Hooray for Skype!

I’ve touted the benefits of Skype in the past.

I honestly don’t know how our Internationally based lifestyle would work without Skype.

But on the 24th of June, someone somehow got into my Skype account.

Between June 24th and June 26th, they made 8+ hours ($50 +) of skype-based phone calls to Taiwan, using my Skype account.

• I would like to go to Taiwan.
• I have known people from Taiwan.
• Taiwan seems like a great place.
• But I have never used my Skype account to make phone calls to (or from) Taiwan.

I contacted Skype to get the problem fixed.

Their online chat people were very nice, but the conversation basically ended with someone telling me that Skype would not be refunding the charges to my account, but would take action to make sure it wouldn’t happen again.

I thought… WHAT?

The person helping me implied that it was probably due to some malware installed on my computer.

But there’s not malware or anything running on my computer that is malicious.  I run checks regularly to prevent that.

So I was thoroughly disappointed in getting off of the chat with their support people.  A customer shouldn’t be held responsible for security vulnerabilities within software, or for problems within the systems of a business.  That should be factored as an expense into what the business charges it’s customers.

So I started the dispute process with PayPal (who had paid the charges to Skype).

However, before I could complete the dispute, I received emails from Skype letting me know that the charges would be reversed due to their fraudulent nature.

And so, a big thumbs up, once again, goes to Skype.

If you’re not on Skype, you really should try it out.  It’s really pretty amazing.

http://www.MyOwnSkype.com

(Disclaimer: That is my referral link.  If you sign up for any of Skype’s paid services (I had the free services of Skype for a year before paying them anything), I will receive a commission.  Skype comes highly recommended.)

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