I commented previously about my excellent experience with the customer support I received from the Apple Genius Bar (in-store tech support). However, even decent customer support is definitely not in the norm for most companies and a recent email from UStream is my latest such “failure”.

I had been experimenting with online video and checking out various streaming sites available for personal publication of video.  UStream was the one I had heard most about and so was one of the first I tried.  The ease of use and quality were pretty impressive at first.  Unfortunately, randomly videos would be unplayable after recording – No good!  After losing a lengthy video I had recorded using their online recording system, I contacted their support on Jan 7th.  I had been experimenting with a few other video sites and eventually I settled on Mogulus, even though it’s much more sophisticated and complicated for my needs.

I pretty much forgot about my support request until I received this email earlier this week.

from Mazy Kazerooni via RT <support@ustream.tv> reply-to support@ustream.tv date Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 3:07 PM subject [USTREAM-Support #XXXXX] Resolved: Issues With Recorded Videos

According to our records, your request has been resolved. If you have any

further questions or concerns, please respond to this message.

Oh, really?  What exactly was resolved?  I certainly never received any notice that you had done anything to resolve my issue.  Nor is the issue resolved as the video in question is still unplayable.  Also, while I’m quite patient, I think waiting 1.5 months to get a response is a bit much, especially if the response is as worthless and misleading as the one above.  Customer support, indeed…

Update:  With comical timing, I received the following email while I was creating this post.

So it’s not resolved but it hasn’t been looked at yet.  Thanks – I look forward to my next email in April!