Earlier this month I wrote about eyeBeam on the Mac. Besides that it truly sucks — it’s probably the worst money I’ve ever spent on software, I am now convinced that this is the least courteous, customer-centric company I’ve had any dealing with in my life.

A visit to their support forum quickly shows how their representative, Mr. Derek Jacobs, responds to customer feedback, problem reports and requests. Mr Jacobs is perhaps the worst customer liaison on a corporate forum, hotline or other form of communication I’ve come across. He is discourteous, arrogant, ignorant as to the company’s products deficiencies, overzealous in his moderation of seemingly inappropriate posts and — last but not least — refusing to actually read, comprehend, convey and report on customer posts and the respective development effort.

I am curious whether the company’s apparent engineering and customer support deficiency is the result of Mr. Jacobs’ inability to effectively liaise between customers and engineering, or whether the whole company is bent on pissing people off with subpar products and poor customer support. In any case, it is a shame CounterPath is probably the largest SIP softphone developer globally and the available options in this market are extremely limited.

Despite this, my recommendation, whatever your needs may be, is to stay well clear of their products. Such companies are not worthy of your custom.

Update: Hours after posting this I was contacted by CounterPath and was offered assistance with their products. I am happy to see that at least they are willing to make an effort — albeit an insufficient one — to engage with their customers’ problems. Hopefully it will be followed by a respective update of the company’s currently dysfunctional products.