It turns out if you don’t pay for premium services at LinkedIn you become the weakest link.

I blogged earlier this week about how I had a major LinkedIn problem and couldn’t figure out how to fix it. I somehow created two accounts and it was causing connection confusion. I figured I could just go online and cancel one account but no luck.

I emailed customer service on Tuesday about the issue and as of last night, nada.

So, being a journalist, I decided to contact the media people and ask what’s up. I emailed a general press mailbox and got a reply almost immediately.

It was from Kay Luo, 
LinkedIn’s Director of Corporate Communications, asking me to give her a call. It included her work and cell phone number. (Amazing what an email from a reporter can do.)

Well, I explained my situation and she was able to close out one of the accounts right on the spot while we were chatting on the phone. She couldn’t merge the two accounts, which would have been ideal. Now I’d have to go back to the people that tried to connect with me on my second account and re-invite them to link with me.

Anyway, I could deal with the inconvenience. But I wondered why it took so long for someone to answer my inquiry on Tuesday when I was just any other LinkedIn member and not a reporter.

OK, here’s what she told me:

“Normally fast-turnaround customer service is reserved for paying users. We have 20 million members and it’s hard to get to all of them. We have a small customer service team in Omaha.”

Yikes! I didn’t know that just because I don’t pay for service I would be left in a LinkedIn abyss if something went wrong!

What is someone got into my profile and changed it, making me out to be some criminal or wacko? Sorry Eve, you’ll have to wait.

But how long do we non-ponying up customers have to wait? She said paying customers get 24-hour turnaround but the rest of us, she couldn’t say.

I asked her where on the site did it say non-payers got less service than payers? She said she’d have to check the site and get back to me.

This is definitely a LinkedIn reality check.

No money, no networking honey.