20 ms·

Android user locked out of Google after moving cities

238 points by Jerry2 10y ago

angry-hacker 10y ago
Well, fortunately this man got help, but this is the customer service of automate everything -- win the lottery of creating enough buzz for the media/Reddit to pick it up, or you're fucked. Suddenly, having your call forwarded for help to Asian calling-center doesn't sound such a bad idea...
- philovivero 10y ago
  That would be a mistake. Companies have replaced humans that can actually solve your problem with humans that just placate you and occasionally sell you on something else. I had a problem with T-Mobile, where I tried to convert my month-at-a-time plan to a family plan, and T-Mobile completely disabled my phone, irrevocably broke my SIM to the point where I had to buy a new one (paying the setup fees). I spent HOURS on the phone (someone else's phone - mine wouldn't work) with various reps in various departments before I finally just ejected and changed to another phone company. They even filled their subreddit with paid shills who will just shout down anyone who comes there with a problem. Honestly, Google isn't doing that bad in comparison.
  - angry-hacker 10y ago
    Honestly, considering human nature, it's better to have someone to yell at (sorry, reps) and ask for the boss than sending e-mails to a black hole (Google).
thro32 10y ago
Google has horrible customer support. That is well known fact for almost a decade. I workaround most of those issues by using VPN. Google always thinks I am sitting in datacenter in Germany.
- Tepix 10y ago
  Just wait until they lock your account because the location of the IP and the GPS disagree...
paganel 10y ago
It's always a challenge when I travel for pleasure to other European countries (I'm from SE-Europe) and when Google tells me I cannot log-in into my email account when using my phone. Luckily most of the times I also carry a laptop, which surprisingly enough does not have the same limitations, but it still sucks.
ti32x 10y ago
I am currently locked out of all paid Google services because I committed the crime of changing countries while holding an active Google Developer Account/Wallet. I've talked to them over the phone, and they were entirely unhelpful. In contrast, Amazon's phone service is great. Get yourselves sorted google.
- tluyben2 10y ago
  Google has always had terrible general support and I am sure they do not have any incentive to change that. The support from tech guys, if you get that far, is excellent though.
- mdp 10y ago
  I had a similar problem. There's literally NO solution other than opening up a new account. It was a wake up call. I've since moved most of my digital life onto other services.
  - angry-hacker 10y ago
    Please tell me how to avoid this case. (according to Google)
    - a3n 10y ago
      One solution is to try not to need those services.
  - metasean 10y ago
    What services did you switch to, and at this point what feedback can you share about those services?
  - TorKlingberg 10y ago
    PayPal is the same. I had to close the account and open a new one in the other country.
- angry-hacker 10y ago
anondon 10y ago
Creating noise on HN, reddit is a sure way of getting their attention, but there has to be a better way to deal with issues when everything is automated. Does Google have a single point of contact for such issues?
- Spooky23 10y ago
  They are a rough company do deal with. I think they do a lot of internal chargeback that people give a shit about so even when you find a sympathetic ear, the person on the other side gives no shits.
draw_down 10y ago
If they had a way for people to talk to them and fix these situations, those affected wouldn't have to garner a bunch of attention in order to get it fixed. Just a crazy dream I guess.
- djaychela 10y ago
  I think it's all about staffing levels. This [1] maths isn't something I've checked, but it does make sense, alas, you'd need 20,000 staff to deal with 1 query every 3 years from 0.1% of a billion users. [1] https://www.seroundtable.com/google-support-staff-limits-13916.html https://www.seroundtable.com/google-support-staff-limits-139...
  - moron4hire 10y ago
    If any company could afford to staff 20,000 tech support people (who don't exactly command the highest salaries) it'd be Google. It's not a matter of cost. They choose not to.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - draw_down 10y ago
    You know what would be even crazier is if they built stores to put those thousands of employees in, so that customers could talk to a real live person when they had problems or questions.... nahh that could never work.
  - irishsultan 10y ago
    You read that incorrectly, he states 0.1% of users has an issue per day, which is equivalent to 1 query every 3 years from 100% or your users (3 times 365 times 0.1% is a bit more than 100%).
  - anbende 10y ago
    I did a little back of the napkin math and came up with something similar. However, 20k staff would cost Google between $1b and $2b per year, which they absolutely have. They've been consistently posting quarterly earnings of around 5b, 20b per annum. They just don't want to pay for it, and the users don't care enough to force them to. In addition, I think google could probably solve the problem with paid support. That would limit volume and pay for itself. Then people who are having a serious problem (like being locked out of their Reb account) could have some recourse. Unless they already do this and I'm not aware?
throwanem 10y ago
"We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company." - Lily Tomlin [1], before a robot came along that could do the same job cheaper [1] https://youtu.be/CHgUN_95UAw https://youtu.be/CHgUN_95UAw
- mjevans 10y ago
  Also true for all of the other natural monopolies in your area, 'cable' included.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    Tell me about it. But at least I can get Comcast to fix themselves without having to complain to the whole Internet successfully.
    - JadeNB 10y ago
      > But at least I can get Comcast to fix themselves without having to complain to the whole Internet successfully. Maybe you can, but lots of people can't: http://www.google.com/search?q=Comcast%20service%20stories http://www.google.com/search?q=Comcast%20service%20stories (At least you can easily get a representative to say personally that they won't be helping you!)
