Sometimes I HATE xHamster...

Yeah, I said it.

Don't get me wrong, in my opinion xHamster is the best site around if you want to see lots of real amateur, home made sex (and if you know of something better, let me know!). Coupled with the ability to control the comments and block unruly users, it's simply the best that we have. And with the scrutiny that porn sites are setting nowadays, we're not likely to get anything new/better any time soon.

That said, when xHamster fucks up - and they do - they just fucking suck ass.

Recently I uploaded two videos and after noticing that they were still listed as "In conversion" and not yet visible, I reached out to support. When you contact xHamster for support, you get replies from "people" like "Cherry xHamster", "Scorp xHamster", "Smoky xHamster" or "Yuka xHamster". I put "people" in quotes because at first, I felt honored that good old Scorp was coming to my rescue...until I started to realize that it wasn't an actual individual. Sure, it's a person responding to you but more than likely, it's a generic name for a group of individuals, one of which just happened to pick up my ticket. (This guess is probably not too far off, given how Vice reported that content is moderated - search for "vice xhamster support" to find the article.)

All of this explains why I sometimes get inconsistent responses when I need help. In this case, I just wanted help getting my videos unstuck and published. The first message I got was from Yuka, who said, "videos will be active during the day". Short and sweet, I can deal with that. I just assumed that meant they fixed the problem, right?

Then I noticed that one video was published and the second was deleted ... due to inappropriate content. "What the fuck?" I'd been on the receiving end of xHamster not liking something I uploaded but this was just me and some guys fucking one of my girlfriends, which I have plenty of up already. So I wrote in again to ask why it was deleted. Yuka replied again with that exact same response...clearly a canned response.

"Ugh. They're not answering me."

I wasn't giving up so easily. I wrote in again and asked what was inappropriate about that video. This time, Cherry responded, with a full list of all the things that are not allowed by xHamster. Way down at the bottom was something that looked tacked on at the last minute "Also, we remove reposts and broken files (where there was error with conversion)." OK, now we're getting somewhere. I think. Except that Cherry didn't say which one of these applied to this video.

This is how it usually is with xHamster support, they're never direct and they never fully answer your questions. But I'm not that easily dissuaded, so I wrote in again and pointed out that they still haven't explained which category my deleted video fell in. This time, Smoky replied - but with the exact same list of generic reasons that Cherry sent me.

"Motherfuckers, they're fucking with me now!" My next response was...direct.

Hello. You guys are doing that thing you do where you respond to one part of an inquiry but ignore the other.

I can’t help but notice that you haven’t published my second video – it’s still showing as deleted. That video does not contain any prohibited content, per your rules. Can you explain why it was deleted?

If a mistake was made, that’s fine – please just say that. And if you have the ability to “undelete” the video and publish it, please do so.

If a mistake was made, that’s fine – please just say that. And if your systems are such that once you’ve deleted a video, you can’t publish it and it has to be uploaded again, please just say that too.

Mistakes happen, so if this was just a mistake, just say so. Otherwise, please tell me what was wrong with that video.


BOOM!

I started to suspect that they simply didn't know why they deleted the video - except that when they restarted their conversion software or something, that particular video was lost. But why not just say that?! Why not just point out that I had to upload the video again and be done with this issue? The next response was from Scorp - and from the tone, he wasn't happy with me:

Thank you for your e-mail.
Could you please provide copies of official documentation for the video in question?

"Oh shit, they're pissed off now. What the fuck does 'official documentation' even refer to?"

I was starting to feel like my years of posting on xHamster may be coming to an end. So I decided to play dumb. I just uploaded that video again and sent the following reply so they could keep an eye on the conversion process:

Huh? I don't understand your reply.

I've re-uploaded the video again but now it's in an "added" state but doesn't say anything about conversion, publication, etc. Is it going through on your end?

And then I just crossed my fingers...


Later that day, Scorp must have been on break because my sweet Cherry came back and replied and innocent:

Sorry for any misunderstanding, your video is active

Crisis averted.

I suppose xHamster is just like every other site or business that we do business with - they have good, helpful employees and some that are not so helpful and our experience with that site or business is directly related to which one we get, when we need assistance.

Personally, I'm hoping that I don't need support anytime soon - I know what type of employee I'm likely to get.