Dear Skype management,

Just to let you know... I am a devoted Skype user and pretty good customer using over $30/month in services.

Since the ebay takeover, your service has deteriorated a lot. Apart from the fact that the new 2.0 sounds are sooooo bad that I uninstalled it and went back to 1.4, everything else seems to be going down hill.

But the real problem is in the audio quality. I have lots of dropped calls, calls where the other person can't hear me and in general the overall audio quality is simply not what it used to be.

The most frustrating part is that since most of my calls are to Panama Cell (at $0.22/min), I have lost a lot of money calling and yelling "can you hear me" repetedly for which I get charged. And I honestly can't comprehend why Skype, of all companies, has no way of reaching them by phone to discuss these issues. You guys should be able to get good caling rates, right? And, Skype to Skype is free. Why not allow us to Skype your service desk?

While I am just about ready to switch to another service such as VBuzzer or Gizmo, (which I have tried and they do remind me of the "good-old-Skype"), I am trying to give Skype the benefit of the doubt in the hopes that your service will at least return to the quality that it was pre-ebay.

I would love to get a response from Skype, but I am confident that I won't.

Podmego,

I just browsed all your posts and can't find a support request for your audio and SkypeOut problems.
Still you complain about it. What if we offer help to see if we can improve the quality by simply going through your set up?
If it was due to eBay (which it isn't of course)or indeed the latest version, all users would have the same problems. But they don't

About your calls to Panama, the problem is likely with the gateway providers not your setup.

The only solution besides waiting is to:
Report each failed call to pstn-feedback@skype.net with your location, time of day of call and the complete phone number you were calling and of course what happened. Without this information there is not much Skype can do to fix your problem

Ike

Ticket ID: AWE-78645
Ticket Key: b88f41d1
Subject: Service is getting worse
Department: General

And yes, I do fill out the surveys and report the problems frequently.

Thanks for your reply.

[quote=paraveterinary]If it was due to eBay (which it isn't of course)...[/quote]

Unfair statement to make I'd say. Although I agree it is not directly caused by Ebay, a major buyout such as this one could easily increase call volume which could easily decrease call quality. Ebay could very well be the cause of such degradation.

Furthermore, the buyout from Ebay may have caused some Skype developers and designers to move on. This could also affect call quality in the long run by producing a lesser product.

[quote=granger]Unfair statement to make I'd say. Although I agree it is not directly caused by Ebay, a major buyout such as this one could easily increase call volume which could easily decrease call quality. Ebay could very well be the cause of such degradation.[/quote]
In such a case, full disclosure is more than warranted. Does eBay open its corporate bandwidth to Skype or are they following the advice of experts by preventing their systems from becoming supernodes while draining the user base bandwidth for corporate use?

[quote=slvaldor][quote=granger]Unfair statement to make I'd say. Although I agree it is not directly caused by Ebay, a major buyout such as this one could easily increase call volume which could easily decrease call quality. Ebay could very well be the cause of such degradation.[/quote]
In such a case, full disclosure is more than warranted. Does eBay open its corporate bandwidth to Skype or are they following the advice of experts by preventing their systems from becoming supernodes while draining the user base bandwidth for corporate use?[/quote]

I've always been under the impression that supernodes were mainly in the wild and rarely Skype controlled machines. I doubt Ebay has added any bandwidth or supernodes to the mix.

[quote=granger][quote=slvaldor][quote=granger]Unfair statement to make I'd say. Although I agree it is not directly caused by Ebay, a major buyout such as this one could easily increase call volume which could easily decrease call quality. Ebay could very well be the cause of such degradation.[/quote]
In such a case, full disclosure is more than warranted. Does eBay open its corporate bandwidth to Skype or are they following the advice of experts by preventing their systems from becoming supernodes while draining the user base bandwidth for corporate use?[/quote]

I've always been under the impression that supernodes were mainly in the wild and rarely Skype controlled machines. I doubt Ebay has added any bandwidth or supernodes to the mix.[/quote]

Which is exactly Slvaldor's point, that eBay, if using in any widespread way, has only added load to the existing supernodes while contributing none themselves due to restrictive firewalls.