I kept getting a silly error message “Can’t synchronize because of an error uploading to your FTP server (connect() timed out!).”

Google wasn’t any help either

I find the fact that you complain about something so small as a forum username quite sad.

My initial complaint Anthony was about the fact that none of my feeds were displaying. However, I was further annoyed by the fact that I then had to register another username and password combo to log this issue in the forum.

Alex has to spend his time responding to your discussion, instead of working on features for the site

I agree Alex doesn’t have to spend his time responding to my discussion - read Brian’s very astute comment above - if Alex had simply said at the start - “you know that’s not a bad idea Tom - we’ll take that into consideration. Right now we’re swamped but next week/month when things quieten down a bit we’ll revisit this issue. Any other problems, feel free to contact me.”

This would have taken 2 minutes and it would have immediately ended the issue - instead Alex chose to argue the point. The funny thing in all this is that all the time I was striving to help Alex!

You have lost a reader here at least…

I’m sorry to hear that Anthony - I hope you’ll return sometime in the future.

A customer-business relationship works both ways. You make it sound like you are the only customer that they have. You have lost a reader here at least…

I didn’t say I didn’t want to engage in the discussion - I said I was getting tired of it. The issue I raised is far from rhetorical - you have a problem with your applications. Applications I am paying for. I am trying to help you fix that and instead of welcoming the feedback, you are getting snotty and defensive.

Your ideas of customer service leave a lot to be desired.

I’m afraid it would, or we’d have to restrict FeedLounge usernames to untaken forum usernames.

and the solution you propose here:

The obvious answer there is not to allow someone to register a username in FL which has already been taken in the support forum.

If you don’t want to engage in a discussion of a “problem” like this, please indicate that your question was rhetorical and I will not waste both of our time trying to engage in the discussion.

If customer human relations were easy for easy for tech people, there’d be a whole lot less lonely geeks in the world. It takes a long time and a lot of effort and even more mistakes to get Customer service REALLY right.

One of the early lessons, the one Alex just had, is don’t try to explain the difficulties in getting something done. Most customers don’t care about the details of completing a task. They care about the end result and being respected. Everyone knows now that ANY feature can be added to software, it’s just a matter of how much thought and effort you want to put into it. And No customers like to be proven wrong after a long debate.

So you take the idea into consideration, this means record it somewhere you WILL look at it again, tell the customer you’ve done so (thus you have taken immediate action upon the customer’s request) and, as Tom says, thank them for the idea. Ideally you’ll have a way of knowing that the customer asked about something and you can look up the status/result of that request, but that all also often comes later.

As does the experience to handle all of these situations and the toughened skin to deal with the customers that don’t want to be consoled.

Alex, a complaint, when handled properly, will win you more loyal customers than customers who have never had any issues.

I’m getting a little tired of this discussion. I am a paying customer of yours. I have made an observation about some unnecessarily awkward behaviour by your applications and I have suggested ways to make your application better.

This is not rocket science. This problem has been solved many times before. Single sign-in is not unusual.

To answer your question:

what happens when someone registers for the FL service and wants a username that is already taken in the forums?

The obvious answer there is not to allow someone to register a username in FL which has already been taken in the support forum.

Something like:
if ProposedUserName = FLUserName or SFUserName, PrintToScreen "Sorry that username is taken, try again"

And the forums login issue?

Create a forums account on FeedLounge account creation automatically. This does not prevent others from creating accounts.

Alex, could you not allow people to use the forums with the same login they use for the application? Having to have another account for the forums is a complete pain.

If we did that, we’d have to limit forum users to only active FeedLounge users.

Alex, could you not allow people to use the forums with the same login they use for the application? Having to have another account for the forums is a complete pain.