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The Silence Continues

As Blogger rolls out their (vastly improved) Beta blog template, the problems arise. Now, I have been part of many roll outs of software and hardware, and problems are normal. So the Blogger Beta, though it may seem catastrophic to most Bloggers (the unpaid employees, I mean), these problems are not unusual.

What is unusual though (at least compared to the real business world), and what has fueled many posts in The Real Blogger Status, is the silence.

An example of the frustration and uncertainty felt, by many Bloggers, is this bit of genius, which I quote in its entirety.
An actual fictitious conversation at google....

Tech 1: Hey lets update blogger with a new beta!

Tech 2: Yeah that would be fun...should we test it first or just make it live on the web?

Tech 1: Hmm...lets just make it live and watch all our faithful bloggers panic.

Tech 2: Haha...man you have a sick sense of humor, but I like the idea. Oh and while we are at it, lets ignore their emails as well.


Blogger Staff: Your Beta product rocks, regardless of the bugs and of the design deficiencies. Having said that, your concept of customer service, customer support, and project management, absolutely sucks. I don't have any objective terms here. Your service and support sucks.
  • Acknowledge the problems.
  • Describe what you're doing to fix the problems.
  • Fix the problems.
  • Let us know when the problems have been fixed.
  • Let us know when we will have raw template editing.


(Edit 8/29): More dissatisfaction is indicated in Google Blogger Help - Something Is Broken: An open letter to Blogger support
One of the first rules of customer service is, even if something is broken, communicate with your constituents. Let us know you're at least aware of the issue and working on it, or even that you're aware of the issue, but blowing us all off.

I understand that this is a free service, but in this day and age, there are plenty of free or near-free services out there for which I will pay a nominal fee to gain decent customer support.


Let's keep communicating. Eventually they will listen. Maybe one day, they will speak.

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Comments

Nabeel said…
I agree .. the switch to beta should have been more smooth
I didn't even switch to beta and needed some assistance as I moved my url from my blogspot blog to my own domain. I wanted one last chance to get back in to the old stuff and say, "Here's our new home". Silence met with each of my requests. Time after time after time. I had no idea why I was being ignored. I finally got a curt we are too busy with the beta rollout and don't bother us now response. I was super disgusted.
Nitecruzr said…
Hi Lady Skye,

Don't take it personally. But don't take it lying down either.

Until they terminate my Blogger account, I'll be here. And if that ever happens, I'll have Wordpress.

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