Biting The Hand That Yanks My Chain

If you have ever tried to get support from an organisation that provides a free product, you'll know what I'm thinking.

Yesterday I read that Blogger have a new add-in, called, (not very) imaginatively, Blogger For Word. I use w.bloggar as my client, and am pretty happy with it, but thought the new thing would be worth a try. So I downloaded it, installed it, and started Word.


I looked for the toolbar shown in the promo screenshot. Without success. I looked in the Toolbar Menu. I figured something was wrong. I went back to the blogger website and read the FAQ, and spotted this:


I also noted the following comments about compilation errors, but since I didn't get that error, it's probably not applicable to me. I followed the instructions about Outlook, with no success. I even uninstalled the add-in, rebooted the PC, re-installed the add-in, and started Word. No change. I went back to the FAQ, double-checked them, and decided to write to Blogger Support. I explained things as I've done above and posted the message.

This morning, a reply was in my mailbox. It was a lot of white space interspersed with comments about things that were irrelevant or that I'd already tried. The message closed with this line:

If your question or problem is not addressed anywhere in our
documentation, please simply reply to this message and let us know. We
will help you out as soon as we can. Thanks for your patience.

So I replied. Later in the day, I got this response:

Hi there,


Thanks for writing in. Please see Blogger Help for information and
Frequently Asked Questions concerning Blogger for Word:
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=1180

Sincerely,

Andrea

Blogger Support

The hyperlink goes to the FAQ page. The one I'd already read. The one that I'd read and that hadn't helped address my problem. The one that prompted me to write to the Support Team in order to see what else I could do. The one that I'd informed the Support Team that I'd read before writing to them.
So here's my response to Andrea's uninformative message:

Andrea,

If you are referring to the page whose text I have quoted below, I have already read it and tried the things it suggests. I wrote to you because the material on that page, and the FAQ page it links to, are not sufficient. I made that clear in the first message. If you have not read that first message, and seen that description, please say so. After doing that, please give me information I have not seen already. If you don't have access to the information I need, please say so.


Sincerely,

David

Member of the Blogger Public

I expect to get a response that's as uninformative as the first one and as inept as the second. Because that's what I paid for.
But there's a flaw in that logic. Even though Blogger are providing a service at no charge, there is no justification for doing it badly. The usual logic doesn't work in cases like this. Blogger is a big player in a market that delivers sophisticated products and services at no charge to the end-user. They do it in order to attract sophisticated and dedicated customers. They know that their product is only as good as their service, and their reputation.
When they perform so badly on an important aspect like support, they're doing themselves a big dis-service.

At this point, I'm keen to see if Blogger can salvage their reputation for crap service. They've put out a user survey that asks about improvements customers would like to see. If I can think of a way to articulate it clearly, I'll be sugggesting that they improve their support work rather than adding bells and whistles to the application. I still haven't got the latest doo-dad to work.