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.

Toast

Maybe it's time to start an on-line wish-list. Or a how-do-I-fix-this list (with a nod to Kerri). My toaster died yesterday.

It's a special toaster, with a single opening about 10 inches (25 cm) by 1.25 inches (3 cm). I bought it a few years ago at a flea market, and it's been good to me the whole time. It is my primary cooking utensil, given that my diet consists mainly of salad in either a tortilla or a pita, and that both of those breads are too large to fit in a normal toaster, but do very nicely in this one.

It failed yesterday, with great arcing and sparking, while I was toasting a flour tortilla. Consequently I didn't eat much today - mainly peanut butter on cream crackers - until I decided that enough was enough, and fired up the god-awful gas grill on top of my stove/cooker.

This gas grill is a nuisance in that it takes several minutes to arrive at a decent toasting temperature, and given that the flames are shooting out of the back of the grill, it cooks the back edge of the toast long before the front edge. So I have to rotate the toast back to front.Then I have to turn the toast over and go through the same process. There's never a nice, even toasting job.

This is just the way people like to do things in Britain. It's cute, but not that clever. Grills are still way more prevalent than widemouth toasters, lemme tell ya. Go ahead, prove me wrong. Of course, there are not many pita and tortilla eaters here. You can buy a pita and flour tortillas in a shop, but when it comes to toasting it, well, I guess most people use their grill.

Back to the main story

I fired up the grill, burned a tortilla, put some salad in it, and was - as if by magic - no longer hungry. This was fine until a few hours later when I really had had enough crackers and peanut butter. So I decided to see about fixing the toaster. First, I checked the 13 amp fuse. It's fine. Not a good sign. I took the toaster apart. No small feat, given that the manufacturer screwed it togethr with some very nonstandard fixings. I resorted to the Dremel tool in extracting the screws. Once I had the thing open, I tested the electrical points and found them to be conductive. I cleaned them just to be sure, then plugged it in, pulled the lever, and waited to see if it heated up. It didn't.

I looked more closely at the innards. There was a funny blister on a piece of insulation, which is where the fault had occurred, melting something in the process. This particular piece of insulation looks like it might be a protective cover for something conductive.

I haven't been able to figure it out. So I'm still toasterless. I'll be burning tortillas on the gas flame until I can get the thing fixed or replaced.