This Is Not How It’s Supposed To Work

I use Remember The Milk to manage my personal task list, and I really like how the product works, mostly. But RTM notes associated with task are pretty inaccessible: you have to click through three or four levels of the UI to get there. I also wondered about various third party apps mentioned on the site, many of which no longer seemed to be supported.

Since I am a pretty committed user, I decided to pay the $25 for a pro account, so I could have email support and ask about these issues.I went to the RTM support forum and found that many other users had similar questions about the product. Below you can see the response to an email I send yesterday.

Kudos for the quick response, Brendan, but it’s pretty content-free:

Hi Stowe,

Thanks for getting in touch.

We don’t currently have any announcements about changes to tasks, but if you’re interested in trying out new features before they’re released, be sure that your Pro Tester Profile is up to date. You can update it here: https://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/tester/

When we have a new feature to test, we use to information to select the users who will get to test it out.

Unfortunately I’m not familiar enough with these third party apps to help answer your questions, but the developer may be able to help you.

I’m sorry we’re not able to provide support for third party apps. :(

Please let me know if there’s anything else I can help with.   Regards,
Brendan

A message to Brendan, Remember the Milk, and all the other product companies out there:

1. If you mention third party apps that hypothetically, once-upon-a-time integrated with your product, or which were reviewed once-upon-a-time as integrating with your product, you have an implicit obligation to maintain information at your website with current status of those integrations. This is especially true if they no longer work. Note: just because you don’t explicitly mention them at your website, or you don’t recommend them, you are not off the hook. Deleting their name and link is not sufficient ‘support’ for users. [Note: I am not saying that RTM has deleted information about formerly working third party apps. This is a general observation.]
2. If a large number of your users are requesting a specific feature or a fix to an existing set of features, you have an implicit obligation to respond to the request. You don’t necessarily have to implement it, but you are obliged to a/ state your logic for doing whatever it is you do, and b/ spelling out your plans — if any — for addressing the questions people have posed. Specifically, in this case, Remember The Milk should explain its logic for making task notes hard to create, read, and edit, and the company should make that thinking easy to access on its website. Having a user forum where users can post questions and concerns does not absolve a company from actually explaining its plans or product philosophy.
3. Whenever possible, be grammatical, even if you have no information to share. In the email, when Brendan wrote ‘we use to information to select’, I bet he meant ‘we use that information to select’. I hate to nitpick about grammar and language usage, but we have to hold customer support people — especially when the support is being paid for — to a higher standard.

I like this product, and I use it every day, but I wonder if these people are in step with the way user-centered product development is supposed to work.