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I have several (breaking) issues with the paid desktop version of the Sparrow.app. I've posted the most bothersome one on their support forums about two weeks a

I have several (breaking) issues with the paid desktop version of the Sparrow.app. I've posted the most bothersome one on their support forums about two weeks ago: no reply at all. Nothing. As a company that does epic UI, they should figure out that customer support is a form of user interface as well. I'm not ready to give them any more money at this point.

sleepyhead 15y ago
I had severe issues too with the Mac app too, like lost email drafts. The problem is that email is difficult to handle. Sparrow does an excellent job with the UI and while that part was ready for a 1.0 release the email handling was not. It takes a lot of manual testing due to the way other email applications and servers abuses email standards. They released it to early for it to be labeled stable IMHO. The current release is decent though, but still found bugs and it has been a while since the latest update (they must have put all resources on the iPhone-app). Hopefully they haven't done the same mistakes with the iPhone-app. Looks great with my limited testing so far and I have replaced my main Mail-icon on my home screen.
freshfey 15y ago
Same thing happened to me. To be fair though, I had issues with the app around a year ago and they promptly answered. It seems like they are a bit swamped with support issues now.
- ivanstojic 15y ago
  "swamped ... now" might be an understatement. From the looks of their support page (https://sparrowmail.tenderapp.com/discussions/questions https://sparrowmail.tenderapp.com/discussions/questions) - the last reply actually made by sparrow support was on December 8.
  - sleepyhead 15y ago
    Their support forum is kinda weird. Every time I add a question it ends up as private. I assume that is why there is a lack of public activity there.
    - ivanstojic 15y ago
      As I understand it, the answers are marked as public once an actual answer is reached.
- joelg87 15y ago
  I can say from my experience so far with Buffer, that it is easy for this to get very hard to keep up with. Seems like they had similar great intentions like us to be amazing at support as well as build a fantastic product. We had a period where our support response time lagged as we reached a certain scale. We've since hired a freelancer for a few hours a day to help us and that's really transformed things to the point where we're better at support than we've ever been, and at the same time we can focus on what each of us in the rest of the team is good at. Whilst the freelancer does a lot, we dip into support every so often and have things assigned to us, so we're always in contact and understand customer problems, which I think is very important. We used UserVoice for a while and were responsive, then as we scaled we found it hard to keep up with, and ended up good at our email channel but bad at our UserVoice channel. Since then we've improved again and are generally good at all channels. With this experience in mind, I'd suggest reaching out through multiple channels if you want to get through to them. Try email and Twitter as well as the obvious channel.
  - squadron 15y ago
    Buffer is excellent btw. It's become a must use app for me. The iPhone app is seriously awesome too. Very user friendly. You nailed it. I have two Buffer subscriptions, one for myself and one for a client and it has become a must use app. Good work!
    - joelg87 15y ago
      Wow, that's awesome to hear, thanks! :-) We have plans to make the iPhone app even more awesome (and also include more of the functionality of the web app) so stay tuned for that! Not sure if you have an iPad, but that's on the way too. Fantastic to have you as a paying customer. Get in touch if you ever have any questions or suggestions!
lylejohnson 15y ago
I stopped using Sparrow due to a bug in their implementation of two-factor authentication for Gmail (it would always "forget" my app-specific password on startup). I got at least one (unhelpful) response to my support request(s) but the trail eventually went dead, with no resolution to the problem.
- squadron 15y ago
  I can't for the life of me sign into my gmail account using the Sparrow iPhone app. Is this an issue other people have been having?
  - chriswarren 15y ago
    Looks like that's a bug that they're fixing in the next release. https://twitter.com/sparrow/status/180334664890855424 https://twitter.com/sparrow/status/180334664890855424
- dorianj 15y ago
  I've been using Sparrow with an app-specific password for months without problems.
  - lylejohnson 15y ago
    I'm not sure if it matters, but are you using a "regular" Gmail account or Google Apps for Your Domain? I'm doing the latter and still can't get it to stick (tried again this morning before posting). When I quit and restart Sparrow it cannot connect, and I have to reset the password before it will fetch my mail. Oh well!
mgcross 15y ago
I've also had a lot of problems, primarily that email subjects don't properly link to the body. Very confusing. I gave up on the app after a couple of updates.
plusbryan 15y ago
100% with you here - the latest version of Sparrow has some serious bugs that cause among other things, kernel panics. Previous versions have seen silently deleted messages, and other such nonsense. An email client should be, above all, reliable.
- tonyarkles 15y ago
  Sparrow has bugs that cause kernel panics? I've never seen this, but... I'd argue that if userspace programs can cause KPs, that's an OSX problem, not necessarily a Sparrow problem. Do you have a link to more info about this? I'm genuinely curious how that could happen. The only time I've ever seen OSX kernel panics was either due to faulty hardware or due to doing something silly (like messing with kernel extensions)
jonshea 15y ago
I find Sparrow for Mac much more pleasant than gmail or Mail.app. I’ve been on Sparrow’s beta build since the Sparrow beta started. I haven’t had any serious issues since version 1.0 was released, and I’ve received grateful replies to all of the minor issues I have emailed them about. Sparrow for iOS is an insta-buy for me.
halostatue 15y ago
Yes, Sparrow's customer support is substandard. I had used emoji in some of my label names—all valid Unicode code points—and it broke Sparrow hard (to the point where even preferences would self-dismiss on clicking an icon). It took about six weeks to get to the point where the "unusual" Unicode characters were the problem. It's a nice email client, but I don't find it that much better than the native gmail email interface that I use most of the time.

