I do get it when companies who serve billions of people cannot do support like companies who support hundreds. But it should be possible to actually contact some human when you, as a customer, have proven that you have exhausted all other options.
As much as i did not like Broadcom purchasing Vmware and made everything a lot more expensive and annoying, i have to acknowledge that their chat support is pretty good, once you have exhausted all other options.
Click the “Contact” link at the bottom of this HN page. It’s a mailto link.
mailto:hn@ycombinator.com
Reeder has a simple contact form on the page.
https://reederapp.com/classic/
Overcast list an email and social media to contact.
Alfred points to the forum and lists email addresses to contact.
https://www.alfredapp.com/help/contact/
iA Writer lists emails.
SnippetsLab list an email.
https://www.renfei.org/snippets-lab/manual/mac/share-your-fe...
iTerm2 list an email.
Those are just a few off the top of my head. Indie developers tend to be more respectful of their customers.
> I'm perfectly happy with "speaking to a human" being the last port of call to fix a problem. as long as it is available somewhere
Yet, too often, it simply isn’t.
Conversely, Virgin Media's is well into the "f** off" realm: https://www.virginmedia.com/support/help/contact-us
Hostile customer service is a sign that a company is too comfortable and there is insufficient competition in the marketplace.
The author isn't generically ranting against contact pages that redirect you to support documentation — they're pointing out that this customer wasn't considering the customer behaviour they wanted and instead followed a trend. In this case, it was counter to what they wanted the customer to do.
Both versions of the Contact page have issues. The author's version (with only a form) doesn't let you specify whether you want to contact sales, support, or other. Once submitted, you have no way of knowing whether it succeeded, or who it got sent to (as opposed to sending an email, which will at least bounce if it's a bad address).
As for the client's version of the page, the only way of contacting a human is to get in touch with the sales team, which in my experience is all but useless if you need support. (Also "Reach out to..." is corporate doublespeak, and it's not immediately obvious what will happen when you click that button: mailto? tel? Input form? Other?) There's nothing more annoying than hunting for, say, a company's address, clicking the "Contact" link, and having it mailto instead of giving you the info you need.
Sometimes (like here) there are even some good reasons (e.g. we host this product and the first point of contact is in fact another business entity, so they get to decide) and apparently their MO is "you will use this ticket system no matter what you want, so only if you are a certain customer with a login it will work" whereas before you could at least write a "hello, here's a technical problem" that would reach us and not them. Ah well.
It's par for the course with Virgin Media. I've been with them for years as the cheapest way to get genuinely fast broadband (though that seems to be changing) but the service is dire. Some of the patterns:
* When your package contract ends, you always get a much better renewal deal by ringing them up and threatening to leave. The deals you can get online are up to 50% more expensive. This tactic is straight out of the noughties and I can't believe it's still working for them.
* However, you often have to keep calling back until someone offers you a good deal. I'm guessing that there is some sort of incentive structure behind the scenes that basically makes it random whether each individual call will pay off.
* About 8 years ago they messed up my direct debit so badly for three consecutive months despite multiple lunchtimes wasted on hold to their support line, that I eventually sent a strong email to my best guess of the CEO's email. The next day I was contacted by a very capable technician who immediately sorted it out.
* Not so related to their support, but they've recently instituted a price-rise of £4 every year.