      - throwanem 10y ago
        Maybe it helps that I have customer service experience myself? All I can say is that I've never had trouble with them. But I suspect that'll change as soon as anything happens that can't be solved by Tier 1 or a truck roll.
Aoyagi 10y ago
Well, something similar happened to me as well. I moved (just a few kilometres, too). In fact, it happens in about half of the cases when I'm logging in in some new location. I want to log in (to Youtube or whatever) from the machine and the browser I always use, just from a different IP. Then I get asked for a phone number (any phone number) to verify that it's me[1], which in itself is a nonsense. That "another way to sign in" includes asking me for a date when that account was created (what???) and sending a code to email, which sometimes works, sometimes it does not. I mean, when I was moving, I fully expected to never be able to get my account. What an utterly rubbish service. And people actually put significant amount of money to it? [1] https://puu.sh/rrKyG/678746a09e.png https://puu.sh/rrKyG/678746a09e.png Edit: And how do you "call a rep" anyway? I haven't seen anything even remotely resembling live support, i.e. one that isn't community-based or self-service.
- gregorias 10y ago
  Hi Aoyagi, I work at Google, and I would like to take a look at what happens to your account during login. The situation that you are describing sounds surprising to me. If yes, then could you provide a contact point so I may contact you with my corporate credentials (corporate e-mail) to verify myself?
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    What everyone here is asking: Why does it take someone posting on HN to get a response? Why can't you just have a basic customer service system set up?
    - samat 10y ago
      Not cost effective, obviously.
  - Aoyagi 10y ago
    Hey! I believe it's just due to me logging in from new locations/countries quite often and Google's account hijack protection kicks in. Up until that point it's completely understandable (although I'd prefer if there was an option to disable that altogether). What happens later, however, is beyond me. Also, I forgot to mention (I wanted to!) that I've never given Google any phone number or logged into an Android device (with that account). Sometimes I am able to get through with the email verification, sometimes I cannot. By the way, this issues goes back to at least 2014, when the form looked different: http://puu.sh/sqFDT/0c3eea00d9.png http://puu.sh/sqFDT/0c3eea00d9.png
johansch 10y ago
So all it takes to get stuff like that resolved is to get on the HN and the /r/android front pages.
secbyinsanity 10y ago
I've been caught out by this before. This could be resolved by allowing city/country/IP range level whitelisting of login locations ahead of travel, or by providing a list of temporary download tokens for later authentication from unusual locations. And no, I'm not giving you my number.
- giarc 10y ago
  How many regular users would know to do that/know how to do that?
- talmand 10y ago
  Or, even better, they can have proper customer service since the problem was eventually sorted out which suggests it could have been sorted out with the very first phone call. It's not like resolving a billing problem caused by moving hasn't been done hundreds-of-thousands of times before. Maybe Google should ask the assistant manager of a bank how it's done.
Tepix 10y ago
If you're tired of having your data taken hostage and want to host your own stuff, you can set it up easily with sovereign (https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign/ https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign/)
tmptmp 10y ago
I have full sympathy for the person. Recently there was a news on HN about Google cloud being cheaper by 50% [1]. We must be very much worried about Google's record of ill treatment of its users, both paid/free. You cannot and should not rely on Google for anything critical to your business unless you are close friends with someone working at Google and that too at a higher up position to be able to get out of such bad situation relatively easily. I had commented there something that I will not repeat here. [2] I hope (I may be a fool to hope so still) this type of frequent bad-light may make Google amend its ways. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12993021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12993021 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12994769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12994769
- egeozcan 10y ago
  What I can't understand is, whether the frequency of this happening is increasing or the news of it finding wide coverage. > You cannot and should not rely on Google for anything critical to your business unless you are close friends with someone working at Google I personally think that you shouldn't "rely" on any third party for the critical things. The critical things are your competitive advantage and you should be in control of them, right?
  - oasisbob 10y ago
    Critical things aren't necessarily your core competencies, nor your market advantages.
    - logfromblammo 10y ago
      More like having electricity in your main office. You don't necessarily need to own your own power source and battery bank if the reliability of the public grid is good enough for your business. But if the public grid is only 98% reliable, and you need power 99.9% of the year, you do need a hot backup system. Google isn't providing the service that is down for many customers x% of the time, but a service that can fail catastrophically and permanently for x% of customers. As long as anyone can say that a Google robot permanently cut them off from a service that is important to them, without any meaningful recourse, you simply cannot trust Alphabet with critical pieces of your business, even to the extent that you can trust your local power utility to keep the lights on in your office. There are plenty of businesses that can operate without a backup generator. But nobody can trust Google, PayPal, Amazon, Stripe, L4, Square, et al to be their sole service provider for some function critical to the business. Those businesses are trying to be Internet utilities, but are neither as trustworthy as nor as reliable as a regular utility. Would you be comfortable buying gas from the gas company if every so often they intentionally burn a customer's house down, then tell any aggrieved survivors to suck it up and get lost?
