Mumbo Jumbo From Support

[Shirley Ann Riddern Labzentis]

Have any of you had to ask the support team for help and received a bunch of mumbo-jumbo answers that really don't answer your question or help you in any way? I have had to ask them several times over the years, and after I read their reply, it left me with a question: What? Are they told to be vague on purpose, or do they really not know what they are doing? I just thought that I would throw this out there and find out what other stories your reviews have or if it's just me.

[Alissa Nesson]

Yes, I have also experienced this. There are a lot of times when my question is misunderstood or the answers they give aren’t helpful. Sometimes they just send you to instructions on the site that are kinda close to what I asked but don’t actually answer it, which is why I asked for support in the first place. The worst support experience I had, I was back and forth with different support staff because they really didn’t know the answer to my question and eventually they would stop answering all together or just tell me that I must be doing something wrong, but they couldn’t tell me what. When I asked if they could clarify this with Scott, I got no reply. Sometimes support doesn’t seem to understand me at all. That’s not to say that I haven’t gotten help with some things, but they aren’t the most reliable means of support. It’s incredibly frustrating. I’ve found that many things that new reviewers really need to know are not written anywhere on this site or aren’t clear. I wish there was still a reviewer support forum so we could get more help from each other. This forum doesn’t seem to get much traffic.

[Shirley Ann Riddern Labzentis]

They took away the Review Team Support forum, I'm assuming, because too many people where on there complaining about not getting paid and that this was a scam site. That was not true, of course, but in doing so, they took away the support for us that are honest reviewers and need help. We, at least, got help from other reviewsers because support half of the time didn't answer the questions. Now, as far as I'm concerned, have nothing. Support doesn't answer our questions by beating around the bush and not actually answer anything. I'm going to find a way to get Scott's attention to see if they can open up something for us that need actual help and are not just badmouthing OBC.

[Alissa Nesson]

That would be awesome! Good luck, I really hope you manage to get his attention. I couldn’t figure out how. I think it would be much more helpful to be able to get help from each other.

[Ceildric]

I have had nothing but awful experiences with support. For a site that will absolutely nitpick reviewers over sometimes subjective or stylistic grammatical choices, and severely over values such "errors" in their score calculus, it is shocking how poor the reading comprehension and language skills of its support staff are.

As others, I have found the responses unhelpful, bordering on rude. And to really take the cake, today I have been told there is nothing they can do when they wrongfully rejected my review (I identified profanity, they claimed there was none in the book, I have the screenshots to prove it).

[Alissa Nesson]

I’m so sorry. I hate reading things like this because I know how much time and energy it takes to write a good review and I know how upset I would be if that happened to me. I assume if I write enough reviews, one day it will. It’s frustrating because if support can’t do anything about it then who else can you ask?

[Emmanuel Asamoah 5]

I have had nothing but awful experiences with support. For a site that will absolutely nitpick reviewers over sometimes subjective or stylistic grammatical choices, and severely over values such "errors" in their score calculus, it is shocking how poor the reading comprehension and language skills of its support staff are.

As others, I have found the responses unhelpful, bordering on rude. And to really take the cake, today I have been told there is nothing they can do when they wrongfully rejected my review (I identified profanity, they claimed there was none in the book, I have the screenshots to prove it).

I wonder if authors are also aware of the review guidelines. I've had two of my reviews rejected after indicating an instance of profanity. I'm wondering if authors are aware of the profanity guide. Because, you can proof with screenshots but it will still get rejected.

[Alissa Nesson]

That’s ridiculous; someone who knows the guidelines should get involved to mediate these things properly. I don’t understand why proof of profanity should get you nowhere. If you have screenshots, why can’t someone jump in and tell the author they’re wrong?

[Ceildric]

I’m so sorry. I hate reading things like this because I know how much time and energy it takes to write a good review and I know how upset I would be if that happened to me. I assume if I write enough reviews, one day it will. It’s frustrating because if support can’t do anything about it then who else can you ask?

The worst part is that they are not the least bit honest or apologetic about it. Nor are they taking ownership of their screw-up and attempting to put in the leg work to reach someone that can solve it. Nor are they connecting me with someone with that power, or someone that can actually read and understand English.

Instead, they think they have done their job perfectly by sending me to a suggestion thread I can upvote, from last year. So I can hope and pray that maybe someday, someone will fix the issue for future reviewers. Ridiculous.

