Ramblings from a Stay at Home Dad & Web Designer

I’m not to impressed with the level of Customer Service I’ve been receiving recently. For more detail on it, keep reading.

First off there is Tweetboard. Their twitter name is @140ware. A description of Tweetboard from their site.

Tweetboard is a fun and engaging micro-forum type application for your website. It pulls your Twitter stream in near real-time (max 1 min delay), reformatting tweets into threaded conversations with unlimited nesting. Conversations that spun off the original conversation are also threaded in-line, giving your site visitors full perspective of what’s being discussed.

Tweetboard is also a powerful viral tool that engages your website visitors. Each time someone posts (or replies) via your board, a link back to the corresponding conversation is appended to their tweet, creating a viral stream of Twitter traffic to your website.

To get invited & accepted into the alpha testing, you just had to send a tweet to them with your website url. As you can see on my blog, I’ve been accepted into the beta no problem. It took several days but they say it may take up to 2 weeks before they get around to sending out the invites. I see no problem with that, since they have pointed it out in the beginning.

Now I was also signing up for Tweetboard on my business account so I could have it integrated on my site.

I sent in my first invite request on Feb. 9th, 2010, and the invite was recorded.

@WyldWebDesigns, Your invite request has been recorded. Once invites become available, we will send you a tweet letting you know yours has b 9:24 PM Feb 9th via Tweetboard in reply to WyldWebDesigns

I waited for the 2 weeks & didn’t get a message saying I was accepted. I sent them a reply asking about & they said they didn’t have a record of it. Strange I thought, so I reapplied.

@WyldWebDesigns, Your invite request has been recorded. Once invites become available, we will send you a tweet letting you know yours has b 5:40 PM Apr 14th via Tweetboard in reply to WyldWebDesigns

As you can see the dates are Feb 9th & Apr 14th. As of today I still haven’t been approved but others have. I sent them a Support Ticket like they say on their site to get approved. It’s been over 24 hours since I’ve submitted the support ticket and it has yet to be assigned to the help desk.

#2740 It’s been 2 months since I requested Invite

I requested an Invite on Apr 17 & it was recorded. It is now almost 2 months & I have yet to be accepted.
Submitted 1 day ago
Awaiting assignment to a help desk operator. View request history »

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Second Failure of Customer Service is my local Freecycle group.

You have to signup using Yahoo! Groups. Once you sign up you get an email with some information you have to fill out to prove you live in the area & aren’t a spammer. In the email it says that you will have your membership approved in 72 hours.

LongviewWA_Freecycle Moderator to me Jun 6 (6 days ago)

Thank you for your interest in The Freecycle Network(TM) and in joining the Freecycle(TM) group for Longview!

Your membership is pending approval from one of our moderators. Please note that volunteers manage Freecycle groups. Your patience and good manners are greatly appreciated. Approval won’t take long at all though, we promise.

This group requires membership approval to reduce the likelihood of SPAM and people who do not live in our local area. Please know that this particular Freecycle group also has rules stating that all profiles must be G-rated and for all ages.

Simply send a reply email with your City, zip code, cross street and a landmark nearest your location within 72 hours and you should be approved.

Once a moderator ensures that your profile contains no porn or curse words and you live in the local area your membership will be approved.

Please note that unless the above requested information is provided you will not be approved. Our group requires this info to keep our members safe.
Please DO NOT send your full name, address or phone number as that is not the information being requested and we DO NOT want it. Please follow the directions
and send us your reply.

Please read the list rules, as they provide much information to make your Freecycle adventure easier and more effective, and remember to Have Fun and Tell THREE (…or more) people about Freecycle!

Thank you and we look forward to having you as a part of our Freecycle Family!

Your Longview Freecycle Moderators
Longview-freecycle-owner@yahoogroups.com

I don’t see a problem with this because it is stated up front.

So I let the 72 hours pass & I’m still not accepted or declined. I try sending the owner an email asking about it using the email link at the bottom of the email. Longview-freecycle-owner@yahoogroups.com

It gets returned to me with this message

We are unable to process the message from xxxxxxxxx
to .

Your message was sent to the owner of a group that does
not exist. Please check to make sure you spelled the
group name correctly.

For further assistance, please visit http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/members/forms/general.html

It turns out that the email address at the bottom of the email is incorrect. So once I get the correct email address LongviewWA_Freecycle-owner@yahoogroups.com, I send off an email asking about it & stating that they need to change their acceptance policy if they can’t do it within the 72 hours as stated in the email.

I finally get a response from one of the moderators.

I am very sorry for what you are going through. I just received another e-mail and am not sure that Yahoo is working correctly right now. I do not know why the owner has not answered your e-mail about joining Longview Freecycle. I will contact her. She is the only one who can approve your membership and I will see if I can find out what the problem is. Again, accept my apology for any problems you are having.

Betty, Longview Freecycle Moderator

So it appears that only 1 person so do the approvals & has gone missing from her job. Granted that the Freecycle group is run by volunteers, but if you are the only person able to do approvals, you might want to let someone else have access to it. It has now been 6 days (144 hours) since I filled out the required information & I have yet to be approved.
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Maybe I should just start offering Tech Support & Customer Service like these 2 business.

Fill out the forms & paper work, say I’ll get back to you in upto 72 hours only to make you wait a month. Good business policy.

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