Jamie's Random Musings on Video IM
Having spent a good part of the last year struggling with a variety of video chat and IM programs, I have decided to write a few things down and see what other people have to say about them.
Saturday 19 April 2008, 7:05 AM
Skype User Forums Down the Drain
Skype has always treated their customers with utter contempt, by refusing to provide any Customer Support (other than a mindless auto-responder which appears to mail out random replies to support requests), by blocking user's paid accounts at random, and often repeatedly, and refusing to answer any queries about such blocked accounts for a minimum of four days, and by producing continually worse and more buggy software with each new release. Until now, the one recourse that Skype users had which offered at least a thread of hope for getting help was the Skype User Forums. Now it appears that Skype has found a way to degrade even that for their users.
The Skype User Forums have been changed to a completely new format. The organization is inscrutable, to say the least (bizarre is probably more accurate). The only reason for it that I can think of is to attempt to prevent anyone from seeing the number and variety of problems that are being discussed there. Even worse, within each category there is, amazingly, no way to simply move from one thread to the next (or previous), so it is impossible to just sit down and read a topic sequentially. What possible reason is there for doing this, other than to prevent someone from reading all of the threads in one category, and really getting a feel for the number of problems being posted? Similarly, the "read new posts" function has no relation to what posts you have previously read, it only shows "new" posts since the last time you logged on. If you left anything unread the last time, you're out of luck. Again, what possible reason could there be fore this other than hiding information?
The effect that the new forum is having on users is obvious - the quantity of posts each day has gone down by at least a factor of 10 since they were introduced. I suppose this means that Skype is achieving their objective - get rid of all those pesky users who are having problems with Skype and insist on talking about it!
jw 19/4/2008
PreviousComments on this post
Correction and Update:
First, a correction. It is no longer the "Skype User Forums", it is now the "Skype Community". In the announcement of the new "Community", the moderator points out that this is NOT Skype Customer Support - which is extremely bad news for Skype users, because Skype "Customer Support" is also NOT Skype Customer Support, so that pretty much eliminates all of the possibilities.
Second, some of the reactions from Skype users over the weekend: "UNPRACTICAL", "horrible", "lacks user friendliness", and my personal favorite, "this design really is a crock". In fact, the only two positive comments about it came from current or former Skype staff.
