I have used Flickr for years now. While I have been generally pleased with their service, pleased enough to upgrade to their “Pro” service, I have recently ran into a problem with their support (or lack thereof) that I find wholly unacceptable. I was in the process of migrating my Flickr account to a new Yahoo! ID when my Flickr account became inaccessible. When I attempt to login to my Flickr account using my Yahoo! ID, I receive the following error:

Your registration was successful.

However, we couldn’t log you in automatically because it looks like you don’t have cookies enabled.

There are a few options:

• Clear your existing Flickr cookies
• Check that your cookies are actually enabled (Click here for instructions on how to enable your cookies.)
• If you’ve done both of these things, and restarted your browser, and tried to log in and it’s still not working, please contact us.

Here’s a link to the login page.

Alright, some funky error is happening. No big deal, sometimes this stuff happens and I am willing to allow them to correct the problem. I set out to contact Flickr according to their directions. The form was simple and I had it filled out in just a few moments. After clicking on “Submit”, I received the following email:

Just a quick email from Team Flickr to let you know that we’ve successfully received your recent Help by Email query and we hope to respond within 3 days.

We’d also like to take an opportunity to remind you that one query is sufficient and multiple queries regarding the same issue make the Magic Donkey cry.

Lastly, you may not be aware that our FAQs and forums are full of help goodness:

http://www.flickr.com/help/faq/
http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/

The Flickreenos

Some of you may have missed the infuriating part… 3 days!!! Are they kidding? I pay good money for this service and their goal for simply responding to my support inquiry is 3 days! WTF? This is simply unacceptable, and I am looking into alternatives to Flickr as soon as I finish this post. With my annual membership as a Flickr Pro user I expect “Pro” support, not to have to wait 3 days for a response to my inquiry. Note that they have not said that the problem will be fixed within 3 days (which would also be unacceptable), they will only be responding to my inquiry within 3 days.

I was a little apprehensive when it was announced that Yahoo! would be acquiring Flickr. Up until today, when I required support, I have had no problems. After perusing the user forums I have found that there are many unhappy users that have received poor support from Flickr, post Yahoo!.

I will post Flickr’s actual response time and what the resolution of the problem when that eventually happens.

[UPDATE] I did receive a response from Flickr, within their specified time, but the the problem had already magically fixed itself. I still thinks that 3 days is way too long to expect a support response from a service that I am paying for!