And Skype call this customer Service part 5.

A very simple solution could be provided by Skype to solve this problem until the bug is fixed, but Skype support is clearly not interested in even bothering to read and understand support requests, less alone putting in any effort beyond giving canned (and often irrelevant) responses.

Even without a workaround or fix for that problem, we might well have considered going ahead with just the Skype Pro accounts, and using Skype (only) for outgoing calls.

However, the shamefully incompetent nature of Skype's so-called "support" has convinced us that there is no way that we can trust Skype to handle any of our communications needs whatsoever, and so we have cancelled (and got refunds for) our existing accounts and will be taking our VoIP business elsewhere.

Since the blog was first posted the customer has received another email from Customer Support.

Surprise! I just got an email from "Davide"! It starts:

QUOTE
Thank you for contacting Skype Support.

I have read your blog on http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,100000...0498653b,00.htm

We are trying to resolve this problem here at Skype.
However our testlab has been unable to recreate the situation.

and then goes onto give the standard how-to-turn-on-logging instructions.

Obviously someone at Skype has spotted the blog and given Davide a kick -- although the latest response shows that he still hasn't understood or researched the problem!

Couple of things about the blog. First, all of Skype's responses are missing. My guess is that the > to separate the messages has confused it, as are SDML (and hence HTML) tag delimiters.

Secondly, it's not quite accurate to say "Having read all the information about VM and finding that what he wanted to do could not be done...". At the time I submitted the support request I didn't know that; I only found that out later, when I looked in the forums after getting the first couple of useless answers from Skype.

Here's the whole of the latest message. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to reply (and if so, how) or just ignore it.

From: "Davide - Skype Support" na_system@ebay.com
To: customer
Subject: RE: GQW: How to turn off voicemail for SkypePro/SkypeIn
Date: 9 January 2008 12:12

Hello customer

Thank you for contacting Skype Support.
I have read your blog on http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,100000...0498653b,00.htm

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 windows update, 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
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)
10. Congratulate yourself on making a contribution

We would be very pleased if you could provide us these log files.

Please observe the CPU usage during the call also and if it is very high, please make a note of it.

Then go to: Start->Run and type: dxdiag and click OK.
Wait until it finishes, then click on Save All Information and save it as regular text document and attach it to the reply with log files. Thank you for the contribution.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions

Best regards,

Davide - Skype Support

Visit www.skype.com for latest news, updates and tips.

"Author comments.......From the latest comments and all the other comments made by CS in their email it is so blatantly obvious that this Skype CS person does not have a clue as to what he is doing nor dose anybody else in CS for that matter. The customer has stated quite plainly what he wants to happen but STILL keeps getting the same pathetic standard answers to something that Skype already KNOW can’t be done.

This customers case is not the only one where Skype DO NOT have a clue as to what they are doing and are just giving the same old standard answer "uninstall Skype and reinstall and every thing will go away."

As an im/chat/video program Skype is very good but I implore anybody who is thinking of buying any of the Skype paid for services DON’T or if you do so you do it at your own peril because if anything goes wrong DON’T expect Skype to solve it for you.

UPDATE 30/01/2008: This customer has received a full refund of his money and is now an ex customer of Skype and good luck to him.
Technorati Profile