6 ms·

Y'know, this article isn't about Gmail performance nearly as much as it is another article about Google's utter disdain for our quaint notions of customer servi

by Vivtek 16y ago

Y'know, this article isn't about Gmail performance nearly as much as it is another article about Google's utter disdain for our quaint notions of customer service and transparency. Somebody who goes to a conference might get something like feedback and disseminate it to the masses - but that's it. Google is not interested in hearing about problems, and if they themselves are affected by a problem, well, boy howdy, they're on it - but in any other case, maybe they're on it, maybe they're not. Who are we to ask?

donohoe 16y ago
Don't mistake lack of customer service for 'disdain'. For every issue related to Googles free products and services when have you ever really, and I mean really needed a traditional customer service rep? Maybe once? Not at all? I would hate Gmail never to have happened becuase they felt it would require a call center and they were not prepared to do that... And as for 'transparency'... um, they're a private company. But a very transparent one at that in many other ways. Just not 'transparent' in this one way? While I'm here... (1) "Somebody who goes to a conference might get something like feedback and disseminate it to the masses" I've found the blog helpful (not always, but its still there): http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/whats-your-story.html http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/whats-your-story.html (2) "Google is not interested in hearing about problems" Try this link: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail (3) "and if they themselves are affected by a problem, well, boy howdy, they're on it" To be fair, as a dev its much much easier to solve a problem when you experience it first-hand but I maintain that they don't necessarily wait until it happens to them before problems get addressed. You know, you could be absolutely right in all respects BUT you assume its somehow malicious, or condescending or whatever - when, at worst, its benign.
- illumin8 16y ago
  I'm sorry, but even though I've never needed Google support for Gmail, that doesn't excuse their lack of it. If they want to be taken seriously, or considered at all for real enterprise app replacement with Gmail or Google docs, they need to have a real live phone support, 1-800 number that lusers can call to get someone that will try to help them. Let me give you a terrible example: I sync my Exchange calendar with Google Calendar so I can get it on my mobile devices. As I work for a large Fortune 15-20 company, one of my meetings was a weekly recurring meeting with 2,000+ participants. This is not unusual as our quarterly all employees meeting requests are sent out to 50,000+ participants. This recurring meeting with only 2,000+ participants was cancelled, but I was completely unable to remove it from my Google Calendar. Google Calendar is broken, and after searching online for about an hour for a solution, I found many other people have the same exact issue. So, here I am with a recurring event in my Google Calendar that I cannot delete: An error has occurred. Please try again later. - this is the level of support I get from Google. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Calendar/thread?tid=51516f13b66a14ed&hl=en http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Calendar/thread?tid=51... Basically, search the forums and find the bug has existed since 2009, and no communication from Google about fixing it. Do they really expect to be taken seriously in the enterprise space?
  - lutorm 16y ago
    If you are running Gmail through google apps for enterprises, then you do have customer support options. Of course, then you also pay.
    - rufo 16y ago
      E-mail support is only for "select administrative issues", and phone support is only for reporting "a service unusable issue caused by a Google server error"[1]. It doesn't sound like the GP's issue would fall into either of those categories. [1]: http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=60830 http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...
      - illumin8 16y ago
        Exactly. I'm not paying for the service so I can't really complain, but when many users report a bug in 2009, where Google Calendar completely chokes and can't delete or modify meeting requests with more than a handful of recipients, you would expect a company like Google to at least reply "we've opened a bug and are working on fixing this issue." Instead, the silence on their troubleshooting forums is deafening. It's as if the engineers just don't care about fixing it, despite what would happen in the real world if a Google Apps sales rep came to our company to do a real evaluation... I suspect they would be laughed out of the room once they admitted they couldn't handle meeting invites with more than a handful of attendees.
