I wrote a review of Twitter HummingBird last week, a Twitter script which I recently bought for $167.45 (discounted from $197). Those of you who read my review of the script and my follow up post the next day will know that I’m a big fan of HummingBird. Whilst it is expensive, it makes mass following and unfollowing a breeze and it also great for mangaging multiple Twitter accounts.

However, their support doesn’t seem to match up to the quality of their product. I signed up to their Twitter Support Forum after purchasing the product however the authorisation was never sent (which means I can’t post).

So I emailed them about this the day after signing up and not getting an activation email :

Sent 14th May 2009
Hi there,

I have signed up to protwitter at http://twitterproforum.com/ but have not received an authorisation email in the last few days so I cannot post.

Also, I have noticed that hummingbird crashes every now and then. Is this a common problem?

Kevin

Someone replied later on that day (They didn’t even leave their name so I’m not sure who replied to me) :

Received 14th May 2009
Kevin,

If you have not received a conformation email, first check your spam filter, if you cannot find it there then please re-sign up. It is not a common problem for hummingbird to crash, please make sure you have all the necessary prerequisites. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Support

This annoyed me. I had just paid $167 for this product and they seemed completely uninterested in helping me. I have used vBulletin for close to 8 years now so I know how easy it is to manually activate an account that hasn’t been activated (it literally takes 5 seconds) so asking me to sign up is just plain lazy on their part.

I replied to them later the next morning (their email had been sent during the nightime in the UK) :

Sent 15th May 2009
Hi there,

The activation email is definately not there as I have did a search in my regular email and in my spam folder.

If I sign up again then I would not be able to use my usual username as I have already signed up with that. Could you please quickly manually approve the account System0. You are using vbulletin so it only takes 2 seconds to change the usergroup.

I do have all the prerequisites for the software. I have a top of the range gaming laptop running on vista so that is definately not the issue. I have just found that if the script is opened for a long time it just crashes for no reason and you need to switch it off and back on.

Kevin

Unfortunately, this was never replied to. Nor was my follow up email on the 17th.

Now I could sign up to the forum again with a different username but I’m perhaps a little stubborn. The way I see it, I just paid $167 for this product so why should I have to go to the hassle of signing up again because their software didn’t send me an activation email.

And is there much point signing up to the forum again anyways as they seemed to completely disregard my comment that the software crashes from time to time (which isn’t a major problem but it still happens). So no doubt all support queries are responded in this way.

I do still believe that HummingBird is a great product and if you are looking to increase your follower count it seems like there is no better alternative around at the moment. However, just bear in mind that direct support from the HummingBird team does not seem to be that good, particularly not for a script at this price.