Customer Service at Watty - a true life horror story

I am not patient

And I know I'm not patient, but that is neither here nor there.

What IS here or there is the fact that I am anal about not only what I write, but how I want it to look. And I don't like change. I REALLY do NOT like change. Especially when the change is NOT an improvement, but a bug-filled nightmare.

In recent months, I have noticed a serious problem in how WattPad loads a fic - basically, it ADDS spacing between the paragraphs - spacing I've already added. It's irritating to spend so much time on a fic, only to have to come back and remove additions I did not add. I load an 8 page chapter and when it finishes loading, Watty has loaded it to 32 pages, making reading on phones a nightmare. Actually, it makes reading HERE a nightmare. I don't particularly care of the constant need to 'go to the next page'.

But the added spacing really REALLY upsets me. There is no need for this. I've had complaints and I've sent people to other places to read. It can take 20 minutes to go through a loaded fic through edit and remove the things I didn't add to begin with. I have attempted to load via other formats - rtf, notepad, pdf, html. It worked ONCE in an edit but never worked again.

Such was the case earlier this week when I added the second chapter of 'Aside from Heaven.'

I've had a problem with people trying to read while I'm editing out the crap that was added. So rather than save and publish, I saved it as a draft, so I could fix what hadn't needed to fixed to begin with and then I could publish.

Except rather than saving it as a draft, Watty published it - only they told me there seemed to be a problem with the copyright - huh? the Second chapter and you're going to whine copyright for a piece of fanfiction? (Although technically Aside from Manna ISN"T fanfiction - it's original, but based on Richard Armitage's portrayal of Guy of Gisborne.) and they locked it so only my follwers could read it.

So the first chapter is open, but the second chapter is locked...

I figured I could fix that at the proper time, and I spent some time removing the extra spacing. I have discovered as time goes, they add more and more spacing. It used to be one added extra space. It is now THREE added extra spaces between paragraphs!

So I edited it and then attempted to publish it to the general public.

No.

Really, it told me no.

I fought with the system for 15 minutes. It simply was NOT going to allow me to change the viewing abilities at all. So I reloaded the 2nd chapter as what is now chapter 3. I published it and then went back and edited it to look right!

I then tried to delete in mostly hidden 2nd chapter chapter.

The App said no. The only choice I have is to leave it as is OR delete the entire fic and start over.

I spent some time in the Help section. No help there. I dickered and tinkered. Nope. I spent over an hour attempting to fix something that shouldn't have needed it in the first place.

I do not want to delete the ENTIRE fic because I already have readers and reviews. I just want to delete the chapter that people can't see that was a mess. I ended up going into the mostly hidden 2nd chapter, leaving something crude and unkind, and sent the following missive to Watty's Customer Service.

zeesmuse

Feb 12, 00:05

Form information:
browser: Firefox
issue: A few things: Why do you ADD spacing on stories? I spend 15 to 20 minutes REMOVING the additional spaces I don't need every time I post. I've tried Rich text, Html, PDf, anything. Please don't help us do things. You don't help aspiring writers by adding things.

Second thing - When I posted the 2nd chapter of my linked story, I posted it as draft, so I could take out the added spaces you put in. (I have had people try to read me while I'm editing, as well as have had LOTS of complaints over the added spacing I previously mentioned, making it impossible for them to read on their phones.) Rather than save it as a draft as I specified, it published it as LOCKED so only my followers could see it. It won't let me unlock it, so I republished it and attempted to delete the 2nd chapter that no longer exists. Except in your updated infinite wisdom, I can no longer delete the empty chapter. I have to delete the entire story! You used to have a lovely edit section, and now it's gone. We have fewer choices and options and I'm not happy. We need the option to undo locked publishing and be able to deleted chapters. Your update has been a nightmare. I thought FFnet's upload was a convoluted mess. But this is now worse than them. this website is next to impossible to surf and I have to go through more steps to get from point A to point B. The old version was much, much better.

email: zeesmuse@
username: http://wattpad.com/zeesmuse
link: http://www.wattpad.com/mystories?compose=true&id=102889420
Type C: 60
Beta User:No
Country:US
Language: English

Ticket submitted

User info
Browser: Firefox
IP:
Useragent:Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:35.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/35.0
--------

Path through the tree:

Which of these are you having problems with?
Web (Desktop or laptop)
Please pick the option that BEST describes where your problem is located.
The Writing Page (Where you actually write your stories)

I thought I was pretty thorough. Obviously, I was not. After 2 days, I get THIS response...

Hi there,

Thank you for getting in touch. We're sorry you're having this problem. We need some more information in order to hopefully fix this. You can help us by answering these questions:

1 - Was this some text in a chapter, a whole chapter or a whole story that got deleted?
2 - Can you please give me the title of the affected chapter and the affected story?
3 - If you login on the website (www.wattpad.com) on your computer, is it available in your works there?
4 - Were you writing it while you were offline or online?
5 - What were you doing on the app up to the point where it was deleted?
6 - Did you see any error messages when it was deleted? If you did, please give me the exact error message and when you saw it or provide a screenshot if possible.
7 - Did you ever change your username in the past? Can you give me your current username?

*crickets*

Excuse me, but where did I say I had deleted anything??? I can't delete a specific chapter - a chapter I shouldn't have to delete in the first place! Had the idiot who sent this actually READ the ticket, every single answer to all 7 questions was there.

Needless to say my response has not been kind - and is probably going to end up in my actual 2nd chapter of Aside. You'll have to follow me to read it, but I wouldn't suggest it. Really.

How can something that should be so simple to fix, become such a conveluted nightmare?

I'm not posting another thing here until they fix this mess they made. I shouldn't spend so much time fixing their errors. Which means, probably never. Find me at Ao3. Same name.