sleepyhead 15y ago

I had severe issues too with the Mac app too, like lost email drafts. The problem is that email is difficult to handle. Sparrow does an excellent job with the UI and while that part was ready for a 1.0 release the email handling was not. It takes a lot of manual testing due to the way other email applications and servers abuses email standards. They released it to early for it to be labeled stable IMHO. The current release is decent though, but still found bugs and it has been a while since the latest update (they must have put all resources on the iPhone-app). Hopefully they haven't done the same mistakes with the iPhone-app. Looks great with my limited testing so far and I have replaced my main Mail-icon on my home screen.

freshfey 15y ago

Same thing happened to me. To be fair though, I had issues with the app around a year ago and they promptly answered. It seems like they are a bit swamped with support issues now.

ivanstojic 15y ago
"swamped ... now" might be an understatement. From the looks of their support page (https://sparrowmail.tenderapp.com/discussions/questions https://sparrowmail.tenderapp.com/discussions/questions) - the last reply actually made by sparrow support was on December 8.
- sleepyhead 15y ago
  Their support forum is kinda weird. Every time I add a question it ends up as private. I assume that is why there is a lack of public activity there.
  - ivanstojic 15y ago
    As I understand it, the answers are marked as public once an actual answer is reached.
joelg87 15y ago
I can say from my experience so far with Buffer, that it is easy for this to get very hard to keep up with. Seems like they had similar great intentions like us to be amazing at support as well as build a fantastic product. We had a period where our support response time lagged as we reached a certain scale. We've since hired a freelancer for a few hours a day to help us and that's really transformed things to the point where we're better at support than we've ever been, and at the same time we can focus on what each of us in the rest of the team is good at. Whilst the freelancer does a lot, we dip into support every so often and have things assigned to us, so we're always in contact and understand customer problems, which I think is very important. We used UserVoice for a while and were responsive, then as we scaled we found it hard to keep up with, and ended up good at our email channel but bad at our UserVoice channel. Since then we've improved again and are generally good at all channels. With this experience in mind, I'd suggest reaching out through multiple channels if you want to get through to them. Try email and Twitter as well as the obvious channel.
- squadron 15y ago
  Buffer is excellent btw. It's become a must use app for me. The iPhone app is seriously awesome too. Very user friendly. You nailed it. I have two Buffer subscriptions, one for myself and one for a client and it has become a must use app. Good work!
  - joelg87 15y ago
    Wow, that's awesome to hear, thanks! :-) We have plans to make the iPhone app even more awesome (and also include more of the functionality of the web app) so stay tuned for that! Not sure if you have an iPad, but that's on the way too. Fantastic to have you as a paying customer. Get in touch if you ever have any questions or suggestions!

lylejohnson 15y ago

I stopped using Sparrow due to a bug in their implementation of two-factor authentication for Gmail (it would always "forget" my app-specific password on startup). I got at least one (unhelpful) response to my support request(s) but the trail eventually went dead, with no resolution to the problem.

squadron 15y ago
I can't for the life of me sign into my gmail account using the Sparrow iPhone app. Is this an issue other people have been having?
- chriswarren 15y ago
  Looks like that's a bug that they're fixing in the next release. https://twitter.com/sparrow/status/180334664890855424 https://twitter.com/sparrow/status/180334664890855424
dorianj 15y ago
I've been using Sparrow with an app-specific password for months without problems.
- lylejohnson 15y ago
  I'm not sure if it matters, but are you using a "regular" Gmail account or Google Apps for Your Domain? I'm doing the latter and still can't get it to stick (tried again this morning before posting). When I quit and restart Sparrow it cannot connect, and I have to reset the password before it will fetch my mail. Oh well!

mgcross 15y ago

I've also had a lot of problems, primarily that email subjects don't properly link to the body. Very confusing. I gave up on the app after a couple of updates.

plusbryan 15y ago

100% with you here - the latest version of Sparrow has some serious bugs that cause among other things, kernel panics. Previous versions have seen silently deleted messages, and other such nonsense. An email client should be, above all, reliable.

tonyarkles 15y ago
Sparrow has bugs that cause kernel panics? I've never seen this, but... I'd argue that if userspace programs can cause KPs, that's an OSX problem, not necessarily a Sparrow problem. Do you have a link to more info about this? I'm genuinely curious how that could happen. The only time I've ever seen OSX kernel panics was either due to faulty hardware or due to doing something silly (like messing with kernel extensions)

jonshea 15y ago

I find Sparrow for Mac much more pleasant than gmail or Mail.app. I’ve been on Sparrow’s beta build since the Sparrow beta started. I haven’t had any serious issues since version 1.0 was released, and I’ve received grateful replies to all of the minor issues I have emailed them about. Sparrow for iOS is an insta-buy for me.

halostatue 15y ago

Yes, Sparrow's customer support is substandard. I had used emoji in some of my label names—all valid Unicode code points—and it broke Sparrow hard (to the point where even preferences would self-dismiss on clicking an icon). It took about six weeks to get to the point where the "unusual" Unicode characters were the problem. It's a nice email client, but I don't find it that much better than the native gmail email interface that I use most of the time.