Well, I would love to see some paid support staff, and I've never added up how much money I've spent here but it's in the hundreds of dollars. But I'll tell you this:

Up until I got a new computer last Thursday, I was unable to log into a good quarter of all journals on LiveJournal, and couldn't get past an "adult content" flag no matter what I did, even though I'm 49 years old.

I filed support request after support request at LJ, and a VOLUNTEER answered every one. And yes, I'm a paying customer (perm account) at LJ, just as I am here.

They told me I was not the only one having this problem. They told me they didn't know what was causing it. They gave me endless steps to take to try to resolve it, none of which worked. They finally sent me a list of steps so long and so complicated I didn't even understand half of them, and I've been online since before there was a web, yo.

I posted a response saying I was getting a new computer in a few weeks and I'd just wait and hope it fixed itself that way (it did), and made the comment that I felt that a paying customer's issues being handled exclusively by a volunteer was not good customer service.

Now, yes, LJ does have paid staff, but I'm not sure what you'd have to do to actually get one of them to read your support ticket. The whole support system is based on the free labor of volunteers.

And given that my perm account here cost a tiny fraction of my perm account at LJ, and I find overall the responsiveness of IJ is far superior to that of LJ, I really am not sure this is as much of an issue as the OP does.

Although again, I'd love to see IJ grow to include paid staff, and there are a few bugs I would like to see fixed too... even though I have no idea on this earth what "quickreply" is.