05-02-2007 02:30
Less of a question and more of a friendly suggestion.

As you can see from all the other feedback comments, there's a lot of frustration around. We all have our very good reasons for being upset about the poor service that we are paying you for (in my case, monthly tier on a whole island that cost me big money to 'buy' in the first place). My own problems comprise constant crashing since client 1.14 despite having done _everything_ your handouts advise to put it right; the broken friends' list and group IM difficulties; frequent inability to TP; and the 'empty sea' bug that has been around for at least 5 client upgrades.

We get upset when you ignore fundamental problems in a rush for minor technical 'improvements'; frustration is redoubled when we are told that help facilities are being constantly improved when they are clearly and obviously deteriorating. Public JIRA is, as you yourself say, a replacement for the repository of known issues and for the feature voting tool, of more use to developers than users. Not much of a help facility for a current problem! The number of Concierges has quadrupled, but I have yet to receive the courtesy of a reply to requests for help sent weekly for several weeks now. Telephone assistance to the US number is non-existent and ends with the despatch of a list of generic information resources unrelated to one's question. And finally, have you noticed that the UK telephone help line has been out of order for weeks? Apparently not.

All this is going to take time to put right. But you could reduce the dissatisfaction dramatically with one simple change: bring back Live Help.

Bear with me.

A small proportion of enquiries concern simple newbie questions; a larger percentage consist of simple 'how do I?' queries; and, yes, a few idiots used Live Help to let off steam. Only some enquiries, I'd guess around a quarter, relate to the big problems we are discussing in the present feedback forum. But all of your current 'improvements' are directed at only the last category!

The other kinds of enquiry are unserviced and frustration grows exponentially.

Live Help provides the comfort of a human voice. It costs little since it relies on volunteer helpers. It resolves the majority of enquiries while you chaps in the background work on the big issues that plague us but that will, I acknowledge, require time to resolve. Please bring it back, as a safety-valve if nothing else; spare your own blood-pressure as well as our own!