Debanter

Skype…WTF?

August 26th, 2006 Rachel

Oh Skype…how you’ve revolutionized instant messaging. How you’ve challenged the Telcos, made it possible for little Johnny to speak with his parents while he nervously gets through the first weeks of college 50/500/5000 miles (notice the "miles"…just to balance out the toonie mention just a minute ago) from home, and pretty much make it possible for our company to communicate regularly.

But then you got big. And now you’re popular. And at the same time…your customer service sux.

I’m criticizing because up until a couple weeks ago, the MusicIP team was is as dependent on Skype for connecting with one another as an all-in-one-office company would be dependent on the watercooler, or for that matter, chairs [modified because after I thought for a minute…we still are dependent on it - we just complain about it now where we didn’t before]. Taking to each other from a number of cities (which is usually at about six, but at other times people could be spread out among up to 10 different places), brainstorming via group chats, or simply sharing an interesting link for a laugh - more than our actual office, Skype is our office.

Which is why the giant bug that is making all of us who upgraded to version 2.5 appear to be offline to others while we repeatedly re-click on the "online" status to no avail…is a real friggin’ pain. 

Luckily, my friend and boss Stephanie is a proactive individual. She wrote to them:

"Since upgrading to the recent version of Skype, at various times during the day I appear to
everyone on my Skype list as "offline" even though I’m online.

This only started happening since upgrading.

Is there another version I can upgrade to to fix this problem?"

To which Anniki from Skype Technical Support replied:

"Hello Stephanie,

Thank you for contacting Skype Support.

This error is known by our development team and will be resolved in a future release of Skype.

We apologize for the inconvenience

Best regards"

Hmmm…okay. Glad to know we’re not crazy, nor are we the only ones - but a little more info please?

Steph wrote again:

"How quickly can I expect a future release?

Our virtual company uses Skype as a major communications mechanism…and this is a problem for
those of us that have upgraded to 2.5.

Can we revert back to an older version?"

Good questions, I’d say. Here’s what she recieved as "answers"…this time from Roman.

"Hello Phillips,

This problem is currently being investigated, however we cannot specify any timelines for it to be
fixed.

I advise you to follow our release new and check for the change-logs. Once you see that in the new
release the problem with presence status (it may sound different, but the meaning is the same) is
fixed, download it and install.

The change-log is available here:
<http://www.skype.com/download/skype/windows/changelog.html

It is update for every new version.

Regards"

Ru-oh. Customer says ‘we need you, we love you…but we have a problem.’ And the best they could come up with was ‘wait for when we fix it…we can’t tell you when, but it’ll happen and YOU can check for when it happens here’.

NO ‘I’ll add you to the skype updates mailing list if you’d like…’
NO ‘here’s a link back to version 2.0, I apologize for your troubles…’
NO valid excuse for why the two scenerios above are out of the question.
[And NO reason for getting her name wrong when it was correct a day before, recorded in the thread below his response…other than laziness/no incentive to care]

It’s not a good thing when I’m saying "Hey, right about now MSN isn’t looking so bad…"

Posted in Customer Service, Issues, Skype | 5 Comments »

Flying to Toronto

August 26th, 2006 Rachel

My computer is plugged into the seat in front of me. But apparently, no juice is flowing. How exciting this new seatback development was…for all of five minutes. Now the little battery icon at the bottom is staring at me, ominously letting me know that I’ve got 48% left…44%…

On another note, something that I’ve been thinking of extensively for the past few weeks came up in the row behind me. An attentive mom requested bottled water for her child. No can do, says the flight attendant - we’ve got tap and that’s it.

Now, if people (myself included) are willing to buy a bottle of water for astronomical prices at the movie theatre, why aren’t they selling them on the plane yet? It’s about a million times easier for me to hide the water bottle in my purse while going to see a film, yet I’ve still forked over three bux for water a number of times.

On a plane, how easy would it be for them to have a bunch of cases of Montclair in the back and charge people a toonie (I feel like I’m already in Toronto…)? I’d be much more interested in paying two dollars an entire bottle of water than a deli sandwich or a pillow. Better yet, the water doesn’t go bad, stale, rotten. It just sits there in the back/front of the plane waiting for folks like me to come along and say "Bottled please…"

[Update: someone I know, who happens to be "in the know", let me know that while there’s no power flowing through those little outlets yet, they will be soon. How exciting is that!]

Posted in Marketing, Toronto, Traveling | No Comments »