more competition from entities like hubspot.

Kindly contacted them to help me with a a Wordpress url that was showing my name and personal information without my consent. I don’t think that in all my life I’ve found such an unprofessional and deceptive company as this one. Not only they did nothing to help or communicate the situation to the webmaster but stated that they wouldn’t do anything as it doesn’t compromise their guidelines when I was able to show them and prove that it does.

Very aggressive emails while I'm not supposed to be in their base.

Currently this company is engaged in a disastrous scorched earth campaign against WP Engine and other open source contributors. Extremely unprofessional behavior from multiple staff at this company has been displayed on twitter, wordpress.org, and other public sites.

Incredibly poor practices at this organization. As someone who participates in the Wordpress ecosystem, all 2M+ users of the ACF plugin have seen a supply chain attack by Automattic that has replaced this plugin for active users without their consent and broken many websites.

Do not recommend.

Poorly run, needs maturity

A company woefully run by someone who makes changes to peoples websites without their approval.
Automattic owner, Matt, has been throwing a month long temper tantrum, now resulting in him stealing other people's work, and passing it off as his own. He's forcing customers to use a plugin they never signed up for or installed. If you have ACF, you should check your plugin.
A disingenuous company attacking the core of WordPress. Have a WordPress site? Or thinking of launching a blog? Choose a different host.

This company should now be considered a malware distributor having performed a deliberate supply chain attack against 2 million users.

For those not aware they deliberately blocked access to the developers of a popular plugin, used this as a context to take over the plugin under the guise of "security" (despite the existing developers providing a separate upgrade route around automatics block), kept all the reviews and ratings and then pushed out their hacked version as a point release, on a Saturday, subsequently breaking customer sites.

Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and several other related products, has consistently proven itself incapable of delivering meaningful, well-designed tools for the WordPress ecosystem. Over the years, I’ve seen their offerings like Jetpack and Gutenberg fall flat. Instead of enhancing the user experience, these tools complicate and frustrate, showing a clear lack of understanding of what WordPress users really need.

What’s even more alarming is the behavior of Automattic’s owner, Matt Mullenweg. Rather than encouraging innovation within the open-source community, Mullenweg appears to be more interested in competing with—and undermining—third-party developers who offer genuinely useful features for WordPress. It feels like a jealousy-fueled attempt to outshine others, rather than focusing on improving Automattic’s own products. This approach has only stunted the growth of the WordPress ecosystem.

There are also troubling claims of extortion tactics used by Automattic against competitors, a move that not only damages rival companies but also tarnishes the reputation of WordPress itself. By engaging in these unethical practices, Mullenweg is actively hurting the open-source community and eroding the collaborative spirit that originally made WordPress so popular and successful.

The people who own and manage this company lack care and concern for the people who use their software and systems. They've allowed numerous free blogs on WordPress.com to steal and plagiarize content. These blogs even automate the theft by using extensions to pull content from legitimate blogs and republish it on their free WordPress blogs. Not only do they steal content, but they also ask their readers to pay them monthly for bringing them the stolen articles, profiting from stolen content. Automattic, the company behind WordPress, does nothing to stop this. They allow free blogs to spread disinformation and misinformation without taking action. Despite sending numerous requests with links to offending blogs on their platform, Automattic does nothing. It's best to avoid WordPress and find a better solution, as there are many that are easier to use and more reliable. Remember, anything free comes with a hidden price! The saying goes, "There's no such thing as a free lunch."

It all started in 2020. Google signaled a 500 error on my site's articles which meant they could not be included. I contacted the support several times via live chat whereupon they finally had enough of my "nagging" and blocked me to only have contact with them via e-mail. Despite this, they refused to fix the problem and it took over a year before they fixed the problem.

In May of this year, I suddenly got a notice saying "You cannot pay". What was it now? I contacted support via email who suddenly claimed that the email associated with the account "was not valid". After this, they stopped responding to just about everything.

After this, I began to sense that things were not right at Automattic and moved to a new web host. This was lucky as they brazenly shut down the site without any warning a few weeks later. A few months before the package actually expired. Damn bad! In addition, I had a site that I had content left on. Do you think they had the opportunity to send a file with the contents to the email address associated with the accounts? No! In addition, the fact that it is not possible to communicate with them after this is nothing but lousy. If I were an American I would sue the crap out of this SCAM company.

I strongly advise against this useless company! The press will hear my story if you read this, Automattic!

They blocked my blogs 3 weeks ago, did not get any reply from a simple request of explanation. tried contacting them by any mean, no reply.
standard arrogant useless yankee company, desperate hypocrites dare to describe themselves in the automatic reply "happiness engineer", UNBELIEVABLE.

Automattic is a business that I have dealt with for 16 years. Sixteen years of working on my website and being involved with WordAds since 2018, plus recently receiving advertising revenue from Google Adsense. There was a technical glitch with Google which was created from all of the redirects that Automattic caused to the site. I simply chose from the backend of WordPress to put the redirects to one destination and Google flagged this as an issue and it is WordPress that created this issue and my site was flagged by Google. When I approached WordPress to resolve this, they shut down my site saying that there was a violation of policy because I was doing affiliate marketing on my site. There is information on the Woocommerce website that will prove that what WordPress said is not applicable to there is any violation of a policy.

