I have a couple tales to share of my experiences with other companies' support. One awesome, one sucky.
Let's start with teh suck, YouTube:
- YT support (ir)regularly takes 3 weeks or months to get back to me. To be fair: Nikhil Chandhok (who like me is not support, but has worked in product management) has been sending me blazing fast responses.
- They deny the existence of buttons that are clearly visible on their website. These aren't hard to find controls. (See below.)
- They have an nonsensically hard time following up on simple, solid bug repros (specifically, an audio distortion issue I've reported several times which affects their "high-quality" streams, but I've also noticed clipping on regular videos too. Yucky. (And yes, I'm not closed to alternatives like blip.tv; it's just that YouTube has such a big viewership and is supported to embed in far more places.)
- All in all, YouTube has wasted a lot of my time chasing around problems that glaringly exist, and squandered even more of their resources in the process.
Here's part of the ordeal I went through:
Proof that this control exists:
I've blocked the name of the support rep because I'm not here to personally degrade anyone. They are trying to help, and I am thankful I heard back at last. I'm a gracious, cheery person, but YouTube's wearing my patience thin.
(Note the May 1 autoreply on the first email.)
This isn't the end. I've replied back to this — and two additional threads on other support issues — hoping to followup. It's moving very slowly. *sigh*
I really appreciate YouTube hosting our Second Life video tutorials, but they really need to get their act together. And yes, yes, this always comes up — I'm more keenly aware than most of what takeaways and lessons we can apply at Linden Lab. 
Now for the awesome, Sony's Rebate Center. Maybe this should've come first.
I sent in a rebate form for a recent Sony Vegas upgrade, but got a card in the mail that said the rebate was invalid because:
Purchase was made outside of the qualifying period
I was like, "What the heck? I still had a day before the deadline hit!" On the card, it said:
If you have any questions please call (866) 231-1202
It was getting late, around 8 PM, and my wife suggested that I not expect to get an answer at this hour. The card didn't even list hours. But I spontaneously gave them a ring anyway.
A pleasant-sounding woman named Kristin answered, and I detailed my problem. She had all my info on file — sharp — and found out the problem: when I printed out the email receipt, the header included the date I printed it out on, which was a couple days later than the expiration date. Apparently, they process rebates speedily, so that tripped 'em up.
Kristin suggested that in the future, I use a highlighter to call out the correct date. I pardoned myself for my not-emphasizing-enough. She was both professional and kind and said I should be seeing my rebate in about a month or so, and if still nothing, to call them back.
That was an experience that warms my heart.
Moral of the stories: It is inaccurate, but all-too-human to blanket your opinion of an entire company with a single experience. I've been in this seat many times before, and will keep relentlessly learning, adapting, and improving how I help Residents (customers) of Second Life. Thanks for your understanding with me, and I really mean that… not just as some throwaway token line. 
Torley, service really makes or breaks a company on my view. I am an avid user of a world called Second Life run by a company called Linden Labs, and man, I have gotta tell you that they often respond to my service calls like YT did to your request. So I do so understand your frustrations here!
Hehe, just teasing yeah! Current response times down from 2 months to about 3 weeks so actually I am seeing some improvements
The part that gets me about your YT complaint is how they don't know their own product. Reminds me of the call centres that companies contract, especially the ones outside their actual customer regions. I had this interesting experience with Barclays once where we had just left the office of a chap who kindly helped us through a business transaction and handed us his card. One of the party with me realized that he had left his umbrella in the person's office by mistake and reached for the business card to call him and apologise and arrange a collection. Hehehe, unbeknown to us the only number on the card connects to India! And of course at that time (2002) they could not connect you to a branch, even if you received the card from a person in that branch with the words 'contact me anytime for assistance'. What a laugh - customer service the way your competition wants you to have
Wow, Youtube only takes three weeks? Some issues in Second Life, (mainland issues mostly) can take 3 MONTHS, or more. Not trying to be hard on you Torley, but you need to be a rocket scientist to use the support features available to all users like the Knowledge Base and the Jira.
[...] also posted a great article on his own blog as he relates two customer service stories, one bad, one fantabulous. I won't tell you which company is which, but both of them shocked [...]
