Skype Customer Support or lack of part 1

To Customer Support or not to Customer Support that is the question.


Well my advise to all would be don’t bother because firstly you are more than likely to got no response from the and secondly if you do the information you get will be nothing to do with the problem you reported in the first place. The best place to go for help is to the Skype Forum which can be found here http://forum.skype.com/ there you will at least stand a 90% chance of getting a sensible reply to you problem and in most cases a 95% of getting it fixed.

What you need to know about the Support Forum is that 99% of the people that give help and advise and none paid volunteers giving up their spare time to help others, whereas Skype pay people to provide Customer Support, what a laugh they must be having at the customers expense. As far as I can determine Custom Support is manned by people who either have NOT been trained for the job or don’t have a clue as to what they as supposed to be doing. You will realise this further down when I quote you an on going problem that has still not been resolved in over 2 months, and to top it all the person with the problem has been totally ignored for the last to weeks.

Ok Skype might not know how to fix his problem at the moment but don’t you think that the most correct and polite thing to do would be to say to the poor guy we have your problem on file but at the moment we have not found a way to fix it yet. Oh! I forgot Customer Service don’t know how to be correct and polite.

What does it take to train a few people to work as Customer Support advisors MONEY which Skype will not pay because they are to interested in putting it in the pockets and paying share holders. Any good company whatever there business needs proper Custom Support via email and phone. I as you have you ever heard of a VoiP service provider not giving phone support, IMHO I think they are to frightened to because the air would be blue with the way they are treating people, also a minimum of 4 WORKING DAY to even answer and support request is no laughing matter when you consider that a large amount of Skype users us it for there business, therefore no phone no money coming in.

Now to the customers problem. I must say that to protect privacy all email addresses have been removed.

This was the customers complaint to Customer Support which as you can see he has a problem storing single chat history’s, every thing that is written after this is the email that have gone back and forth between hime and Customer Support.

"Topic: Technical (sound, video, connection, etc.)
Subtopic: Other
Subject: Not storing one chat history, the MAIN one
Message:
------------------------------
-----------------------------------------
Skype won't store the current chat history. For a while it stored it plus all my other chats, now since I made the error of deleting it once, it won't return to storing it in the history. I have to call it up from bookmarked chats every time which is a pain. I'd rather go to the chat history.

It stores all my other chat histories from other groups, calls, etc., but not the one I use most frequently."

Andre - Skype Support to me

show details Nov 2

Reply

Hello Jason,

Thank you for contacting Skype Support.

In order to solve this problem, please reinstall Skype as follows:

1. Backup your Skype chat history files.

• Close Skype
• Go to "C:\Documents and
Settings\your_windows_username\ApplicationData\Skype\your_skype_name" and copy this directory somewhere safe (burn to CD, etc.)

2. Uninstall Skype.

• Open "Control Panel" (Start > Control Panel, or Start > Settings > Control Panel) and choose "Add/Remove Programs".
• Select Skype from the list and click on "Remove".
• Go to C:\Program Files and delete the Skype folder from there.
• Go to "C:\Documents and
Settings\your_windows_username\ApplicationData" and delete the Skype folder from there.
• Go to c:\docs and settings\all users\ApplicationData and delete the Skype folder from there.
• Open “Windows Start Menu” and select "Run".
• Enter "regedit" in the text box and click "OK".
• Open the "Edit" drop-down menu and click "Find".
• Search for the keyword "Skype". Delete all search results.

3. Download and install the latest version of Skype at:
http://www.skype.com/go/download

4. To restore your chat history, move Skype chat history files back to "C:\Documents and Settings\your_windows_username\ApplicationData\Skype\your_skype_name".

Note: There is no need to backup contacts as they are stored centrally on our server and can be accessed anywhere as long as you log in with the same username and password. A detailed list of your calls and SMS messages is available at:
https://secure.skype.com/store/myaccount/history.html

Best regards,
Andre
---
Skype Support
to Andre
show details Nov 5
Reply
Sorry man,

didn't do it. It still is not putting the one current chat I use the most in the history. Did everything you said, step by step, not a go yet. How come it won't store this one most important chat?

