Everything Must Change — Why I am Leaving Substack

Gemini season is a time to reflect on our relationship to change, and how we manage it. The double-bodied sign of Gemini, ruled by frenetic Mercury, is known for its mental agility and rapid shifts, and Gemini transits often bring a sense of crumbling and divergence, as life throws unexpected choices our way. For those of us who love firm, solid earth under our feet, change can be uncomfortable and unnerving. But tapping into Gemini’s powers of mutability can help us make peace with the inevitability of life’s vicissitudes.

Kylie Minogue’s chart features Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, and Mars in Gemini! If anyone could help us learn the lessons of moving on and accepting change, it would be her.

I don’t have strong Gemini placements, but I’ve had to learn to be flexible with life’s changes. A theme of my life seems to be “learning by hard knocks,” and my endeavors to build a living with astrology and herbalism are no different. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to have a knack for choosing the winning formulae the first time! (The silver lining is that I gain a lot of wisdom, as I learn by trial and error! Let’s focus on the positive, here!) This has meant that I’ve had to learn to pivot and change when things aren’t working. This theme has held true for my choice to start writing articles with Substack a couple years ago.

The problem

I recently ran into an problem with a payment through Substack, and I needed to contact customer support to resolve it. When you go to the help center in Substack, your only option is to talk to an automated chat bot about your problems. After explaining my situation to the bot, it agreed with me that a live human needed to handle this issue. It told me that it would forward my request to the human side of the support team, and I would receive an email from them within a few days. The email never arrived.

I tried to contact customer support three more times over the next month, and NEVER got a response. It has been 5 weeks, and my issue has still not been resolved, or even addressed. Substack is simply ignoring me.

This is ridiculous, and I am quite annoyed. A few days ago, I decided to look up Substack’s ratings. It has abysmal ratings on Trustpilot. And it has 7 unanswered complaints at the Better Business Bureau, earning it a grade of F. I filed an 8th complaint, which is still being reviewed by the BBB. (Since none of the others have been resolved satisfactorily, I am not holding my breath that mine will be either.) Clearly, Substack is run by sociopaths that do not care about their users.

So I am leaving Substack. I don’t like to cause disruption and uncertainty among my readers, but I can’t stay with a company that doesn’t resolve basic problems, especially when money is involved!

Moving to Beehiiv

I’ve decided to try Beehiiv instead. It has somewhat better reviews on Trustpilot, and an A rating on the Better Business Bureau. Of course, Beehiiv is a younger company than Substack, so maybe there just hasn’t been as much time for the negative reviews to come “buzzing” in. I don’t know. But I’ve investigated other options, and this one seems the closest to what I want to do right now. If I end up getting “stung” by Beehiiv as well, I won’t hesitate to move again. But meanwhile, here I am.

So far I am liking Beehiiv. It is not quite as intuitive, but it has more options than Substack, that I appreciate. For example, it allows me to add tables to my articles. This is really helpful when discussing research that uses tabular data. It also allows me to send a test email to myself, so I can see how the article appears in email, before I send it out to everyone. It also allows me to create templates, which is helpful for information that needs to be repeated across multiple posts.

It’s going to be OK!

If you tend to feel unsettled and worried about change, you are not alone! It is normal! But I am doing everything in my power to make this particular change seamless for you. You will still get my articles delivered to your email. Most articles will have the option to post comments. Everything should work normally; there’s just a different logo at the bottom now! It’s going to be OK, promise! 💟 

Meanwhile, if you’d like to support my work financially, as I make sense of life’s changes via astrology and holistic herbalism, please check out my membership options on Buy Me a Coffee!

Meanwhile, here’s another song to get you through this season of change!