We’ve all got our examples of this type of thing and like you I just don’t get why companies don’t simply state their position on something. It sets a customer’s expectations at the outset, and if they still choose to go ahead with it, at least they know what they are getting in for.

What I have never figured out is why when we walk into work in the morning we suddenly forget everything about what it means to be a customer. We suddenly forget all the little bugbears, annoyances and frustrations that we hate happening to us when we are customers. And then when we leave work at 5pm or whenever we suddenly remember them again. is there such a difference between being a customer and being a person?

I’m a PRE user – I love Apple too – been a user since the SE was introduced – but di not have an iPhone – I’m brand loyal an din this case it’s to Palm and Sprint – but have not personally encountered the problems with Foursquare on PRE you describe. Shame about the lack of CS.

In the age of iPad-only magazines and newspapers, it’s ok to admit you’re narrow. The problem is that foursquare is billed as “the next big thing” and unless it’s ubiquitous, then it won’t be.

I mean if you want to exclude a group from the coolness, pick *those people* who don’t have any smartphone.

Great point @guy!! So true!

You build loyalty through great customer service and actually giving a damn about your customers. All the badges in the world won’t make up for their lack of interest in their customers. I’m sorry to say that once you are known for horrible customer service and trying to make your customers change for you and not the other way around it’s a tough reputation to kick. Great post.

I had used Foursquare(found it thru u) on a Blackberry Verizon phone for more than a year. When I clicked on tips there were never any. I assumed the
were none.

I switched to Sprint Android phone and it looks like a different application.

I am now seeing e.g. Checkin and receive a free coffee at Starbucks
at rest stop in Atlantic City. It has been mixed emotions glad to see offers
but disappointed at all I had missed.

FourSquare doesn’t work in parts of Manhattan because the satellite gets blocked by the tall buildings. It also doesn’t work inside. Gowalla I have had work from inside buildings but never FourSquare to date. I view these service more as GeoLocation Yellow pages than anything else so I can see what is in my area easily (Yelp does the same with their App)

There are so many failures in this story.

First, are the CS folks at Foursquare who, at the very least, should be answering queries in their queue promptly, even if they don’t come from a digitally famous customer.

Second, is the marketing team at Foursquare, who should have made a point of following and staying in touch with Peter all along after he started talking about their service publicly. That way, they would have had an open line of communication and an early heads-up about any potential problems. There’s a handy little service called Twitter they might used to do it in a subtle way too. Heard of it, Foursquare?

Finally, the folks at Blackberry need a serious wake up call too. As great as their phones are, they have simply not kept up with the world of apps. And they’ve been as deaf, blind and mute to the community of app developers as Foursquare has been to Peter. Luckily, Blackberry still has Peter’s, and a good chunk of corporate America’s loyalty for now. Are they ready to learn the lesson for them in this post too, before it’s too late? I sure hope so.

@carolschiller

Hi Peter,

I’m Community Manager at foursquare (since January 2010. Prior to that, any support for the company was done by Dennis/Naveen/Harry via our Get Satisfaction forum). I manage a team of 3 support staff (who are awesome! I believe Kristen gave you a really quick reply to one of the two tickets you created on our support site a week ago). I cannot respond to the technical specifics of the BlackBerry platform, so I’ll defer to our BB dev who should be piping in here shortly, but I can tell you about how I approach customer service at foursquare.

When I started, we had a community of about 200k users. In 13 months, we’ve grown to almost 7 million users, and thus the way we approach support has changed. I’m no longer directly replying to every individual user email and Get Sat threads. If I did that, we’d need, well, 30 of me. What we’ve done instead is build out a searchable FAQ site (http://support.foursquare.com) so that users can find the answer they’re looking for. We update known issues there and are constantly updating articles when we iterate on features. Via our support ticket site and our support Twitter account (http://twitter.com/4sqsupport where we tweeted at you earlier today), we answer many many many queries about foursquare for BlackBerry. I promise you, we’ve never once told someone to get an iPhone! We’re doing everything we can to support the platform and have all apps have the same functionality (we recently doubled our BlackBerry client developer team). We provide support for all platforms as best we can (even for the apps not built in house), and even for our super lightweight SMS check-ins.

We’re acutely aware that foursquare doesn’t work perfectly 100% of the time for 100% of our users–there are isolated server hiccups, service problems, platform bugs, user error, and any number of other factors that go into each individual interaction with our service. As Community Manager, I strive to have as much proactive communication from us available for users. FAQ articles, status blog posts, known issues, support tweets, support tickets, individual emails. Sometimes I don’t have the answer. Sometimes our engineers don’t have the answer. But we try our best to communicate what is going on, we try to investigate bugs and usability confusion.

So, I’m sorry you have had trouble with foursquare on your BlackBerry. I’ll see what we can do to help you out. But please know that foursquare cares about all our users, across platforms. I hope I’ve expressed this sufficiently, and I hope that Kristen’s response to you last week did as well.

Thanks for being an early adopter and for continuing to use foursquare!

Chrysanthe
Community Manager, foursquare
@4sqsupport
support.foursquare.com

P.S. Here’s our basic BlackBerry troubleshooting guide: http://support.foursquare.com/.....berry-help

ROTFLMAO – Wow, what a rant! Was your phone on? And, no, I did not miss the point of the post . Thanks for the grin Peter. Safe travels.

I know this may not make you feel better, but thought I would mention. I use Foursquare and even locally, I *repeatedly* have to refresh or it defaults back to the last place or area I was in. I am in Canada. So maybe its not even an overseas or a black berry issue, because I am on android. Places Check in App is faster and far more efficient, so I know its not an issue of my phone. I think the bottom line is, Foursquare has some work to do. A lot of it.

And just to eliminate any misconception, I don’t live in the countryside, I live in a major city! great network coverage with zero downtime…

Personal thoughts of late, considering uninstalling FSq.

Wished I hadn’t tried it, but as a rule of thumb before I give up – I try and stick to it for a while. So we will see.

Just moved from my Blackberry to Android. I don’t think that’s the big issue here either.

Sorry for all you have experienced, I would be REALLY upset if I was traveling the world and not able to check in. -Big time.

Thanks for sharing :) & Wake up Foursquare! This is a service issue.

CS folks at Foursquare who, at the very least, should be answering queries in their queue promptly,even if they don’t come from a digitally famous customer.Blackberry still has Peter’s, and a good chunk of corporate America’s loyalty for now.Just moved from my Blackberry to Android.I don’t think that’s the big issue here either.

Many companies do not realize how important customer service actually is. Some seem to take advantage of their customers and just assume that they are always going to be their customers and never go anywhere else. That’s not true. It does not matter how big the company or many customers they may have during the day, I still expect to be treated like a respected consumer. I do not currently use the Foursquare application but I do use places on Facebook through my iPhone. I thought these application companies supported all smart phones, whether it is a iPhone, a Droid or the older Blackberry. They are all smart phones and all are able to be equipped with the Foursquare application. To me it seems that the Foursquare company does not care about one of their first customers and users and will not take the time to fix the problem as long as their application works on the newer iPhones and Android phones. Customer service is one of the most fundamental forms of public relations and this company does not seem to realize how important this aspect really is to them.

Peter – did 4sq work the next time you traveled internationally? I was in London and Paris a few weeks ago with my Blackberry and Vodafone coverage and was absolutely horrified that 4sq did not work. I resorted to their mobile web page so I could at least check-in at the important places, but I was incredibly disappointed. Of course it works on my sister’s Blackberry that uses Orange.