This blog post will be off-base from what I usually post, but this has been a predominant stressor in my life for the past two weeks. Plus, I just can’t think of what else to post about. But first, let me clarify a few things to help set the scene.

I’ve used Canva since 2013 (that’s 11 years), pretty much the whole time they’ve existed. Seriously, they launched in 2013. There were maybe, like, a couple of months where they existed, and I didn’t know about them yet. And I have loved them the whole time. I’ve used Canva for book covers, for social media posts, for this blog. Up until this point, I’ve always been satisfied with them. In fact, usually, I’m blown away by the options and quality they offer.

Two years ago, I convinced my employer to let me set up a Canva Teams account so I could use it for work. Pretty quickly, I started using it over InDesign for layout design. I rave to everyone I know who does any sort of design about how much of a game-changer Canva can be.

But now I’m rethinking all of that because Canva may have, very simply put, the worst customer service I have ever experienced.

And let’s get one other thing straight. I usually have bottomless empathy for people working in customer service, especially support positions. I’ve worked retail; I know how awful people can be, and I can only imagine how much worse it is for people whose whole job is to help people when something goes wrong.

When I contact support, I usually begin by assuming I’ve fucked up somehow or misunderstood something. Because, about half the time, that’s the case. And the other half the time? I find the support person is usually in a better mood and more willing to help me when I start off that way. So that’s how I started my email to Canva support when I was trying to set up a nonprofit (free) Team account for my local animal rescue, and the nonprofit account was automatically misapplied to my work team account instead. I figured there was probably a step I missed where I was supposed to specify that I needed it applied to a new Team account. After all, it says right on the Canva Team sales page that you can have multiple Teams.

In my email, I told them about the misapplied account status, explained that I already had a Team account for work and said that I couldn’t find any way to set up another Team, so I thought that that would be done automatically when I applied for the nonprofit account. A day later, I heard back from Canva support from someone telling me that the nonprofit status had been granted to my work account and that, since they only grant nonprofit teams to the first Team account, I would need to pay for it if I wanted any more.

I tried to explain to them that I already paid for the work account’s annual subscription two months earlier (which they can see in my billing history on my account) and that I wasn’t trying to set up two Teams for a nonprofit. I simply already had a paid Team and now needed a separate nonprofit Team for the rescue. I really didn’t expect it to be a difficult situation to handle. I guessed it would be taken care of in a day or two.

Oh, but I was wrong. Each reply I got from Canva support came from a different person, always 24-48 apart, despite my replying within an hour of receiving the emails (usually between 8-9pm). Each person from Canva support who emailed me didn’t seem to know what was going on and usually sent me pre-written paragraphs (I know because I received most of them multiple times) that only sometimes pertained to my actual situation.

I lost track of how many times I received the same written instructions on setting up a Team account. Several times, I was asked to simply set up and pay for another account, with no promises that they would solve the issue after I did so.

This went on for two weeks. At no point did any support person actually do anything for me. No changes were made to my account. The animal rescue still does not have access to design software for its needs–I eventually told Canva support that I was no longer interested in setting up a nonprofit account for them. My work account is still set as a nonprofit account despite my continued requests for someone to simply restore it to its previous status.

Eventually, I lost my temper and sent a reply, asking if they were even real people or just a poorly programmed AI. I said it was ridiculous that people with admin privileges couldn’t simply go into the site and reset my account to what it used to be. That email garnered a pre-written response warning me not to use “threatening/abusive language,” or they would stop providing me support. I tried to point out that they hadn’t actually supported me in any way, but that just got me another generic template email telling me how to set up a Team account.

Finally, I told them that I had given up. They won. I didn’t want support anymore. I’d just live with the screwed-up account and hope that nothing bad came of it. The animal rescue would make do without the Canva account like they had up until this point. 

The next day, I got an automated email from Canva saying they hadn’t heard from me in a while and asking if my problem was resolved. When I replied again to point out that they had literally never done anything for me, I got another email about how to set up a Team. A day later, I got the same “Haven’t heard from you in a while” email. This time, I didn’t reply.

I’ve never had an experience quite like this with customer service. I’ve never encountered a customer service team that not only never actually does anything to try to fix the problem but tortures its users through sheer incompetency until they give up. How is this a sustainable business model? And why is Canva putting so much time and energy into every other avenue of their company except this one? 

I began to wonder how they don’t have a worse reputation because, with customer service this bad, there’s no way I’m the only one experiencing it. And I was right. I’m not the only one experiencing it. One user-generated site gives them a 2 out of 5 star rating and another 1 out of 10. Dozens of Reddit posts complain about their lack of service. And yet, somehow, this reputation hasn’t become widely known. 

I guess, maybe because they work so hard to ensure customers don’t need customer service? After all, I went 11 years before I needed it. . . 

Either way, this whole situation has sort of ruined Canva for me, something that I held in high esteem until now. Now, I get a bad taste in my mouth every time I open the site (which is several times a day since, as I said in the beginning, I utilize it quite heavily for work and my personal life).