  - phreanix 16y ago
    When I tested out Apps Premier I was able to get phone support and was very well assisted by them. While a certain level of support is expected from a 'free' service, I don't think it is viable to offer phone support for it. In much the same way, it is horribly difficult to get phone support for any free email service, yahoo, hotmail, etc.
    - wrs 16y ago
      Me too. After one escalation I got a super pleasant guy on the phone who spent 10 minutes helping me find the problem (which, btw, was my own fault).
- nfnaaron 16y ago
  [comments] " ... um, they're a private company. ..." Screeeeeeech! http://www.google.com/finance?q=goog http://www.google.com/finance?q=goog [comments]
  - donohoe 16y ago
    Sorry - my bad. I meant in so much as a government agency etc should be transparent (but that's not a great example either) :)
- wolfish 16y ago
  Does google consider gmail users to have value? Be it via ad views or good will, etc. If so, then is it in their interest to provide a commensurate level of support to their users? Sure there's no legal binding contract, but at what point does it cross from being benign to being bad business. The fact is that this is a common complaint that Google seems content to ignore. Which is their right, but is it the best choice from a business perspective? I don't know.
ern 16y ago
A few years ago, I was called in and told that my work machine was pulling huge amounts of data from the net. It eventually turned out that the problem was a buggy version of Google Desktop. After a fairly intensive search, I found the reason in an obscure Google Groups posting[ http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Desktop_Something-Broken/browse_thread/thread/bcc8350664774299/2f37d62faa69477b http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Desktop_Something-Brok... ]. I experienced the bug six months after the issue was discussed there, and that was the only source of information I could find. I don't know if Google has improved its support recently, but the obscure way in which information on the bug was disseminated certainly made me more wary of using Google products after that.
andreyf 16y ago
Google's utter disdain for our quaint notions of customer service and transparency Do you really expect GMail to provide personal customer service to its ~176m [1] non-paying users? Run the numbers: if the average user calls in 5 minutes a year (very low estimate), how many hours a day of customer support would it take? And transparency - are you suggesting they open source their infrastructure so you can hack on BigTable to fix their speed issues? 1. In 2009: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703630404575053480962942848.html&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=C6dakjOf_S5WaM4KGzQTE_bi0BQAAAKoEBU_Q3MIS http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=http:...
- daten 16y ago
  Do you really expect GMail to provide personal customer service to its ~176m [1] non-paying users? Don't mistake non-paying for no-profit. Those users don't pay cash but they do give google lots of personal data and ad-clicks that makes google money. I would personally rather pay a fee and keep my data private and not see ads. If google loses "non-paying" customers because of performance issues or outages that they don't know about because there's no effective way to contact them, they also lose money just like a company with paying customers.
  - nooneelse 16y ago
    "I would personally rather pay a fee and keep my data private and not see ads." I thought that one could do that with a Premier Edition Google Apps account.
    - PStamatiou 16y ago
      Yes they can. I have been on Google Apps Premier for 2 or 3 years now.
      - bigstorm 16y ago
        Yes although Apps Premier comes with a price, it has many other features including ad free mails. You get less spam too
wmeredith 16y ago
You get what you pay for. End of story.
- patio11 16y ago
  Oh, how I wish your quip was accurate.
- blueben 16y ago
  I pay $50 per user, and get the same "support" as free users. Got any clever comments about that?
  - studer 16y ago
    Premier Edition? That includes 24/7 phone support, SLA:s, and a lot more. Why are you paying for something if you haven't even bothered checking what you pay for? Doesn't sound very clever to me...
    - blueben 16y ago
      Read some more. The support is limited in many respects, and does not include the ability to complain about and get resolution on issues of website performance.
- Poiesis 16y ago
  I have found that while you don't always get what you pay for, you generally don't get what you don't pay for.