alphabettsy 10y ago
And I thought Privacy was the main reason to avoid Google when possible...
bluesilver07 10y ago
The sad part is, he doesn't seem to be the only one. There are other people having the same problem.
dilemma 10y ago
This is an example of Artificial Stupidity; what we get when the pipe dream of AI fails.
muse900 10y ago
Its very disturbing for me as a google user and an android phone bearer seeing many of those posts coming up. So in all fairness if I ever get my account locked for whatever reason, I need to make noise on reddit and yc news to get it resolved? That really makes me feel uncertain about the google apps I use day to day. They need to change something soon on their policies or they'll start losing customers. P.S there was a post here the other day about someone that got his account closed due to a breach of service etc. I don't mind that obviously google can close your account if it feels you are violating their terms, what shouldn't be able to do is to lock access to your data or the option to extract your data off their servers.
- mamadrood 10y ago
  The worse thing is, I don't think they care about losing users, they are like 90s Microsoft, there are no alternative for most of the services they give. They would care about losing customers, but Google customers are not its users, it's the guys who buy advertising space.
  - iainmerrick 10y ago
    Even if that's true, they still care about losing users -- users are inventory!
    - morganvachon 10y ago
      Yes, but if your inventory is over a billion units worldwide, you don't even notice a few thousand a year disappearing from the shelves.
    - a3n 10y ago
      This is just "shrinkage." It's factored in. A certain percentage of your inventory will be stolen off the shelves per year. Your rental property will stand empty a certain percentage of the year. A certain number of your cows and chickens will die, or fall ill and be "culled." A certain number of your engineers will move on. A certain number of your containers will fall overboard and spread yellow rubber duckies around the word's oceans.
9248 10y ago
And that's why I moved most of my website registrations to a name@mydomain.com address and host the server myself on a $4/mo VPS. Still, my domain name is tied to my gmail address. Now I'm paranoid I'll lose access to my gmail, and my domain name quickly after. (remember the @N guy?) Unless I manage to learn some social engineering skills or hire myself a marketing team I doubt I'd be able to get my stuff back. I'm no social butterfly, I'm not pretty and I've got some serious Eastern European accent. So I'm considering maintaining two mail servers with different companies and different registrars, both pointing at each other. Such that in case I lose one, I can recover with the second. Am I crazy?
- morganvachon 10y ago
  What I'm planning to do is move the services I have registered with my Gmail account to a Fastmail account, and migrate my Gmail archive to that service. They handle contacts and calendars too, and their basic service is $3/month. That's cheaper and easier than running one's own mail server. I've been test driving their service for a few days and so far it feels much more intuitive and faster than Gmail. It also works properly on every browser I've thrown at it, and their Android app is nice. I'm going to spend the next few days pruning my Gmail archive before transferring it so I don't have to buy the 25GB plan from Fastmail, then I'll tell all the services that use the Gmail address to use the Fastmail address instead. That second task will be the most time consuming and frustrating one, but it's worth the effort to break the chains of the big G. (Edit: Corrected the price for Fastmail's basic service)
  - FireBeyond 10y ago
    Good luck. I did the same and now I have all sorts of issues when employers send Calendar invites to my (ex-Google, now Fastmail) email address. I cannot accept them due to weird errors, etc. Not the best look if you're ostensibly an Operations guy. :)
    - morganvachon 10y ago
      I don't use Google services for anything work related (we're government so we have "good old" Outlook and Exchange), just personal stuff and side work. Basically, as long as it can sync with the calendar and contacts on my phone, I'm set. Thanks for the warning though, and maybe one of the FastMail devs will see your post and address it.
pritambarhate 10y ago
I think Google should offer paid consumer support for their free services for instances like this. I wouldn't mind paying $40-50 if I get locked out of my gmail for 2 days. I use my gmail for many important services as my main email. Looks like time has come to change that.
ocdtrekkie 10y ago
Google's behavior will continue until enough people leave to seriously impact their bottom line.
cft 10y ago
I wonder if this account holder had a couple of medium sized Android apps on Google play. Would he lose the apps and all the work behind them? Makes it scary to develop small and medium size Android apps.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  Actually the Play Store Developer account is often the source of people's Google accounts getting suspended. As a point of note, you should always publish apps on a completely separate account from the Google account you use, and keep all details like address, phone, and payment accounts separate, as to avoid either one being affected by the other. With both the Play Store and the Apple App Store, since only one company decides whether or not your app is listed, developing a mobile app can be a pretty risky investment, since one company can make all your work worthless in short order.
technological 10y ago
Just FYI: I know the pain it has caused the user. Eventually his account was unlocked https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/5dif8j/psa_google_can_lock_your_account_forcing_you_to/da59egv/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/5dif8j/psa_google_... Quote from above link ""To protect our customers from fraud and abuse, we routinely monitor account behavior on Google Play and take action on potentially suspicious activity. Unfortunately, in your case, your account was wrongly flagged and suspended. I have just reopened your account..." "We strive to provide excellent care to all our customers but we have obviously failed you in this instance. I sincerely apologize for the stress and inconvenience this has caused you. You can reply to this email if you have any questions and concerns. "
