I'm cross at the moment - not a good way to start the working year. I have a problem with Feedburner that the FAQ can't fix - so why can't I contact a real person? I've tried to transfer an RSS feed for a client from my Google Feedburner account to his, and Feedburner has conveniently lost the feed. Google's customer service means I can only access a forum (in which no Google staff member ever seems to respond) or read a list of FAQ. There is no contact form for people like me to request assistance with a real problem.
I tried phoning Google in Australia but of course they don't offer help via the telephone, as a pleasant voice told me in a recorded message. Unless of course I want to spend money on Adwords or other paid products, in which case they'll be only too pleased to help.
I realise that a massive global organisation is going to have to spend a bomb to man a real live help service; but it's something they need to do if they want to keep their customers satisfied. Google is where Microsoft was a few years ago - dominating its own part of the IT industry. It has a plethora of free products, it is growing exponentially, almost everyone uses at least one Google product - but it WON'T OFFER A PROPER HELP SERVICE AND THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. Not to mention short-sighted. How long before a competitor who can offer live help starts capturing the market?
In perusing Feedburner's Help Forum (and adding my own problem there) I noticed several people had my issue. The feed they were trying to transfer from their Feedburner Account to someone else's had gone into limbo. (In my case my client clicked on the "transfer" link and was provided with an error message saying there was a problem and Feedburner would fix it. Well, it's not fixed and now the transfer link has expired. The feed has left my account and is in limbo; still working, still providing feeds, but we need to access it and fix the feed's title and do some more tweaking to it.) What was noticeable was a complete lack of support from Feedburner staff - many forum posts were followed up by the author wondering if anyone was there at all and complaining, as I'm doing now, of a lack of customer service.
Feedburner is introducing a new interface and thankfully there was a feedback form I could complete, so I put my problem into it and sent it off. I'm not confident that anyone from Google Feedburner will bother to contact me. It seems all Google want to do is pump out software, get users committed to their products and services and provide third party help through FAQ and help forums in which the blind have to lead the blind.
I'll be tweeting this post and sharing on Facebook in the hope that someone can help me find a solution or at the very least some kind of contact point to talk to a Google customer service rep by email or phone.
Google, lift your game. Listen and RESPOND to people like me who have problems. You want to be the biggest in the world? Then offer a proper help service.