[Alissa Nesson]

I understand. I’ve been through similar suggestions while trying to solve a different problem. It’s very frustrating because someone must be in charge. Sometimes on the OBC Facebook page I see Scott asking people for their PRQ dispute codes so someone can look into them. I don’t know how much that helps, though, unless he does it personally. I don’t know who these support staff people are but sometimes they don’t seem to understand or care what you’re asking. It’s not unusual to be sent to a thread on here or a page that talks about the topic you’re asking about but doesn’t quite answer the question. And I know it’s impossible to get them to look into anything further if they can’t help because I’ve been there too. I don’t know what we can do about it when good suggestions go nowhere for long periods of time, perhaps forever. I know I’d like to write a whole list of things I wish I’d known when I started but are written nowhere on this site for people to learn. There are rules nobody tells you about and a guideline that isn’t on the guideline page. Why does everyone have to learn these things the hard way? With so many people working on this page, I just don’t understand it.

[Oluwagbenga Akangbe]

I have had nothing but awful experiences with support. For a site that will absolutely nitpick reviewers over sometimes subjective or stylistic grammatical choices, and severely over values such "errors" in their score calculus, it is shocking how poor the reading comprehension and language skills of its support staff are.

As others, I have found the responses unhelpful, bordering on rude. And to really take the cake, today I have been told there is nothing they can do when they wrongfully rejected my review (I identified profanity, they claimed there was none in the book, I have the screenshots to prove it).

I had this same exact issue and was talking to Shirley about it days ago. I sent video proofs to them and the support team approved and unrejected the PRQ, only for an editor to still mark the PRQ wrong and say the exact same thing about the profanity once again.

You won't believe after 10 days and 75 mails, no one has still been able to help me, lol. They keep passing me around various supports, answering vaguely and wrongly and some just answer like they either didn't read my messages even after capitalizing important details to them or close to being rude.

They told me only the review admin could fix my issue, the review admin said the issue doesn't concern them and only support can fix it and I was about to explode this afternoon from the back and forth. That aside, they hardly have actual help or information to any issue and act like you should just suck it up whatever happens even when it's blatantly and clearly their fault the issue in the first place.

For a site with such rigid system and criticizing almost every step of reviewers' steps, the support system is almost non to existent and it's starting to get tiring, sigh.

[Alissa Nesson]

Yes, this is extremely frustrating. With all the hard work we do, the least they can do is have a system in place that works for us. Because we really do work hard on every review we write.

[Alissa Nesson]

Quick question for you all. Does anyone know what is required to become a member of the support staff? Are there any qualifications needed? Are they volunteers or are they employees? If you have any answers I’m very curious about how they are chosen. Same for administrators, if you know. Thanks!

[Ceildric]

I understand. I’ve been through similar suggestions while trying to solve a different problem. It’s very frustrating because someone must be in charge. Sometimes on the OBC Facebook page I see Scott asking people for their PRQ dispute codes so someone can look into them. I don’t know how much that helps, though, unless he does it personally. I don’t know who these support staff people are but sometimes they don’t seem to understand or care what you’re asking. It’s not unusual to be sent to a thread on here or a page that talks about the topic you’re asking about but doesn’t quite answer the question. And I know it’s impossible to get them to look into anything further if they can’t help because I’ve been there too. I don’t know what we can do about it when good suggestions go nowhere for long periods of time, perhaps forever. I know I’d like to write a whole list of things I wish I’d known when I started but are written nowhere on this site for people to learn. There are rules nobody tells you about and a guideline that isn’t on the guideline page. Why does everyone have to learn these things the hard way? With so many people working on this page, I just don’t understand it.

I spoke to Scott a day or two ago through Facebook, and even went through the trouble of posting 4 or 5 screenshots on there for him. He was completely unhelpful and unapologetic. Instead of offering empathy or, more importantly, actual solutions to either of my issues, he just gave me back-handed pseudo-philosophical nonsense.

My first review is now beyond two months since publishing and not paid (so much for a three week timeline), with a message on my history tab suggesting that mods have not even taken a look at the last verification step I completed over three weeks ago now. And my second review remains wrongfully rejected.

[Ceildric]

Quick question for you all. Does anyone know what is required to become a member of the support staff? Are there any qualifications needed? Are they volunteers or are they employees? If you have any answers I’m very curious about how they are chosen. Same for administrators, if you know. Thanks!

They are paid. He said as much to me in our conversation on Facebook, and I have also seen an old (2023) thread on his other forum (philosophy) advertising for trainee positions starting at $10 per hour.

https://onlinephilosophyclub.com/forums ... p?p=447266