Jas(on)
Andre - Skype Support to me
show details Nov 7
Reply
Hello ,

Thank you for contacting Skype Support.
We are trying to resolve this problem here at Skype.
However our testlab has been unable to recreate the situation.
Therefore we would like to ask for your help.

First of all run windowsupdate, upgrade all devices drivers and make sure that you are using the latest Skype version. You can download it here: http://www.skype.com/download/skype/windows

You would help us a lot if you would create two files: debug.log and trace.txt

How you can create those files:

IMPORTANT: place a call for 5sec and wait 5min before creating the log.

1. Download the following file (needed for logging the problem): http://download.skype.com/logging-on-off.zip
2. Extract the zipped files skype-logging-on.reg and skype-logging-off.reg
3. Shut Skype down from system tray if needed.
4. Enable logging by importing skype-logging-on.reg (Just double click the file and answewer yes everywhere)
5. Start skype and regenerate this error(make some chats)
6. Shutdown Skype from taskmanager (Ctrl-Alt-del )
7. Go to "C:\Program Files\Skype\Phone" there should be files called
"debug-yyyymmdd-time.log" and "trace-debug-yyyymmdd-time.txt"
8. Please e-mail me those files.
9. Double click on skype-logging-off.reg (this disables logging again)
We would be very pleased if you could provide us these log files.

Best regards,
Andre
---
Skype Support

to Andre
show details Nov 7
Reply
The part that says:

"IMPORTANT: place a call for 5sec and wait 5min before creating the log." doesn't make any sense. I don't have any Skype minutes to place a call with, nor do I use Skype for calling anywhere ever. None of my contacts use Skype for calls, at least not to me and from what I understand a lot of them don't even have headsets. We use Skype as an Instant Messenger to send text messages back and forth and occasionally exchange image files.

How am I suppose to place a call?

Jason
Andre - Skype Support to me
show details Nov 7
Reply
Hello ,

Thank you for contacting Skype Support.
In this case please try to call our testcall service. You can add this contact as follows:
Tools>Add a contact
Search for username echo123

If you are able to place a successful call then we can be sure that your connection is working correctly.
After this call send some chats to online users.(chats and call should be saved on History tab, if not then we would need log files)

Best regards,
Andre
---
Skype Support

to Andre show details Nov 13

Reply
Ok, the phone call worked fine. The one chat it is still not storing in history is the one I just used in the file I'm sending, every other one shows up in history just fine.

Jason
- Show quoted text -

2 attachments — Download all attachments

debug-20071113-1444.log 2102K Download
debug-20071113-1444.trace.txt
32K Open as a Google document View Download
Andre - Skype Support to me
show details Nov 15
Reply
Hello ,

Thank you for contacting Skype Support.
We have recently released an upgraded version of Skype for Windows (3.6.0.216). This version includes major upgrades and improvements over the previous releases.
The latest Skype for Windows is available for download here:
http://www.skype.com/download/skype/windows/

With updating Skype, your Firewall needs a new rule in the exception list. Even if the previous version of Skype is already in the exception list, delete it and create a new rule for Skype.

If you have more than one Firewall each of your Firewalls will require a rule allowing Skype to connect to the internet. Sometimes Firewalls allow Skype to connect for a number of days before blocking it.

For firewall setup - http://www.skype.com/help/guides/firewall.html

Please contact us again if the new version did not solve your current issues.

Best regards,
Andre
---
Skype Support
to Andre
show details Nov 15

Reply
Upgrade didn't matter, has anyone looked at the debug files I sent?

2 attachments — Download all attachments

debug-20071113-1444.log 2102K Download
debug-20071113-1444.trace.txt
32K Open as a Google document View Download


to Andre
show details Nov 19
Reply
I've sent you people everything you asked for plus I've sent another email inquiring about the results. Has anyone looked at these debug files yet? It's been almost a week since I sent the files.

Jas(on)

2 attachments — Download all attachments

debug-20071113-1444.log 2102K Download
debug-20071113-1444.trace.txt
32K Open as a Google document View Download

To be continued................