They deny the existence of clearly visible options, eh? Makes me think of Area51 - are you sure that YouTube isn't run by the US Government?
lol @ Laetizia
hows this for customer service - I work for a car insurance company who does quotations over the internet. Because we 'supply' car insurance for different 'brands' there are LOTS of different websites that we work through (more than I could feesbly remember and check in my own time).
The problem is this: the company doesnt allow us internet access…
This often leads to the following dialogue between me and customer:
Customer: "On your website it says X"
Me: "X sounds plausible so I take your word for it. I believe that X is true"
OR "X sounds implausible, please could you print out a screenshot that proves proposition X is on our website and fax it to me so that I can validate proposition X"
[...] Yes! (Makes football touchdown knee-jerk with simultaneous arm pull.) Torley (Linden) wrote a great little piece on his experience with company support from two different firms. The contrast demonstrated is how [...]
Wow. Economic Mip… do you know what the definition of "moral" is? LOL
Very good article, Torley. I've been saying this for as long as I can even remember.
So my most profoundly concerned, carefully contemplated words of wisdom to all regarding your article:
ditto.
Hmm, you might want to try…
http://www.veoh.com/
… on the website, it states "Veoh scours the web for millions of videos, and organizes them in one place. From CBS and MTV to YouTube and MySpace, it's on Veoh". Hehehe. Heard it gives crystal clear resolution (unlike the "slightly blurriness" of YouTube, if you know what I mean. Anyways, just a little "try it" to you! It's good to try something new!
Hi Torley, I'm posting a comment here though I don't expect it to see daylight. I am not sure if I somehow offended you, but trying to comment 17 times to your great posts over the past two weeks without a single one published is pretty damning. So I apologise outright if somehow I did offend. I have been so troubled I even posted about this on my blog. I guess the frustrations are mainly due to the fact that previous comments published fine and though it takes a bit to go through the site security to leave comments, it's always been worthwhile. The biggest reason I comment is because you are one of the few who actually respond back, a major kudo for anyone, and especially for a Linden. Regardless what happens to this comment, I will remain an avid reader, but I do not think I will comment in the future again. Best regards as always. Dumi
@Dumisani: You didn't offend, my spam filter was being st00pid and I have spanked it. *I* apologize for any confusion about that. Your comments were in the mod queue but are out now! Thanks for your thoughts. ^_^
I'm very understanding if someone says "I don't know" (I do, a lot) — but denying that a popular (as I've seen on *many* YT channels) control exists and not taking a few seconds to verify is irksome. I have pictures of the SL UI on my Flickr photostream I refer to without needing to log in.
I'm also understanding that not a single person will know everything there is to know about a product/service — when things get complex, it's well-worth hiring "connector hubs", people who are especially talented in knowing "who does/knows what" and routing knowledge to the correct places. It may seem like a trivial thing to do, but just like broken hyperlinks, ultimately frustrating if your crucial messages don't reach the right people. I've more or less served in this sort of role in different flavors at Linden Lab, depending on projects.
@economic: More details (or even a blog post of your own!) would be helpful and actionable to pinpoint problems. That's why I wrote mine out. It GRIEVES me to hear of simple things that get missed and leave you suffering, so if your lacking experiences which I'm sorry to hear of included some of those, let me know.
Incidentally, that is exactly why I followed up with: http://torley.com/fixing-the-small-stuff-and-making-a-big-difference
Please let me know which companies have great Knowledge Bases and bug trackers you prefer too (I found out recently Skype uses JIRA too). I like to learn and adapt from existing successful models.
@Laetizia: Well, you know, Google is so heavyweight…
@Lhynnan: That sounds glum, like awkward communications breakdowns. No Net access? For crying out loud, WHY?
@Ari: Thanks.
@Lovebird: Thanx, I've checked them out too. I do not know a single video-sharing service which offers all the features I need. Others than YouTube have SOME of the pie but not ALL the pieces. Veoh isn't as openly-embeddable and doesn't work with security restrictions on WordPress.com (which the Official Second Life Blog is hosted on), alas.