- dimino 10y ago
  Who is "I" in the "I have just reopened your account"? Because apparently whoever that person is ended up being the "right" person to contact. Figuring out where he/she works (what department) would be helpful in determining how to navigate this issue for future users.
  - mjevans 10y ago
    Exceptions are costly in any circumstances, and will be abused by attackers wherever possible. I don't know of any company or even government that has a solution for this issue that isn't too costly in at least one of: false positives, false negatives, monetary cost, time cost, or some set of the previous failures during the 'error handler'. Ultimately, the root cause of this failure is the lack of a strong 'digital', opt-in, national/global identification system. Along with your government issued plastic would be a government signature on your digital signing keys. That would make "identity theft" far less possible and would vastly reduce the false positive/negatives for cases like this where you are establishing that you are who you say you are for banking/related activity.
rubberstamp 10y ago
Key points: Asks to provide scanned id and cc info to restore account access. But google fails to reinstate account. This user was actually able to get hold of google customer reps who told him only way is to start afresh, talks to supervisor and supervisor "assures" that everyone there in his department absolutely cannot help and that my only hope is to reply to the emails and try to appeal to them. All purchases made with old account will not be moved into new account if user opens new google account, which by the way requires a new credit card too as old cc info is associated with blocked google account! What!! Does google even read their own stupid resolution process?? He was able to contact google customer care but they couldn't fix it until the user got some love on reddit and twitter. I have nothing to say, really
atemerev 10y ago
I think that the root of the problem is that most of Google's core services developer are Americans, with American cultural peculiarities. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that for an average American, moving to another country is something that less than 1% of population does, and it is like once a lifetime event. Here in Europe, on the contrary, it is relatively common to stumble upon a German guy living in France, or a Brit living in Germany, or any combination whatsoever, and many are changing their place of living more than once, especially in the academic environment (I have 5 residence cards of different European countries). The same goes with the localization approach. Google or Apple always want to give me services in the language of the country I currently live in, instead of remembering my priority language (English, even if I am not a native speaker), and sticking with it, even if I am now in Spain or Italy. Changing countries is really common in Europe. Probably we need more European companies in the Internet space to adapt to our way of living.
- vram22 10y ago
  Insightful comment ...
- rconti 10y ago
  I'm not sure I'd call it an "American cultural peculiarity". I imagine it's much the same in other physically large countries. It's also a consequence of immigration/residence policy. Even before the EU, I'm sure it was quite a bit easier to get residence in another European country as a European, vs as an American or Mexican or South African.
  - atemerev 10y ago
    Well, I am Russian now living in Switzerland (and occasionally Spain) who used to live in Denmark and Italy before. Casual, matter-of-fact immigration is a fact of life these days.
  - atemerev 10y ago
    Physically large countries: Russia, China, Brazil, US, Canada, India. Of those, only US and Russia have this peculiarity.
GlickWick 10y ago
Yeah, have had similar problems, dealing with Google support is a nightmare. I can't use Google Ads at all anymore. I once had an account for a business in NY, and I was listed as the point of contact for it. Lost access to that account when I moved (locked out due to changing location, Google refused to offer any means to recover it), and now I can't sign up for Google Ads with my name on any account. It simply informs me that I'm already using the service on another account, and that I should use that for Ads.
- detaro 10y ago
  And I suppose without an account you can't contact the support for Google Ads to see if maybe they can fix it? (Since people always argue that Google support is only shit for the free products)
  - GlickWick 10y ago
    Correct. Since I can't get through account creation at all I'm mostly stuck. I've tried social media, but without much luck there as well.
mikebay 10y ago
You most probably done something against they globalist agenda or did not support Hiilary Clinto or you wore a Infowars Bill Clinton is a rapist t-shirt front of your webcam. Google watch and listen all your actions. Straight cables to NSA. Google ? - No thanks.
zwetan 10y ago
You, as a user, are geolocked, it's not only Google, it's everyone. The only excuse they have to do that is the different countries legislation, but besides that, like any geolocking, it's just not fit for "I can access my stuff, my services, from anywhere in the world because ... internet!", nope ... you can't. I had the problem with Google, google dev license with a wallet, moving to another country ? well then create another google account, no other choices, period. Can't we have the option to be a google dev in 2 different countries ? no you can't. Same for Google Ads, even more so if you connect ads to a bank account to get paid. Same with Apple, same with Facebook, same with Paypal, same with Microsoft Xbox, etc. Some tricks can work: using a Google Apps for your domain email when you move to another country, alter slightly your name or use your middle name to create another account for the same service but from another country (and a different bank account), alter your gmail with old google trick +something eg. username+fr@gmail.com and username+uk@gmail.com etc. If you move often it get old pretty quick.

