September 29, 2005

Is Skype getting to big for its own good?

I like Skype. Works awesome on my desktop and my tablet. Heck, with my bluetooth headset I can walk around and have conversations, sometimes with BETTER quality then the land line for some of my overseas contacts.

I have been a long time user of the product, and a customer since last summer (that's right I bought in for the voicemail). All before the hype of Skype. But recently I am starting to see the downside of such a growing business.

Their growing pains are starting to affect me in a negative way. I have support instances logged now that are now two weeks old without resolution. I get answers that include text like:

Unfortunately we have not been able to get to your request for Technical Support in a timely manner and we apologize for this. We try and get to as many requests as possible but due to the high number of requests and the fact that many of these problems are either irreproducible problems specific to your computer setup or already answered on website we cannot always answer every specific request.
We suggest that you search our Help section knowledgebases, user guides and troubleshooter for answers to your technical problems.

Right now, I am paying for a voicemail service that doesn't work. Used to. No idea what changed. And moving to their latest version (1.4.0.71 as of this writing), doesn't seem to resolve it. But now I have had 4 people text or email me and tell me they would have left voicemail, but that it never went to the voicemail. And to boot, even though "My Account" on skype.com says I have 9 months left of voicemail, my Skype client tells me I have less than a week! *sigh*

I really wanted Skype to be MY communications medium. Unfortunately, I cannot rely or trust that it will work for business communications. Heck, they can't even get it straight that I still have 9 months left on my account!

Perhaps they are growing way to fast for their own good.

Posted by SilverStr at September 29, 2005 09:30 AM | TrackBack
Comments

Actually, I understand Skype's current position, though I do not really appreciate it.

As you pointed out, they grew too fast, maybe faster than they could hire. Responding to the growing demand is pretty difficult: if they hire slowly and run with a small, but compenent group of support engineers, these will be overloaded with work and will be slow to respond. If they hire fast, Brooks' Law will apply: adding resources to late projects will only make the project finish later. Teaching the new staff members will eat up all resources and there is no money which could make people learn faster. You can save time by not teaching them very thorougly, but then the quality of your services will necessarily worse.

Posted by: pb at September 30, 2005 12:32 AM

Just a thought, but have you tried uninstalling skype, deleting anything left behind and then reinstalling it?

Posted by: Andrew at September 30, 2005 02:27 AM

Skype deserves pain considering that they aren't building on open standards. :-)

I think we argued/discussed this one before, but my recommendation is still to use SIP based Centrex style VOIP service. Similiar pricing, similiar or better features, voice quality is about the same, and you're not locked in - you can change or add SIP connections as required.

Posted by: Wim at October 1, 2005 07:34 PM

Wim,

I don't agree that it's similarly priced, with similar features. I don't have time to tweak and configure an Asteriks server to support SIP. Nor do I wish to purchase the hardware needed to do so. Or the PSTN gateway and cards I would need.

Skype just works (minus the dumb voicemail issue of course). Skype In and Skype Out just work for me on all my systems. No configuration needed. No hardware needed. It roams with me whereever I go.

Not perfect, but pretty damn good for about $1 a month plus $0.02 cents a minute anywhere I call.

Now try to roll out a VOIP with Asteriks. Assuming you got GOOD and EASY software for Windows as the client, you still need the server, the PSTN gateway, the cards etc. Way to much overhead I don't want to manage.

So lets look at the alternative. I can go with Packet8 or Vonage. $40/month PER USER plus $15/month for the virtual attendant. $150 setup and activation fee per user (although it does include a SIP phone). Not as cheap as one thinks.

I'd love to discuss this more with you if you believe you can get it working for a LOT less than that. Gimme a call via cell or Skype or IM me and we can hook up for lunch next week. :P

Posted by: Dana Epp at October 2, 2005 06:18 AM