WordPress said that they would give me a refund for the remainder of the money that they owe me after shutting down my site. I was not due to pay again until December of 2023. They have not refunded me. WordPress is a scam!

My company filed a request with Automattic to grant us control / access to an Internet site hosted by them, created by a user who is using the same name as my company and is in the same business as us - thereby creating confusion in the minds of our customers.

According to United States law, the company that is first-to-use a trademark has rights to it, "use" being defined as "use in commerce" and not merely inventing or registering a trademark. We have been using the trademark since 2016.

Automattic has done nothing in response to our complaint. As we are in strong legal standing, we intend to take this matter to court. Automattic has secondary liability for aiding and abetting trademark infringement and for wilful blindness.

This is a post for anyone else who has faced the same trouble with Automattic. Do seriously consider suing them. We are more than willing to file a joint lawsuit.

This is the continuation of a cautionary tale about the perils, especially those of us who are elderly, I just turned 70 this year, who wish to write and share what others may find useful in their journey through life. Socrates had said, we are told, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Many, who have gone through their productive years working in “the system,” raising families, building careers, etc. did not have the time or inclination to pursue spiritual journeys of self discovery or self-knowledge. More and more, even younger persons are in search of meaning to their lives. Our society’s myriads of ways to enjoy the material realm does not involve what one might call a “journey of self-discovery,” that provides meaning to one’s internal life.
In my early twenties I found myself dissatisfied with all I had achieved materially, cut a long story short, I decided to go on a quest. A journey of self knowledge to find out why, what was a successful life, left me in danger of self destruction.
This long introduction is my segue into my introduction to Automattic through its WordPress.com. Initially I had started a free blog, ev7.com with WordPress.org the Site Title “thefirstmockingbirdofSpring” was the overall name of my main website that I had started on the hosting site Bluehost.com.
The latter, i.e. Bluehost.com contained (before the advent of Automattic) all my life’s work: personal, research, sources and continuing writings. It was and still is my magnum opus, which I subscribed to SiteLock.com website security to protect.
After using Wordpress.org as an incubator for ev7.com, and finding “issues” with 24/7wpsupport,com that made the next step in the development of what was now still under the Wordpress.org held domain ev7blog.com was thetranspersonalway,training which I upgraded to Wordpress.com which I came to realize was part of Automattic. The domain remained with 24/7wpsupport.com which is part of Wordpress,org. I later transferred the domain ev7blog.com from 24/7wpsupport.com paying $78.00 for Item list: File and Domain transfer File transfer-$49.00 Domain transfer-$29.00 to Bluehost,com as a subdomain of my primary domain evergreen7.com. I also added its own SiteLock security subscription.
I was determined to protect my life’s work that I had sacrificed everything else for, through thick and thin, I reiterate, it is my magnum opus.
Initially, all was well with Wordpress.org where I had upgraded thetranspersonalway.training to. Incrementally, I found the same “issues” that plagued my relationship with 24/7wpsupport creeping in. This time though, it was more serious, since I was now attempting to create a training program that would eventually develop into a business. I had already found the web developers I planned to use to develop the website, into the final package.
Automattic had earlier requested that I transfer my domain ev7blog.com from 24/7wpsupport Wpordpress.org, the latter refused, since Ibwas already having problems with Automattic, the transfer from Wordpress.org 24/7wpsupport, was a no-brainer.
I received an email from ICANN regarding thetranspersonalway.training with Automattic listed as the Registrar. I contacted Automattic seeking an explanation for Automattic’s claim as the Registrar of thetranspersonalway.training since their previous request for the transfer of the domain ev7blog.com which thetranspersonalway.training was upgraded from, to Wordpress.com but still part of the domain had been rejected by both Wordpress.org 24/7wpsupport and I.
Automattic had been incommunicado most of the time, and their euphemistically named Happiness Engineers😁 were a misnomer. Eventually needing to send certified return receipt 🐌mail informing them of my intention to file a complaint with ICANN.
I also informed them that I was going to migrate my site since my subscription with them was shortly due to expire and they wish it renewed. I filed my complaint with ICANN and informed them.
It was then that the journey that now has me filing Pro Se ‘in forma pauperis’ complaint with the United States District Court Southern District of New York started, and continues.
Pro Se means “for one’s own belalf; in person. Appearing as oneself, as in a case of one who does not retain a lawyer and appears as herself in court.”
‘in forma pauperis’ “A phrase that indicates the permission given by a court to an indigene to initiate a legal action without having to pay court fees or costs due to her lack of financial resources.”
This is the background to what the next installment will be, the warning about the perils the neophyte to the world of digital technological communication and the shark 🦈 infested 💦 waters that make this journey “Twelve Labours” of Hercules/Herakles 21st century version.💐