Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Skype = Ok ... ish

Well I got a response from Skype, and while they have lots of excellent reasons for expiring my credit within 180 days (please review our Terms of Service), they have reviewed my case and are re-instating the credit, so Yay!

I still am not happy that they've got the 180 day limit, and have tried to register my concern/complaint/issues in a reasonably polite and friendly way, basically trying to say, yes you're a business as such you can pretty much do as you like, I think you should change what you're doing though cause as a customer I'm more likely to go with someone else if you don't. Of course I'm a minor customer so I don't really know how much they'll really care. I mean in the last year I've only spent 3-4 euros... Definitely on the minor side.

Also I don't like this use of the term 'credit', I think of it as I am purchasing a product, the product isn't the right to call a phone, I am pre-purchasing that phonecall! So if I want to call someone 2 years down the track, you should allow me to! At least that's my opinion, of course commercial reality is something completely different.

Anyways here's that email that I sent back:
Hello Rando,

Just wanted to say thank you for reviewing my case and re-instating my credit. Also thank you for the details on the expiry, I understand why you've imposed that limitation, I was surprised at it being only 180 days. Realising that it's Skype's prerogative to set it's Terms of Service, can you record somewhere that I at least think that it should be of a longer duration? (also what happens to that unclaimed credit? [I've been unable to find any details of where it goes on the Skype pages])

Also want to request that more detailed information be supplied on the 'Help' section of your website, searching for 'Balance Expiration' I was only able to find http://support.skype.com/index.php?_a=knowledgebase&_j=questiondetails&_i=38 which was about 20 or so items down, and didn't provide much detail. Namely what happens after the expiry? (This is a rhetorical question, as I now know what happens, point is that the help section is unclear).

Again thank you for your response, I look forward to continuing to use Skype and will make sure I make use of the phone calls at least once every 180 days.

Sincerely,
Andrew Bickerton

2 comments:

Andrew said...

Looks like I got the full 180 days reset as well, doesn't expire until: 'October 22, 2007'

Andrew said...

Just got a response from Skype, basically they said "Thankyou for your feedback, we always take our customers requests seriously, we will be taking it under consideration upon next review..."

In other words 'We'll pretend to treat you seriously, but we don't really care what you say'... Of course I didn't really expect much else.