Customer Service Complaint

Well, for an all volunteer support team, I think we do a pretty good job of keeping folks up and running.

*Gingerly raises hand*

While locked out of www.ads-software.com, due to login issues, I have browsed the forums for answers. What I have found is terrible at best.

Terrible? How? We take support seriously even though like yourself, we are all unpaid volunteers. If you can provide an example I’ll be happy to look at that forum post.

BUT… I believe you are referring to your self-hosted installation of WordPress as you’ve mentioned in this topic you started.

https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/merging-packages?replies=3

If that is the case then I think you have a potential issue with your host provider which reads to be GoDaddy. The reason I mention is that no one here has anything to do with that login to your site.

We can help you with advice but that’s really as far as we can go. These are self-help support forums and no one here is a customer. And none of us here provide customer service, just volunteer support as part of the community.

If you mean in these forums as in this topic:

https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/unable-to-login-to-wordpressorg?replies=2

Then please send an email there as suggested and someone (possibly me) will reply with help if possible.

[Edit: Looks like a couple of moderators posted before me, but I’ll leave this post here just in case it adds any information not said above]

We don’t want to condescend again, but are you sure you are talking about the www.ads-software.com forums? There are no products sold here and there is no customer relationship.

If you are referring to www.ads-software.com then we’ll need to look into the threads in question, because the last thing we want to do is make people afraid to ask for help.

Jan Dembowski. Thank you for your reply. I am not referring at all to any of my own posts. Those who have assisted me thus far have been cordial and wonderful. I am simply referring to a number of posts from others who I have seen.

kmessinger, Volunteer or not, no one has rights to treat anyone as I have seen in these forums. Nor am I questioning the quality of work done here. I am simply bringing to your attention that, as a new user coming in to this, it has resulted in some concerns.

If you need examples, I will pull them.

Andrew. Yes. I am referring to the www.ads-software.com forums. I do understand that wordpress.com is a completely different service and many customers confuse the two.

Thank you again, all of you for your assistance. Pulling samples now…

Jan ?? Also… No. The login issues I am having is not related to my WordPress sites, which I can login to with no issues. I an not able to log in to www.ads-software.com with my original user name because I forgot the password. I am user abchrysler with a forgotten password. The email on file is [ redacted, please do not post that in public ], but this email is corrupt.

I submitted a new password request from www.ads-software.com, and they (I assume because I have no way of checking) sent me the new password via email to [ redacted, please do not post that in public ]. But this email is no longer active. I have no other way of logging in to www.ads-software.com to change the email address to get the new password because the email is no longer valid. Catch-22

I had to create a new temporary account to login to the forums to ask for help. Here is my question: Is there a way to login to my original Worpdress.org account with User name: ABChrysler to update the email or is this User name now lost?

Here is the thread I read earlier today: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/cant-log-in-to-wordpressorg-blog-with-supplied-info?replies=17

Again, I respectfully credit everyone here and am not looking for a fight. I was only browsing the forums and, when I saw this, I became concerned that I too would be treated like this. As a new user to the forums, I have my apprehensions.

A few months back, again, I saw treatment like this and it has taken me awhile to ask for help.

In no particular order:

Support Forum Password Resets

Here is my question: Is there a way to login to my original Worpdress.org account with User name: ABChrysler to update the email or is this User name now lost?

Yes, but please do not post emails in public, that never ends well. One exception is this email address.

[email protected]

If you send an email there then perhaps that part can get sorted out. I’ll need you to send this info.

1. Your old account ID in the support forums.
2. The email you have used with that old account in the support forums.

NOTE: Please be aware that an account in these forums cannot be used anywhere else including your own site. Resetting an account here will not get you into your own site. The accounts on your site and the www.ads-software.com site are in no way connected.

If you only have an account on your own site then no one here can directly help you with that. I can point you at some documentation to assist you in that but that’s as far as anyone can go.

I know you understand that, I am just trying to be complete for anyone else who comes across this topic in the future.

Customer support

This is going to a long reply so please be patient with me.

There is no customer support here. There are no customers here to support.

Weird right? I’ll explain. ??

These are support forums are staffed by unpaid volunteers like yourself.

All the volunteers here (and again, that includes yourself) are honestly trying to help people on their own free time out of the goodness of their hearts. The majority of the time those volunteers are successful and end users (that’s you and me) get the help they need.

We’re not customer support representatives, we are just some people who like to help others in the community. Some of us have technical background but most support is from people who just may know the answer to that one question.

If you are reading a “BUT!” in all of that, then you are understanding what I am writing. ??

Everyone has bad days. Sometimes that comes out and that’s fine. We’re all human and we all make mistakes. If someone has enough of those then a moderator (I’m one of them) will tap that person figuratively on the shoulder and ask if everything is alright.

There are (does a quick look) 7,699,368 posts in these forums going back 12 years. There are many examples of people having a bad day and replying in a less than helpful way. There are just as many people who have started a topic with a large chip on their shoulder.

The example you pulled is 7 years old. The volunteers honestly tried and then the original poster who had a problem became mildly insulting after she figured it out herself. That’s fine: as I said everyone has bad days.

