Nearly two years ago, I got fed up with paying $50+ per month for phone service, and switched to Skype. I have a Skype phone at my office that works just like a regular phone, and I can also answer calls from my laptop or iPod Touch. While call quality seems to vary for some Skype users, I have not had any issues.
While I have never had any problems with Skype, a post about Skype on Consumerist this weekend made me sit up and take notice. A glance at the Skype Wikipedia entry confirms what the Consumerist post suggests: Skype has virtually no customer service. All you can do is submit a support request, but a reply seems unlikely.
No customer service is a major problem for a service I depend on. Despite this, I am sticking with Skype. It has nearly 300 million users, and its owner, eBay, has announced an IPO sometime in 2010 to spin Skype off as its own company. The future looks bright, but for the next year, I am going to be a bit more nervous about my phone provider.
Sam Glover is a business and consumer rights lawyer and the creator of Lawyerist.
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Consumerist followed up with some more end-around customer service options for Skype.
I should point out that I needed some help from Skype last week, and submitted a support ticket. The responses were slow in coming, but I did get responses, and Skype was able to help me figure out how to solve my problem (porting a number from my personal account to my firm’s business control panel).