I have had recent (bad) experiences with this phenomena, but it’s not the first time.<\/p>\n
How many times have you gone to a website for a game, a service, an ISP, some software, whatever, and found an ‘official’<\/strong> self-help<\/span> forum for users? I seem to recall Dell used to do it, and now almost everyone does it.<\/p>\n “Welcome to the community help forums where fellow member of the ABC community help solve each other’s technical problems”<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n What this translates (to me) as is this…<\/p>\n “Fuck customer service. We will let you dumb schmucks who bought our stuff fix each others problems. Meanwhile, we are on the beach! Good luck losers…”<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n I check my forums daily. I don’t post in every thread, and I don’t fix every problem, but I at least flipping TRY to do so. I read every support email I get, and I won’t make you jump through hoops to email a real person. The person is ME. here is my email address: cliff@positech.co.uk.\u00a0 Here is a clickable one:<\/p>\n cliff@positech.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n Here it is bigger;<\/p>\n I get quite a pile of spam because I am so free with my email address. You know whose problem that is? MINE. Whose problem is it not? My customers.<\/p>\n Fuck email forms, fuck ‘self-help community forums. Fuck “your call is important to us” and definitely fuck “We are experiencing higher than normal traffic<\/strong>“. If you bought a game from me, and it doesn’t run email me. email me now, and I’ll do my best to fix it.<\/p>\n And the next time you encounter a software provider or other company that expects you to not only make do with ‘community’ tech support, but to act as their unpaid helpdesk staff, make a mental note to avoid them in future. Only by hurting the business of people like that will things improve…<\/p>\n And just to add some positivity, who can I name with the same attitude?<\/p>\n Seth Godin<\/a>, the marketing guy.<\/p>\n BMTMicro<\/a>, my payment provider,<\/p>\ncliff@positech.co.uk<\/strong><\/a><\/h1>\n