Skype - Why there's always room for a new guy

Skype that once amazing little start up which set records for downloads, users, and for 'the liquidation event'. Rah rah, except Skype has joined the ranks of BigCo with all the reality she is due.

Consider this WTF post from my daughter Rachel regarding Skype's bugs, an attempt to head back to an older version and the goofball customer service.

The well put summary from her post:

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 scenarios 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..."

A few observations:

• She is not an old, set in ways fart like her Dad. She is in her twenties and will drop Skype like that smelly jr. high school boyfriend.  That's the reality of an entire generation of customers.  One "skype sux, try this" wildfire happening in MySpace and say goodbye to some market share.
• The "bigger they are" theory continues to be alive and well.  Do I think this nonsense would have happened pre-EBay purchase, pre-golden child, pre-zillions of users? Nope.  But like virtually every company then, now, and in the future, success can be a bitch to plan for and manage.

If the Penquin and the Fox and do it, Skype should pay attention to this stuff.

Comments

[Josh Einstein]

You get what you pay for. If you want reliable service, stick with Vonage or Sun Rocket and pay for it.

It's no secret I dislike Skype, but when I was playing with it for the sake of my users, I found it to be very unprofessional. I mean SkypeOut doesn't even give a valid caller id number! Even though I had a SkypeIn number too. And the fan boys have a million and one excuses for why this is acceptable, but I have plenty of experience with the telecom business and that will just never fly. Rant terminated. :)

[Jeff]

I use the Skype for when I want to chat with my peeps across the globe in areas that my Vonage is not free to call. I think that Vonage can make me a happier customer by lowering their rates for Soft Phone. 10 bucks plus a differnet number? I don't think so.

[Pat Phelan]

I am in Josh's corner on this and have had plenty of "come in rubber duck" style conversations on Skype.
The quality just isn’t there and definitely isn’t there for business conversations.
Skypeout quality is no improvement whatsoever and in my opinion most of the Skype traffic is run over tier 3-4 which as fixed line service provider I would never get away with from my customers.
Now you have Skype/EBay with a call me service and another firestorm announcing this amazing product.
I have been an advocate of this type of product for 6 years and couldn’t give it away but I am looking forward to all the non believers calling me now.