February 16th, 2005
The SkypeOut Forum is a chamber of horror stories
As our own Ben Charny reports today, users of Skype’s new PC-to-phone SkypeOut service report multiple customer service problems.
I’ve just come back from a point-and-click sessionon the SkypeOut section of the Skype Forum. You’ll find a chamber of horrors… choppy calls, non-connects, mis-credits, non-credits, inexplicable errors.
Theseshortcomings mesh with the complaints reported in Ben’s article. Issues from slow posting of SkypeOut calling credits, to latency delays when the party you’ve called talks back to you. That is after all, the purpose of most conversations, unless you are trying to get the last word.
And then there’s the customer non-support factor. Most service questions and complaints, including billing,are handled by forms-based questions, and reportedly, not in a very speedy fashion at that.
More complaints about SkypeOut have already been appearing in the Blogosphere.
Amsterdam-based Blogger Nevon Hobson reports that his wife has been experiencing a "100 % failure rate" on calls to family and friends in Costa Rica.
Are these reports enough to discourage you from using SkypeOut? If you are a SkypeOut user, have you been having similar problems. Post a TalkBack and let us know.
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