by Vivtek 16y ago

donohoe 16y ago

Don't mistake lack of customer service for 'disdain'. For every issue related to Googles free products and services when have you ever really, and I mean really needed a traditional customer service rep? Maybe once? Not at all? I would hate Gmail never to have happened becuase they felt it would require a call center and they were not prepared to do that... And as for 'transparency'... um, they're a private company. But a very transparent one at that in many other ways. Just not 'transparent' in this one way? While I'm here... (1) "Somebody who goes to a conference might get something like feedback and disseminate it to the masses" I've found the blog helpful (not always, but its still there): http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/whats-your-story.html http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/whats-your-story.html (2) "Google is not interested in hearing about problems" Try this link: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail (3) "and if they themselves are affected by a problem, well, boy howdy, they're on it" To be fair, as a dev its much much easier to solve a problem when you experience it first-hand but I maintain that they don't necessarily wait until it happens to them before problems get addressed. You know, you could be absolutely right in all respects BUT you assume its somehow malicious, or condescending or whatever - when, at worst, its benign.

illumin8 16y ago
I'm sorry, but even though I've never needed Google support for Gmail, that doesn't excuse their lack of it. If they want to be taken seriously, or considered at all for real enterprise app replacement with Gmail or Google docs, they need to have a real live phone support, 1-800 number that lusers can call to get someone that will try to help them. Let me give you a terrible example: I sync my Exchange calendar with Google Calendar so I can get it on my mobile devices. As I work for a large Fortune 15-20 company, one of my meetings was a weekly recurring meeting with 2,000+ participants. This is not unusual as our quarterly all employees meeting requests are sent out to 50,000+ participants. This recurring meeting with only 2,000+ participants was cancelled, but I was completely unable to remove it from my Google Calendar. Google Calendar is broken, and after searching online for about an hour for a solution, I found many other people have the same exact issue. So, here I am with a recurring event in my Google Calendar that I cannot delete: An error has occurred. Please try again later. - this is the level of support I get from Google. http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Calendar/thread?tid=51516f13b66a14ed&hl=en http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Calendar/thread?tid=51... Basically, search the forums and find the bug has existed since 2009, and no communication from Google about fixing it. Do they really expect to be taken seriously in the enterprise space?
- lutorm 16y ago
  If you are running Gmail through google apps for enterprises, then you do have customer support options. Of course, then you also pay.
  - rufo 16y ago
    E-mail support is only for "select administrative issues", and phone support is only for reporting "a service unusable issue caused by a Google server error"[1]. It doesn't sound like the GP's issue would fall into either of those categories. [1]: http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=60830 http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...
    - illumin8 16y ago
      Exactly. I'm not paying for the service so I can't really complain, but when many users report a bug in 2009, where Google Calendar completely chokes and can't delete or modify meeting requests with more than a handful of recipients, you would expect a company like Google to at least reply "we've opened a bug and are working on fixing this issue." Instead, the silence on their troubleshooting forums is deafening. It's as if the engineers just don't care about fixing it, despite what would happen in the real world if a Google Apps sales rep came to our company to do a real evaluation... I suspect they would be laughed out of the room once they admitted they couldn't handle meeting invites with more than a handful of attendees.
- phreanix 16y ago
  When I tested out Apps Premier I was able to get phone support and was very well assisted by them. While a certain level of support is expected from a 'free' service, I don't think it is viable to offer phone support for it. In much the same way, it is horribly difficult to get phone support for any free email service, yahoo, hotmail, etc.
  - wrs 16y ago
    Me too. After one escalation I got a super pleasant guy on the phone who spent 10 minutes helping me find the problem (which, btw, was my own fault).
nfnaaron 16y ago
[comments] " ... um, they're a private company. ..." Screeeeeeech! http://www.google.com/finance?q=goog http://www.google.com/finance?q=goog [comments]
- donohoe 16y ago
  Sorry - my bad. I meant in so much as a government agency etc should be transparent (but that's not a great example either) :)
wolfish 16y ago
Does google consider gmail users to have value? Be it via ad views or good will, etc. If so, then is it in their interest to provide a commensurate level of support to their users? Sure there's no legal binding contract, but at what point does it cross from being benign to being bad business. The fact is that this is a common complaint that Google seems content to ignore. Which is their right, but is it the best choice from a business perspective? I don't know.

ern 16y ago

A few years ago, I was called in and told that my work machine was pulling huge amounts of data from the net. It eventually turned out that the problem was a buggy version of Google Desktop. After a fairly intensive search, I found the reason in an obscure Google Groups posting[ http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Desktop_Something-Broken/browse_thread/thread/bcc8350664774299/2f37d62faa69477b http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Desktop_Something-Brok... ]. I experienced the bug six months after the issue was discussed there, and that was the only source of information I could find. I don't know if Google has improved its support recently, but the obscure way in which information on the bug was disseminated certainly made me more wary of using Google products after that.

andreyf 16y ago

Google's utter disdain for our quaint notions of customer service and transparency Do you really expect GMail to provide personal customer service to its ~176m [1] non-paying users? Run the numbers: if the average user calls in 5 minutes a year (very low estimate), how many hours a day of customer support would it take? And transparency - are you suggesting they open source their infrastructure so you can hack on BigTable to fix their speed issues? 1. In 2009: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703630404575053480962942848.html&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=C6dakjOf_S5WaM4KGzQTE_bi0BQAAAKoEBU_Q3MIS http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=http:...

daten 16y ago
Do you really expect GMail to provide personal customer service to its ~176m [1] non-paying users? Don't mistake non-paying for no-profit. Those users don't pay cash but they do give google lots of personal data and ad-clicks that makes google money. I would personally rather pay a fee and keep my data private and not see ads. If google loses "non-paying" customers because of performance issues or outages that they don't know about because there's no effective way to contact them, they also lose money just like a company with paying customers.
- nooneelse 16y ago
  "I would personally rather pay a fee and keep my data private and not see ads." I thought that one could do that with a Premier Edition Google Apps account.
  - PStamatiou 16y ago
    Yes they can. I have been on Google Apps Premier for 2 or 3 years now.
    - bigstorm 16y ago
      Yes although Apps Premier comes with a price, it has many other features including ad free mails. You get less spam too

wmeredith 16y ago

You get what you pay for. End of story.

patio11 16y ago
Oh, how I wish your quip was accurate.
blueben 16y ago
I pay $50 per user, and get the same "support" as free users. Got any clever comments about that?
- studer 16y ago
  Premier Edition? That includes 24/7 phone support, SLA:s, and a lot more. Why are you paying for something if you haven't even bothered checking what you pay for? Doesn't sound very clever to me...
  - blueben 16y ago
    Read some more. The support is limited in many respects, and does not include the ability to complain about and get resolution on issues of website performance.
Poiesis 16y ago
I have found that while you don't always get what you pay for, you generally don't get what you don't pay for.