238 points by Jerry2 10y ago

Well, fortunately this man got help, but this is the customer service of automate everything -- win the lottery of creating enough buzz for the media/Reddit to pick it up, or you're fucked. Suddenly, having your call forwarded for help to Asian calling-center doesn't sound such a bad idea...

philovivero 10y ago
That would be a mistake. Companies have replaced humans that can actually solve your problem with humans that just placate you and occasionally sell you on something else. I had a problem with T-Mobile, where I tried to convert my month-at-a-time plan to a family plan, and T-Mobile completely disabled my phone, irrevocably broke my SIM to the point where I had to buy a new one (paying the setup fees). I spent HOURS on the phone (someone else's phone - mine wouldn't work) with various reps in various departments before I finally just ejected and changed to another phone company. They even filled their subreddit with paid shills who will just shout down anyone who comes there with a problem. Honestly, Google isn't doing that bad in comparison.
- angry-hacker 10y ago
  Honestly, considering human nature, it's better to have someone to yell at (sorry, reps) and ask for the boss than sending e-mails to a black hole (Google).

thro32 10y ago

Google has horrible customer support. That is well known fact for almost a decade. I workaround most of those issues by using VPN. Google always thinks I am sitting in datacenter in Germany.

Tepix 10y ago
Just wait until they lock your account because the location of the IP and the GPS disagree...

paganel 10y ago

It's always a challenge when I travel for pleasure to other European countries (I'm from SE-Europe) and when Google tells me I cannot log-in into my email account when using my phone. Luckily most of the times I also carry a laptop, which surprisingly enough does not have the same limitations, but it still sucks.

ti32x 10y ago

I am currently locked out of all paid Google services because I committed the crime of changing countries while holding an active Google Developer Account/Wallet. I've talked to them over the phone, and they were entirely unhelpful. In contrast, Amazon's phone service is great. Get yourselves sorted google.

tluyben2 10y ago
Google has always had terrible general support and I am sure they do not have any incentive to change that. The support from tech guys, if you get that far, is excellent though.
mdp 10y ago
I had a similar problem. There's literally NO solution other than opening up a new account. It was a wake up call. I've since moved most of my digital life onto other services.
- angry-hacker 10y ago
  Please tell me how to avoid this case. (according to Google)
  - a3n 10y ago
    One solution is to try not to need those services.
- metasean 10y ago
  What services did you switch to, and at this point what feedback can you share about those services?
- TorKlingberg 10y ago
  PayPal is the same. I had to close the account and open a new one in the other country.
angry-hacker 10y ago

anondon 10y ago

Creating noise on HN, reddit is a sure way of getting their attention, but there has to be a better way to deal with issues when everything is automated. Does Google have a single point of contact for such issues?

Spooky23 10y ago
They are a rough company do deal with. I think they do a lot of internal chargeback that people give a shit about so even when you find a sympathetic ear, the person on the other side gives no shits.

draw_down 10y ago

If they had a way for people to talk to them and fix these situations, those affected wouldn't have to garner a bunch of attention in order to get it fixed. Just a crazy dream I guess.

djaychela 10y ago
I think it's all about staffing levels. This [1] maths isn't something I've checked, but it does make sense, alas, you'd need 20,000 staff to deal with 1 query every 3 years from 0.1% of a billion users. [1] https://www.seroundtable.com/google-support-staff-limits-13916.html https://www.seroundtable.com/google-support-staff-limits-139...
- moron4hire 10y ago
  If any company could afford to staff 20,000 tech support people (who don't exactly command the highest salaries) it'd be Google. It's not a matter of cost. They choose not to.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- draw_down 10y ago
  You know what would be even crazier is if they built stores to put those thousands of employees in, so that customers could talk to a real live person when they had problems or questions.... nahh that could never work.
- irishsultan 10y ago
  You read that incorrectly, he states 0.1% of users has an issue per day, which is equivalent to 1 query every 3 years from 100% or your users (3 times 365 times 0.1% is a bit more than 100%).
- anbende 10y ago
  I did a little back of the napkin math and came up with something similar. However, 20k staff would cost Google between $1b and $2b per year, which they absolutely have. They've been consistently posting quarterly earnings of around 5b, 20b per annum. They just don't want to pay for it, and the users don't care enough to force them to. In addition, I think google could probably solve the problem with paid support. That would limit volume and pay for itself. Then people who are having a serious problem (like being locked out of their Reb account) could have some recourse. Unless they already do this and I'm not aware?

throwanem 10y ago

"We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company." - Lily Tomlin [1], before a robot came along that could do the same job cheaper [1] https://youtu.be/CHgUN_95UAw https://youtu.be/CHgUN_95UAw

mjevans 10y ago
Also true for all of the other natural monopolies in your area, 'cable' included.
- throwanem 10y ago
  Tell me about it. But at least I can get Comcast to fix themselves without having to complain to the whole Internet successfully.
  - JadeNB 10y ago
    > But at least I can get Comcast to fix themselves without having to complain to the whole Internet successfully. Maybe you can, but lots of people can't: http://www.google.com/search?q=Comcast%20service%20stories http://www.google.com/search?q=Comcast%20service%20stories (At least you can easily get a representative to say personally that they won't be helping you!)
    - throwanem 10y ago
      Maybe it helps that I have customer service experience myself? All I can say is that I've never had trouble with them. But I suspect that'll change as soon as anything happens that can't be solved by Tier 1 or a truck roll.

