chip.de Digital Lifestyle Award
We’re not obsessed about awards, but we like them. They show that someone, somewhere thinks we’ve done something right. Which is always nice to know.
So we have just got another award from Germany from Chip, the largest end user IT and CE magazine in Germany. More precisely, it’s the ["Digital Lifestyle Award 2005" in the personal communication category](http://www.chip.de/artikel/c1_artikelunterseite_16438313.html?tid1=&tid2). The site says:
> “1st place, Skype (23.4%) — Skype is on its way to become the synonym for Internet-telephony. This freeware helped to spark the voice-over-IP-boom”.
This award is interesting because the votes were cast by Chip online visitors. According to Chip online, over 70,000 visitors participated and made this the largest event of this kind of Internet voting in Europe.
It is frustrating to see Skype, a service I previously admired, win an award while not addressing a serious system glitch, as I am a very unhappy Skype customer.
Since I have received no response to a previous support request, and no answers via the Skype Forums, I am posting this here.
Here is my situation:
– In 2004, I signed up for Skype on the advice of a friend.
– I bought credits on my account and used some of them without a problem.
– Due to my work situation I did not use the Skype service for a period of more than six months, which expired my credits. (That is not the problem — I don’t mind losing the credits.)
– This summer, I downloaded the latest version of Skype, and attempted to renew use of the service.
– I discovered, however, that per the terms of use my credits had expired. Naturally, I then attempted to buy additional credits.
– However, when I try to purchase new credits, the Skype system seems to think I still have more than 5 credits left.
– The Skype system prevents me from making an additional purchase until I use the phantom remaining credits — which it elsewhere says have expired, so it is impossible to use them up.
– This creates a Catch-22: I can’t use any remaining credits because part of the system says they have expired. And I can’t buy credits to resume calling because another part of the system doesn’t realize my remaining credit has expired.
What to do? I have now filed a second support request, having not heard back on the first one.
I have also posted in the Skype Forums, but have not received any answers that address this situation.
Indeed, most of the responses I have received were either from people who had the same problem, or from people who did not read the post carefully and mis-diagnosed the problem.
In order to try to work around this problem, I created a new Skype name and tried to set that account up. However, the system rejects any attempt to buy credits for this name, recognizing that I have another account. I understand that this is a safety measure. But I have no way of using Skype until this system problem is resolved.
I know other users are in the same Catch-22. This means I cannot use Skype. I am merely an individual trying to make ordinary calls and support your service. Please help, anyone… Maybe by posting here I’ll finally get Skype’s attention.
Sampratt – Can you please sumbit a ticket with the same text to our Customer Support? That is surely the best way to help us find a solution to your problems. You can submit ticket here: http://support.skype.com/?_a=tickets&_m=submit