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Couple that with the fact that they do not offer anything that deserves the moniker "customer service".

by _pmf_ 9y ago

dragonwriter 9y ago
I've gotten excellent customer service from them with Google Express. They certainly can offer good customer service where they choose to.
Spivak 9y ago
If you pay them you get good customer service. Google Play, YouTube Red, Chromecast, Chromebook, Nexus, all have pretty good service.
- pgodzin 9y ago
  Google Fi as well
- DataWorker 9y ago
  I completely disagree. Recently did a factory reset on my nexus only to find out that without the password for the last sync'd google account, a throwaway I don't remember, it's bricked. I can report it stolen on the device page, can easily prove to google it's my device, but I can't reset or sell or do anything with the phone. Google's response after spending days trying to fix, and talking to different support people who had wildly different answers, the only viable answer was to give me the number for Lg and wish me good luck. Never have I paid so much for a product which is broken by its own design while being entirely unsupported by the vendor. Never will I purchase a google product or service and I will tell everyone I know to do the same.
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    (I work at google but not on android). That's because, short of sending you a new device, there isn't any way to bypass the theft prevention. Do you have the same complaint about, as another user mentioned, not being able to recover your data when you forget the password to an encrypted drive?
    - argv_empty 9y ago
      Do you have the same complaint about, as another user mentioned, not being able to recover your data when you forget the password to an encrypted drive? This is a pretty disingenuous analogy. GP did not ask about recovering data from the device. GP asked about starting over from scratch. Most people do have the expectation that an old encrypted drive can be reformatted and repurposed without knowing the key.
      - joshuamorton 9y ago
        True, but in this case, you're "encrypting" (or really, securing) your device, and not your data. (I realize this will be misunderstood because "encrypting your device" normally means encrypting the data on your device). The whole point of that is as an anti-theft measure (a stolen device [with a locked bootloader] cannot be factory reset without the original owner's permission). It would be kind of silly if you could bypass that by saying "no look, its mine I just forgot the password.". Now admittedly, I'm unsure if you need to know the original password, or if you can change the password online and then reset it, but I think the second would work. As an aside, this I think fits into a trope I see repeatedly (and pretty much only on HN). I'm not making any judgement about whether being privacy conscious is good or bad. But I find it amusing when people state something like "This product is awful because I <did something that is incredibly privacy conscious and actively inhibits the ability of the prodcut to track things about me that contribute to a positive UX> and then <some product was not useful, and my experience was notably less good than other people>."
        ksk 9y ago
        >cannot be factory reset without the original owner's permission) Presumably the permission should come _before_ the reset? After the reset, all the data is gone anyway, and asking the password at that point seems pointless since > I <did something that is incredibly privacy conscious and actively inhibits the ability of the prodcut to track things about me that contribute to a positive UX> I read it as - "I did a completely normal thing like performing a factory reset of a consumer device (something that people have been doing for over a decade)"
  - euyyn 9y ago
    Was the disk encrypted?
  - foobaw 9y ago
    (Disclaimer: I worked at an Android OEM company). Someone at LG or Qualcomm can definitely fix this easily and it takes about 30 seconds to do so. All it takes is to do a "chip erase" which will clear the QSEE sector and allow a complete factory reset.
- puranjay 9y ago
  Just ask the thousands of pissed off AdWords advertisers about their customer service
praneshp 9y ago
The few times I needed help with my project Fi connection it took about 3 minutes to reach a human. Even faster if I was willing to chat instead of call.

Couple that with the fact that they do not offer anything that deserves the moniker "customer service".

by _pmf_ 9y ago

Couple that with the fact that they do not offer anything that deserves the moniker "customer service".

I've gotten excellent customer service from them with Google Express. They certainly can offer good customer service where they choose to.

Spivak 9y ago

If you pay them you get good customer service. Google Play, YouTube Red, Chromecast, Chromebook, Nexus, all have pretty good service.

pgodzin 9y ago
Google Fi as well
DataWorker 9y ago
I completely disagree. Recently did a factory reset on my nexus only to find out that without the password for the last sync'd google account, a throwaway I don't remember, it's bricked. I can report it stolen on the device page, can easily prove to google it's my device, but I can't reset or sell or do anything with the phone. Google's response after spending days trying to fix, and talking to different support people who had wildly different answers, the only viable answer was to give me the number for Lg and wish me good luck. Never have I paid so much for a product which is broken by its own design while being entirely unsupported by the vendor. Never will I purchase a google product or service and I will tell everyone I know to do the same.
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  (I work at google but not on android). That's because, short of sending you a new device, there isn't any way to bypass the theft prevention. Do you have the same complaint about, as another user mentioned, not being able to recover your data when you forget the password to an encrypted drive?
  - argv_empty 9y ago
    Do you have the same complaint about, as another user mentioned, not being able to recover your data when you forget the password to an encrypted drive? This is a pretty disingenuous analogy. GP did not ask about recovering data from the device. GP asked about starting over from scratch. Most people do have the expectation that an old encrypted drive can be reformatted and repurposed without knowing the key.
    - joshuamorton 9y ago
      True, but in this case, you're "encrypting" (or really, securing) your device, and not your data. (I realize this will be misunderstood because "encrypting your device" normally means encrypting the data on your device). The whole point of that is as an anti-theft measure (a stolen device [with a locked bootloader] cannot be factory reset without the original owner's permission). It would be kind of silly if you could bypass that by saying "no look, its mine I just forgot the password.". Now admittedly, I'm unsure if you need to know the original password, or if you can change the password online and then reset it, but I think the second would work. As an aside, this I think fits into a trope I see repeatedly (and pretty much only on HN). I'm not making any judgement about whether being privacy conscious is good or bad. But I find it amusing when people state something like "This product is awful because I <did something that is incredibly privacy conscious and actively inhibits the ability of the prodcut to track things about me that contribute to a positive UX> and then <some product was not useful, and my experience was notably less good than other people>."
      - ksk 9y ago
        >cannot be factory reset without the original owner's permission) Presumably the permission should come _before_ the reset? After the reset, all the data is gone anyway, and asking the password at that point seems pointless since > I <did something that is incredibly privacy conscious and actively inhibits the ability of the prodcut to track things about me that contribute to a positive UX> I read it as - "I did a completely normal thing like performing a factory reset of a consumer device (something that people have been doing for over a decade)"
- euyyn 9y ago
  Was the disk encrypted?
- foobaw 9y ago
  (Disclaimer: I worked at an Android OEM company). Someone at LG or Qualcomm can definitely fix this easily and it takes about 30 seconds to do so. All it takes is to do a "chip erase" which will clear the QSEE sector and allow a complete factory reset.
puranjay 9y ago
Just ask the thousands of pissed off AdWords advertisers about their customer service

praneshp 9y ago

The few times I needed help with my project Fi connection it took about 3 minutes to reach a human. Even faster if I was willing to chat instead of call.