Aoyagi 10y ago

Well, something similar happened to me as well. I moved (just a few kilometres, too). In fact, it happens in about half of the cases when I'm logging in in some new location. I want to log in (to Youtube or whatever) from the machine and the browser I always use, just from a different IP. Then I get asked for a phone number (any phone number) to verify that it's me[1], which in itself is a nonsense. That "another way to sign in" includes asking me for a date when that account was created (what???) and sending a code to email, which sometimes works, sometimes it does not. I mean, when I was moving, I fully expected to never be able to get my account. What an utterly rubbish service. And people actually put significant amount of money to it? [1] https://puu.sh/rrKyG/678746a09e.png https://puu.sh/rrKyG/678746a09e.png Edit: And how do you "call a rep" anyway? I haven't seen anything even remotely resembling live support, i.e. one that isn't community-based or self-service.

gregorias 10y ago
Hi Aoyagi, I work at Google, and I would like to take a look at what happens to your account during login. The situation that you are describing sounds surprising to me. If yes, then could you provide a contact point so I may contact you with my corporate credentials (corporate e-mail) to verify myself?
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  What everyone here is asking: Why does it take someone posting on HN to get a response? Why can't you just have a basic customer service system set up?
  - samat 10y ago
    Not cost effective, obviously.
- Aoyagi 10y ago
  Hey! I believe it's just due to me logging in from new locations/countries quite often and Google's account hijack protection kicks in. Up until that point it's completely understandable (although I'd prefer if there was an option to disable that altogether). What happens later, however, is beyond me. Also, I forgot to mention (I wanted to!) that I've never given Google any phone number or logged into an Android device (with that account). Sometimes I am able to get through with the email verification, sometimes I cannot. By the way, this issues goes back to at least 2014, when the form looked different: http://puu.sh/sqFDT/0c3eea00d9.png http://puu.sh/sqFDT/0c3eea00d9.png

johansch 10y ago

So all it takes to get stuff like that resolved is to get on the HN and the /r/android front pages.

secbyinsanity 10y ago

I've been caught out by this before. This could be resolved by allowing city/country/IP range level whitelisting of login locations ahead of travel, or by providing a list of temporary download tokens for later authentication from unusual locations. And no, I'm not giving you my number.

giarc 10y ago
How many regular users would know to do that/know how to do that?
talmand 10y ago
Or, even better, they can have proper customer service since the problem was eventually sorted out which suggests it could have been sorted out with the very first phone call. It's not like resolving a billing problem caused by moving hasn't been done hundreds-of-thousands of times before. Maybe Google should ask the assistant manager of a bank how it's done.

Tepix 10y ago

If you're tired of having your data taken hostage and want to host your own stuff, you can set it up easily with sovereign (https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign/ https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign/)

tmptmp 10y ago

I have full sympathy for the person. Recently there was a news on HN about Google cloud being cheaper by 50% [1]. We must be very much worried about Google's record of ill treatment of its users, both paid/free. You cannot and should not rely on Google for anything critical to your business unless you are close friends with someone working at Google and that too at a higher up position to be able to get out of such bad situation relatively easily. I had commented there something that I will not repeat here. [2] I hope (I may be a fool to hope so still) this type of frequent bad-light may make Google amend its ways. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12993021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12993021 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12994769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12994769

egeozcan 10y ago
What I can't understand is, whether the frequency of this happening is increasing or the news of it finding wide coverage. > You cannot and should not rely on Google for anything critical to your business unless you are close friends with someone working at Google I personally think that you shouldn't "rely" on any third party for the critical things. The critical things are your competitive advantage and you should be in control of them, right?
- oasisbob 10y ago
  Critical things aren't necessarily your core competencies, nor your market advantages.
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    More like having electricity in your main office. You don't necessarily need to own your own power source and battery bank if the reliability of the public grid is good enough for your business. But if the public grid is only 98% reliable, and you need power 99.9% of the year, you do need a hot backup system. Google isn't providing the service that is down for many customers x% of the time, but a service that can fail catastrophically and permanently for x% of customers. As long as anyone can say that a Google robot permanently cut them off from a service that is important to them, without any meaningful recourse, you simply cannot trust Alphabet with critical pieces of your business, even to the extent that you can trust your local power utility to keep the lights on in your office. There are plenty of businesses that can operate without a backup generator. But nobody can trust Google, PayPal, Amazon, Stripe, L4, Square, et al to be their sole service provider for some function critical to the business. Those businesses are trying to be Internet utilities, but are neither as trustworthy as nor as reliable as a regular utility. Would you be comfortable buying gas from the gas company if every so often they intentionally burn a customer's house down, then tell any aggrieved survivors to suck it up and get lost?

