![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Skype is customer-hostile now?
I have a personal Skype account, which I use very rarely via my personal tablet. That's all fine, or was the last time I checked, anyway.
I also need Skype for work, so to prevent mingling I created a work account (6+ months ago), using my work email address for the account name. I log in to Skype using that email address and password on a (work) tablet all the time. That's all fine.
It would be convenient for me to also have a Skype client on my work laptop, so I went to download one. Along the way I tried to sign into the Skype web site, using that email address. Whereupon it told me that my account name can't be an email address and I need to either give it a proper account name or sign in with my Microsoft account. I've no idea what they think the former is nor do I have one of the latter so far as I can tell. There's a "forgot user name?" link, but it leads to a login page for a Microsoft account. After making a few failed guesses about all of this I found my way to their support page.
Their help pages are useless for this particular situation (no I didn't forget my password). They don't publish any email addresses for support, of course, but there was a link for "support request page". Great, I thought -- so I clicked on it. And it demanded that I log in.
Earth to Skype: If you require login for people to get support, you aren't providing support for identity/password issues! Sheesh.
I verified that I can still log in on the tablet, then went back to their web site for one more try at "forgot account name". At which point it told me I've tried too many times and come back tomorrow.
By the way, neither help@skype.com nor support@skype.com is a valid address. I'm not even going to bother with postmaster or webmaster; most customer-facing sites I've tried to contact send those into a black hole, never mind that at least the former is supposed to always be defined.
Grumble. It was to be expected that Microsoft would be bad for Skype in the end, but this particular set of failures puzzles me.
By the way, I tried downloading the Windows client anyway just to see if I could log in there with my email address -- break the tie vote between the tablet (yes) and the web site (no). But it wants to make Bing my default search engine (no obvious way to turn that off) in every browser on my machine, so, um, no thanks. It has a checkbox (on by default but can be unchecked) to change my home page (again, in all browsers), but there's nothing about disabling the Bing thing. I'm willing to give IE over to Microsoft (and/or corporate IT) to violate however they like, but I draw the line at inviting tampering with the browsers I actually rely on.
Skype: this is not the way to build customer engagement. Maybe I'm better off just using my cell phone.
I also need Skype for work, so to prevent mingling I created a work account (6+ months ago), using my work email address for the account name. I log in to Skype using that email address and password on a (work) tablet all the time. That's all fine.
It would be convenient for me to also have a Skype client on my work laptop, so I went to download one. Along the way I tried to sign into the Skype web site, using that email address. Whereupon it told me that my account name can't be an email address and I need to either give it a proper account name or sign in with my Microsoft account. I've no idea what they think the former is nor do I have one of the latter so far as I can tell. There's a "forgot user name?" link, but it leads to a login page for a Microsoft account. After making a few failed guesses about all of this I found my way to their support page.
Their help pages are useless for this particular situation (no I didn't forget my password). They don't publish any email addresses for support, of course, but there was a link for "support request page". Great, I thought -- so I clicked on it. And it demanded that I log in.
Earth to Skype: If you require login for people to get support, you aren't providing support for identity/password issues! Sheesh.
I verified that I can still log in on the tablet, then went back to their web site for one more try at "forgot account name". At which point it told me I've tried too many times and come back tomorrow.
By the way, neither help@skype.com nor support@skype.com is a valid address. I'm not even going to bother with postmaster or webmaster; most customer-facing sites I've tried to contact send those into a black hole, never mind that at least the former is supposed to always be defined.
Grumble. It was to be expected that Microsoft would be bad for Skype in the end, but this particular set of failures puzzles me.
By the way, I tried downloading the Windows client anyway just to see if I could log in there with my email address -- break the tie vote between the tablet (yes) and the web site (no). But it wants to make Bing my default search engine (no obvious way to turn that off) in every browser on my machine, so, um, no thanks. It has a checkbox (on by default but can be unchecked) to change my home page (again, in all browsers), but there's nothing about disabling the Bing thing. I'm willing to give IE over to Microsoft (and/or corporate IT) to violate however they like, but I draw the line at inviting tampering with the browsers I actually rely on.
Skype: this is not the way to build customer engagement. Maybe I'm better off just using my cell phone.
no subject
no subject
I have unlimited (domestic) calling on my cell phone. I rarely make international calls, so I have an international calling card that I stick $10 on every now and then to cover the relatives in Canada. The only reasons to use Skype for me are (a) video call and (b) to avoid sharing my cell-phone number with people, but most of my work calls aren't video anyway and my immediate team-mates have my number anyway, so... maybe it's time to punt? Dunno.