MySpace Sucks. Tell a Friend.

Joelle said at some point on February 11, 2008

Farmer's Market, Sunday

For the last two months, I’ve been locked out of my MySpace account.  Having the password resent would do no good, as they send it to the email address on file and that account was no longer active. I tried to contact their support to help me change my email address to no avail, so I eventually gave up.  No one would even respond to my emails except to send me things that didn’t help me.

One day they put up some kind of political “skin” on their login page and ever since then I’d been locked out.  I contacted their support for weeks, following all the instructions on their site and in the autoresponse emails they sent. But no one would ever help me.  I tried being sweet.  I begged.  I bitched.  I practically rubbed myself in sage oil, twirled three times, stuck a feather in my ass and sang Yankee Doodle in Mandarin, but still… no one would help me. 

I went on a hunt yesterday morning to find some kind of contact phone number for their corporate offices so I could share my displeasure with the poor unsuspecting receptionist unfortunate enough to pick up my call, but after being sent from one disconnected number to another, from one “full” voicemail box to another… I cried “uncle”.

It’s not that I care so much about being “on” MySpace, I mostly use the account for promotional purposes and keeping in touch with friends. I didn’t like that I was locked out from my own personal information, yet any Tom, Dick n’ Hacker could break in and use my account for them spam/perv bidding, which has happened in the past, so yeah, I wanted into my account. It’s not too much to ask.

Eventually, an email came back with the same repetitive request for a “salute” even though I’d included salutes in every single email. (A “salute” is when you take a photo of yourself holding your friend ID on a piece of paper or whatever).  This was my third one of those, so I snapped. I responded with the entire sordid story yet again and signed with a very pissed off, “If someone with a pulse does not attend to this matter or respond to this email, I will be contacting local and national media to spotlight you flagrant disregard for your members, their personal information and their identities.”

Who knew that was going to work!  I’m a woman of my word, so my threat wasn’t empty, but seriously… what good is my local news scam-stopper going to do?  I certainly wouldn’t think that would have an effect on MySpace, let alone my silly grumbling, but it worked nonetheless.  Yesterday afternoon there was an email in my inbox from MySpace (when usually it would take about a week to get a response, if I got one at all) saying they’d reset my email on the account and forwarded me my password.

*happy dance* Now I can go about ignoring MySpace like I usually do.

Of course, I’m not advocating spouting off that you’re going to contact the media every time customer service sucks somewhere. If we did, there would need to be a Dateline just for crap service. Hm… Dateline: To Catch a Tech Support Person Who Actually Gives a Damn?  No, that’s just too long… Dateline: To Catch a Slacker… *ponders*