alphabettsy 10y ago

And I thought Privacy was the main reason to avoid Google when possible...

bluesilver07 10y ago

The sad part is, he doesn't seem to be the only one. There are other people having the same problem.

dilemma 10y ago

This is an example of Artificial Stupidity; what we get when the pipe dream of AI fails.

muse900 10y ago

Its very disturbing for me as a google user and an android phone bearer seeing many of those posts coming up. So in all fairness if I ever get my account locked for whatever reason, I need to make noise on reddit and yc news to get it resolved? That really makes me feel uncertain about the google apps I use day to day. They need to change something soon on their policies or they'll start losing customers. P.S there was a post here the other day about someone that got his account closed due to a breach of service etc. I don't mind that obviously google can close your account if it feels you are violating their terms, what shouldn't be able to do is to lock access to your data or the option to extract your data off their servers.

mamadrood 10y ago
The worse thing is, I don't think they care about losing users, they are like 90s Microsoft, there are no alternative for most of the services they give. They would care about losing customers, but Google customers are not its users, it's the guys who buy advertising space.
- iainmerrick 10y ago
  Even if that's true, they still care about losing users -- users are inventory!
  - morganvachon 10y ago
    Yes, but if your inventory is over a billion units worldwide, you don't even notice a few thousand a year disappearing from the shelves.
  - a3n 10y ago
    This is just "shrinkage." It's factored in. A certain percentage of your inventory will be stolen off the shelves per year. Your rental property will stand empty a certain percentage of the year. A certain number of your cows and chickens will die, or fall ill and be "culled." A certain number of your engineers will move on. A certain number of your containers will fall overboard and spread yellow rubber duckies around the word's oceans.

9248 10y ago

And that's why I moved most of my website registrations to a name@mydomain.com address and host the server myself on a $4/mo VPS. Still, my domain name is tied to my gmail address. Now I'm paranoid I'll lose access to my gmail, and my domain name quickly after. (remember the @N guy?) Unless I manage to learn some social engineering skills or hire myself a marketing team I doubt I'd be able to get my stuff back. I'm no social butterfly, I'm not pretty and I've got some serious Eastern European accent. So I'm considering maintaining two mail servers with different companies and different registrars, both pointing at each other. Such that in case I lose one, I can recover with the second. Am I crazy?

morganvachon 10y ago
What I'm planning to do is move the services I have registered with my Gmail account to a Fastmail account, and migrate my Gmail archive to that service. They handle contacts and calendars too, and their basic service is $3/month. That's cheaper and easier than running one's own mail server. I've been test driving their service for a few days and so far it feels much more intuitive and faster than Gmail. It also works properly on every browser I've thrown at it, and their Android app is nice. I'm going to spend the next few days pruning my Gmail archive before transferring it so I don't have to buy the 25GB plan from Fastmail, then I'll tell all the services that use the Gmail address to use the Fastmail address instead. That second task will be the most time consuming and frustrating one, but it's worth the effort to break the chains of the big G. (Edit: Corrected the price for Fastmail's basic service)
- FireBeyond 10y ago
  Good luck. I did the same and now I have all sorts of issues when employers send Calendar invites to my (ex-Google, now Fastmail) email address. I cannot accept them due to weird errors, etc. Not the best look if you're ostensibly an Operations guy. :)
  - morganvachon 10y ago
    I don't use Google services for anything work related (we're government so we have "good old" Outlook and Exchange), just personal stuff and side work. Basically, as long as it can sync with the calendar and contacts on my phone, I'm set. Thanks for the warning though, and maybe one of the FastMail devs will see your post and address it.

pritambarhate 10y ago

I think Google should offer paid consumer support for their free services for instances like this. I wouldn't mind paying $40-50 if I get locked out of my gmail for 2 days. I use my gmail for many important services as my main email. Looks like time has come to change that.

ocdtrekkie 10y ago

Google's behavior will continue until enough people leave to seriously impact their bottom line.

cft 10y ago

I wonder if this account holder had a couple of medium sized Android apps on Google play. Would he lose the apps and all the work behind them? Makes it scary to develop small and medium size Android apps.

ocdtrekkie 10y ago
Actually the Play Store Developer account is often the source of people's Google accounts getting suspended. As a point of note, you should always publish apps on a completely separate account from the Google account you use, and keep all details like address, phone, and payment accounts separate, as to avoid either one being affected by the other. With both the Play Store and the Apple App Store, since only one company decides whether or not your app is listed, developing a mobile app can be a pretty risky investment, since one company can make all your work worthless in short order.

