Hi Miriam,

Unfortunately someone (obviously high up) at italki must have decided to replace the old well-working messaging system by the current mess. I am having many problems of different sorts, because I am using italki both as a student and a teacher. I just had one of my teachers ask me for a change of lesson time, because the italki software had created three lessons which were overlapping with mine in the middle... Technically this should not be possible but she sent me a screenshot of the mess.  It seems that the "technical" problems in italki are getting worse over time, slowly but surely. And using the app, problems are worse than on my PC. For booking, confirming or anything else which might be important, I avoid the app to reduce the risk of disappearing messages (which already happened) or other accidents.

A quite worrying thing is also that they set up a discussion where people can give feedback on the new messaging system. For three or four months this board has been filling up with hundreds of complaints of both teachers and students, but there is no visible reaction. It looks like they just set up the list to give people a forum to vent their anger and make comments and proposals which eventually will be ignored anyway.

In the beginning of the process italki asked me for my opinion... which I readily shared with them. The content was exactly what now can be read a hundredfold on the forum list. No reaction from the top. It looks like on a lower level people are fighting to keep the site running, but on a top level other things have already been decided... At least that's my guts feeling.

I am disappointed, but I still stay on the site because I like the community, having so many promising students and many wonderful inspiring teachers.

Thanks a lot for your comment. Yes, I'm concerned about italki's complete ignorance of customer feedback and thought about leaving. But I love this community and don't want to give up the hope that it'll stay somehow. So, I'm trying my best to keep going..

Rüdiger

I have also tried to imagine how italki could possibly be experiencing and subjecting their users to such horrible mal-functioning website features.

My best guess is that the new programmers are very new programmers and unfortunately inexperienced... certainly not professional.

My biggest disappointment is with the way in which all of these changes have been managed and italki's disregard for their helpful, well-intentioned users.
I looked in a dictionary for the definition of mismanagement...  guess what I saw...?
Somebody at italki needs to pay attention to customer/user relations.

But I was only a business consultant for 28 years, so what the hell do I know?    :)

Rüdiger...

I could not agree more with your comments.

The feedback section certainly appears to be a place that was set up to allow the members to vent their complaints and frustrations while trying to appear that the comments were being noted.
There has been no feedback or expression of gratitude from italki.

Many of us are now exhausted from banging our heads against a wall.

What could possibly make italki take our concerns, complaints and recommendations seriously?

I know the answer to the previous question, but I hesitate because of the risk of retribution.

Thank you Miriam for this posting

P.S. - I don't use the app so I can't comment, but if it's not working properly, I am not surprised.