I am sure you can find other examples but yes, no one should be treated rudely and no one should use their disappointment or misunderstanding to become rude either.

If someone does keep up that rude behavior then their account will get put into moderation watch. Until a moderator approves their replies or posts, then no one sees what they’ve posted. If they get better then the watch tag is removed from their account.

If they don’t play nice with the other forum members then their account may be blocked. That doesn’t happen that often but it has happened in the past.

*Re-reads whole thing*

I hope that explains the customer service thing. I also hope once your account is sorted out that you help others here too. Helping people here is a great way to learn new things related to WordPress.

Hah. 7 years ago. Old one.

ngelahrysler: Seven years ago, I had my day job in a cubicle farm in the basement of a Fortune 500 company doing little more than tech support for their network of a few thousand stores. They even had a dress code. Six years ago, I started doing this full time and now work from home, on my couch.

To say I’m a little more relaxed now would be the understatement of the decade.

In any case, it’s important to keep in mind that we’re not a company. We don’t have a “customer service department”. Heck, we don’t even have customers.

WordPress is an open-source project. Anybody, and I do mean anybody, can contribute. If somebody is willing to come onto these forums and answer questions and it turns out they’re good at it, then we promote them. Give them more privileges, more rights, more ability to do what they’re clearly good at doing.

I’m pretty good at support, and became a moderator based on that, then got a job working on this website specifically and exclusively, and that’s what I do now.

As for questions like the one that person posed 7 years ago, most of the people here now have stock answers to that sort of confusion. The confusion still happens from time to time, and the specific problem with that sort of issue is that the confusion happens on both sides of the discussion. When somebody says they can’t log into their “www.ads-software.com blog”, then the actual question itself makes no sense, even though they don’t realize it. We need to know where they are trying to log in, specifically, and what username and password they are trying to use, and why they think that that username and password should work. It’s not easy information to pull out of somebody, to clear up that sort of confusion all around. People often install WordPress via a one-click install on their hosting and then don’t know why their forum password won’t work on .com, or on their own site. We have to clear up that confusion, and people resist because they don’t understand the responses entirely, because we don’t often understand their problem entirely. So, yeah. That’s a hard one to answer sometimes.

But yeah, 7 years ago, I probably had more than a few bad days. I could edit that view of the past now, since I have that power, but… why? It’s 7 years old. Don’t care anymore about that. I only look at right now and doing what we can to make the website better overall. Also, I don’t do as much of the support anymore, we have lots of moderators now, and lots of people answering questions. Not just the handful we had back then.

In any case, Jan is correct. For issues with passwords for this specific forum, we have the [email protected] email address now. They can sort out any problems.

I always try to provide clear support and help when I can, I have on the whole just seen clear support that was not sarcastic but helpful.

But the best way to help, is to get involved.

https://make.www.ads-software.com/support/

derek hill <[email protected]>
to: WordPress <[email protected]>
date: 21 April 2017 at 16:19
subject: Re: [Derek Hill] Your site has updated to WordPress 4.7.4
mailed-by: gmail.com
: Important according to our magic sauce.
Hi WordPress

https://derekhill.co.uk/wp-admin/about.php

After a great deal of investigation between myself and my website hosts, it has arisen, that when I updated my WordPress package from 4.7.0. to 4.7.1 in January this year, a plug-in and/or plug-ins, (maybe with themes), corrupted my entire website, apart from a very small part of it which I only just managed to salvage.

Therefore as this is currently under investigation, I I have been advised by my web developer not to upgrade any content or update any “plugins” or “plugins with themes” until this matter is resolved. I should point out that I have not used any other “plugins” or plugin sources, with or without themes, apart from WordPress.

You will appreciate that my website has been in existence spanning 15 years of personal development and archival material and in all that time I have never experienced this before. It is a collaborative effort and contains a laborious amount of development, design, photography and editing at great personal expense.

In the meantime, any help with these issues will be gratefully accepted.

Very best wishes
Derek Hill

I need someone I can actually TALK to, who UNDERSTANDS technology. It takes a long time to get someone to respond and a long time in between responses, and their not even reading my problem! They’re giving answers that are the PROBLEMS I’m trying to have solved to begin with. I keep having to repeat myself. It’s frustrating!

I’m sick of repeating myself.

I’m on limited time, and I’m locked out of my account, so I can’t do anything. I keep explaining that I can’t login to change the password (I’m locked out), and I can’t get email as it never arrives, and that my hosting provider doesn’t give me a login or a cpanel. What do I keep getting? Things where I have to check my email or log in to a cpanel of some sort with my hoster, or some other thing that involves my hoster/computer service people.

I hate repeating myself. How can I change the lost password when the email never arrives?

I need someone I can CALL that I can TALK to. I need a real EXPERT who UNDERSTANDS technology and can look at what’s wrong with the PROGRAMMING.

My email is working for everything else. I’ve said that more than once. I can send and receive email. It’s not my email or my hosters. Last I heard, they didn’t find anything wrong on their end.

Please, to the support here, actually READ what the people wrote before responding. Don’t give an answer that is clearly NOT what the person asked. Like if someone is having trouble getting a password reset in an email, don’t give them stuff where you either have to log in or have an email sent to you to reset.