technological 10y ago

Just FYI: I know the pain it has caused the user. Eventually his account was unlocked https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/5dif8j/psa_google_can_lock_your_account_forcing_you_to/da59egv/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/5dif8j/psa_google_... Quote from above link ""To protect our customers from fraud and abuse, we routinely monitor account behavior on Google Play and take action on potentially suspicious activity. Unfortunately, in your case, your account was wrongly flagged and suspended. I have just reopened your account..." "We strive to provide excellent care to all our customers but we have obviously failed you in this instance. I sincerely apologize for the stress and inconvenience this has caused you. You can reply to this email if you have any questions and concerns. "

dimino 10y ago
Who is "I" in the "I have just reopened your account"? Because apparently whoever that person is ended up being the "right" person to contact. Figuring out where he/she works (what department) would be helpful in determining how to navigate this issue for future users.
- mjevans 10y ago
  Exceptions are costly in any circumstances, and will be abused by attackers wherever possible. I don't know of any company or even government that has a solution for this issue that isn't too costly in at least one of: false positives, false negatives, monetary cost, time cost, or some set of the previous failures during the 'error handler'. Ultimately, the root cause of this failure is the lack of a strong 'digital', opt-in, national/global identification system. Along with your government issued plastic would be a government signature on your digital signing keys. That would make "identity theft" far less possible and would vastly reduce the false positive/negatives for cases like this where you are establishing that you are who you say you are for banking/related activity.

rubberstamp 10y ago

Key points: Asks to provide scanned id and cc info to restore account access. But google fails to reinstate account. This user was actually able to get hold of google customer reps who told him only way is to start afresh, talks to supervisor and supervisor "assures" that everyone there in his department absolutely cannot help and that my only hope is to reply to the emails and try to appeal to them. All purchases made with old account will not be moved into new account if user opens new google account, which by the way requires a new credit card too as old cc info is associated with blocked google account! What!! Does google even read their own stupid resolution process?? He was able to contact google customer care but they couldn't fix it until the user got some love on reddit and twitter. I have nothing to say, really

atemerev 10y ago

I think that the root of the problem is that most of Google's core services developer are Americans, with American cultural peculiarities. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that for an average American, moving to another country is something that less than 1% of population does, and it is like once a lifetime event. Here in Europe, on the contrary, it is relatively common to stumble upon a German guy living in France, or a Brit living in Germany, or any combination whatsoever, and many are changing their place of living more than once, especially in the academic environment (I have 5 residence cards of different European countries). The same goes with the localization approach. Google or Apple always want to give me services in the language of the country I currently live in, instead of remembering my priority language (English, even if I am not a native speaker), and sticking with it, even if I am now in Spain or Italy. Changing countries is really common in Europe. Probably we need more European companies in the Internet space to adapt to our way of living.

vram22 10y ago
Insightful comment ...
rconti 10y ago
I'm not sure I'd call it an "American cultural peculiarity". I imagine it's much the same in other physically large countries. It's also a consequence of immigration/residence policy. Even before the EU, I'm sure it was quite a bit easier to get residence in another European country as a European, vs as an American or Mexican or South African.
- atemerev 10y ago
  Well, I am Russian now living in Switzerland (and occasionally Spain) who used to live in Denmark and Italy before. Casual, matter-of-fact immigration is a fact of life these days.
- atemerev 10y ago
  Physically large countries: Russia, China, Brazil, US, Canada, India. Of those, only US and Russia have this peculiarity.

GlickWick 10y ago

Yeah, have had similar problems, dealing with Google support is a nightmare. I can't use Google Ads at all anymore. I once had an account for a business in NY, and I was listed as the point of contact for it. Lost access to that account when I moved (locked out due to changing location, Google refused to offer any means to recover it), and now I can't sign up for Google Ads with my name on any account. It simply informs me that I'm already using the service on another account, and that I should use that for Ads.

detaro 10y ago
And I suppose without an account you can't contact the support for Google Ads to see if maybe they can fix it? (Since people always argue that Google support is only shit for the free products)
- GlickWick 10y ago
  Correct. Since I can't get through account creation at all I'm mostly stuck. I've tried social media, but without much luck there as well.

mikebay 10y ago

You most probably done something against they globalist agenda or did not support Hiilary Clinto or you wore a Infowars Bill Clinton is a rapist t-shirt front of your webcam. Google watch and listen all your actions. Straight cables to NSA. Google ? - No thanks.

zwetan 10y ago

You, as a user, are geolocked, it's not only Google, it's everyone. The only excuse they have to do that is the different countries legislation, but besides that, like any geolocking, it's just not fit for "I can access my stuff, my services, from anywhere in the world because ... internet!", nope ... you can't. I had the problem with Google, google dev license with a wallet, moving to another country ? well then create another google account, no other choices, period. Can't we have the option to be a google dev in 2 different countries ? no you can't. Same for Google Ads, even more so if you connect ads to a bank account to get paid. Same with Apple, same with Facebook, same with Paypal, same with Microsoft Xbox, etc. Some tricks can work: using a Google Apps for your domain email when you move to another country, alter slightly your name or use your middle name to create another account for the same service but from another country (and a different bank account), alter your gmail with old google trick +something eg. username+fr@gmail.com and username+uk@gmail.com etc. If you move often it get old pretty quick.