"Wrong" Email

Let’s say your LinkedIn account has been restricted, and you can no longer access it. You might try to visit:

https://www.linkedin.com//help/linkedin/ask/sdsupport or https://www.linkedin.com//help/linkedin/ask/ppq

to contact customer support. You fill out the form and click "Submit," but for a split second, a pop-up appears:

"we`re sorry. There was an error creating your case. Please try again"

and than redirect.

You might try switching browsers, using private/incognito mode, changing devices (desktop, phone), or even using a different IP address—but nothing works. You keep encountering the same error. However, as soon as you change the email address to one not associated with the restricted account, the form submits successfully. This proves, beyond a doubt, that the "error" was linked solely to the email address; changing the email—while keeping everything else the same—changes the outcome.

Okay, so you’ve submitted the request—what happens next? You receive a response (here are some excerpts; the exact wording may vary slightly):

"You are contacting us from an email address that differs from the one registered to your account."

"An account restriction should not, in itself, prevent you from contacting us via the provided form."

"To protect privacy, I cannot, without a direct request from the account owner sent from their registered email address, do the following:"

"Therefore, please reach out to us using the form mentioned above, ensuring you use the email address registered to your account. This will allow us to proceed with reviewing your inquiry and provide the necessary assistance."

Brilliant. In other words, LinkedIn blocks support requests made using the email address linked to a restricted account—yet when they receive a request made (out of necessity) from a different email address, they close the ticket and instruct you to submit a new one using the "correct" email—which is technically impossible to do. And they are flat-out lying—let me repeat:

An account restriction should not, in itself, prevent you from contacting us via the provided form.

Even if you explicitly point out this situation in your request—and even suggest that they email you directly at the address linked to your account (which they do very, very rarely—maybe once in every 50 attempts)—they still respond with that same template.

This raises two questions:

1. Are the LinkedIn support staff genuinely unaware of this, even though they ought to know? Or do they know, but are lying and moking with users on purpose? I, for one, have never been able to figure this out.

2. Why is so little known about this, given that the situation has persisted for years and has been documented many times ( as example https://youtu.be/RRIm1ReQ_6A?t=221 (t=180) ) ? And why is there no reaction to it? It’s as if it’s been tacitly accepted.

26 points | by rbmm 1 day ago

3 comments

  • isuleman 22 hours ago
    if you can, then try to take linkedin premium which may have premium support. My meta business manager got banned. No luck with any support. I got meta blue tick with meta premium subscription for 2 months and then in premium support i connected to live agent and they restored my banned meta business manager.
    • rbmm 21 hours ago
      [flagged]
  • dr_kiszonka 1 day ago
    Fixing this problem would result in more tickets from accounts flagged as "bad actors." So first you pay for fixing the problem, and then you pay to resolve the tickets. Maybe nobody at LinkedIn wants to pay for it?

    It sucks for those banned erroneously.

    • rbmm 1 day ago
      Naturally, it is not in LinkedIn’s interest to change this; the corporation’s behavior is logical and understandable. But that’s not the real question. What about the community’s reaction? Has this simply been accepted as a given—normalized and justified? And what about the rank-and-file support staff who send you a template—telling you that you’re writing from the wrong email address and that you should use the one linked to your account—do they know they are peddling a blatant lie? Or do they not know? Or perhaps they simply choose not to know? "We were just following orders; we didn't know anything." I am narrowing the scope of the issue as much as possible: I am not discussing why accounts end up "restricted"—whether that’s fair or not—nor am I addressing other problems. I am focusing solely on this one specific aspect.
  • pwmglenn 1 day ago
    Many large companies have issues like this. I think it's just incompetence.
    • rbmm 1 day ago
      I don’t know. But how do you explain the fact that this remains almost unknown, even though this system behavior has existed for years? For instance, try asking ChatGPT or Gemini about this —the AI don’t know, which is quite telling.