FeedBurner Support 2

FeedBurner hasn't lost all of its friendliness, as one would be lead to believe looking at the change in the way their technical support operates. There are no more letters signed "Your Friendly Neighborhood FeedBurner Support Team" but not all is lost.

I had an issue with one of their features not working with Blogger, and I have submitted the error outlining where, how it occurs and the exact error codes Blogger returns.

What response I got from Blogger? Zilch, nada, nothing.

Whereas in the FB forum at least a so-called "Community Expert" responded to check my IQ (not in so many words), and after finding me sufficiently intelligent forwarded my error report to the FB staff, and a member of their staff responded quite quickly.

It would have spared everyone's time if the vetting process was skipped, and I would have felt better if not a "Community Expert" were the one cross-examining my error report, but a staff member from the outset (even if this member of staff is the same person as the "C. expert").

In conclusion, I believe FeedBurner has not chosen the most consumer friendly way to deal with the increasing strain on their support department, but they are still the most human branch of Google I have come into contact with through the Feedback or Contact us buttons.

FeedBurner adopting the "Google way" to deal with customers (Updated)

I use FeedBurner to analyse the traffic to my blogs. From time to time I have to contact their support department. In the past there was a contact form to fill out and a staff member would contact me personally in no more than 48 hours' time.

All this has gone since they have been acquired by Google. Now direct contact with their support team is reserved for issues involving the misuse or transfer of feeds, all other support questions are directed at their forum. To make things more complicated you have to register separately for the forum and then check back regularly whether anyone has bothered to reply to your post - usually they don't.

With further integration into Google they had transferred their forum to Google Groups (you have to manually click on a link on the forum's homepage to get there - so far you have travelled the Contact Us -> Forum -> Google Groups route without the chance to provide feedback or to ask questions). The welcoming message in their help group informs you that (emphasis added)

While this forum is intended as a place for FeedBurner users to assist one another, from time to time Google representatives, nicknamed FeedBurner Guide will post tips and clarifications.

So that is the de-evolution of friendly customer support into an impersonal corporate nightmare, the same as that of some bigger Google services. This has happened to a team that posted a photo like this on their flickr account:

[Update]: After having successfully resolved an issue in both the old and new ways of FeedBurner Support I have written a follow-up in which I shall point out that FB support is still better than Blogger support.