Ask Lemmy

Talking to the support team for most services. They have a tendency to act like your issue isn't real or that there is absolutely no way that the issue could be on their end and it just wastes both your time and theirs. You have to constantly repeat everything pertaining to your issue or else they forget everything about your issue and start asking questions or giving advice that is irrelevant to not just the issue you're having but also how you use the service.

For those who don't mind reading my rants, there are two times I think I had the worse experiences with.

The first was with Google, I had an issue on the Google play store where I couldn't review an app that I had downloaded because it would give a generic error message saying something like "an error has occurred". I tried writing the review both in a web browser on my computer and in the app on my phone but no matter what I did it wouldn't post the review. I thought the issue would be a simple fix for them but when I contacted them, they constantly forgot what my issue was and the fact that this issue happened regardless of what app or OS I was using. There was also an issue where at some point in the conversation where I thought they redirected me to a bot that then ghosted me after a few days, because up to that point all of the emails mentioned the name of who I was talking to and a survey that I would get after the conversation was over.

After that I was checked out and I just wanted the conversation to end. So when they did eventually start emailing me again, I told them that even if they don't fix the issue, I wanted the conversation to be over. I was checking about once a month to see if they fixed the issue and they did about 6 months after the conversation ended.

The second time was with HideoutTV (a youtube alternative that, at least used to, double as a "beer money site"). I had an issue where I can't watch any video on their website in any browser I use on my tablet. I thought this would also be a simple fix because YouTube works fine on my tablet. I mentioned what my tablet was and every browser I tried, even showing screenshots so they know what this issue is, that the browsers were fully updated and that I didn't have any extensions installed (for the few that had them). I did everything they told me to do and even provided further screenshots in case they would help. But the thing that aggravated me the most, was that the CEO of Hideout came into the conversation, ignored everything that I said and all the screenshots I posted and proceeded to insinuate that I wasn't being cooperative and made some excuse about how one of my browsers looked outdated (despite being the newest version available) and that if I just updated that browser, my issue would magically disappear.

This obviously upset me greatly because I thought I was doing more on my end then most of the users they normally work with. I don't remember exactly what I responded with but I remember saying that I thought their platform would be similar to YouTube and that this would be a simple problem for them to fix but the conversation proved to me that they're incompetent. I then asked how my browser could look outdated when I've already proven multiple times that every browser I used was reinstalled multiple times and fully updated every time I tried them. They never responded after that but about 9 months later, they had the audacity to mark the issue as "solved" even though it definitely wasn't and I decided to stop using their platform. Although, I don't think I'd be using their platform anyways because apparently they stopped paying their users.