4 ms·

As stated in the original medium post, the issue was they only had one credit card on file and no contact at the company. If they had either a second credit car

As stated in the original medium post, the issue was they only had one credit card on file and no contact at the company. If they had either a second credit card or moved to offline billing or had a contact with a phone number (all free steps), they would not have been suspended.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
crazysim 8y ago
Maybe the language in setting all those up should be very upfront with the benefits they provide. Or even proactive emails and large dialogs about doing that. Perhaps it should be like those sites heavily suggesting 2FA if you've been a customer long enough. If there is a concern about noise, maybe the messaging for that should pop up in the GUI in a non-ignoreable way and start on accounts with a sizable spend or have existed for some time with activity.
mmt 8y ago
I'm pretty sure that's undisputed, but it also doesn't address the concern of what happens once a customer finds themselves in that situation, whatever the reason. Furthermore, this response could be construed as reinforcing the OC's precise concern regarding Google's attitude: > that you are probably wrong.
- TheIronYuppie 8y ago
  I hope we can convince you all that that is no longer our attitude, but I know that only time will tell. As I mentioned above, in this case, WE were absolutely wrong, and the blog post details all the ways we're fixing it.
  - mmt 8y ago
    I suspect that part of what has people worried and continuing to complain about Google's attitude and "tone-deafness" is that your responses, which are seen as being representative of GCP, based on your revealing your affiliation, suggest you're not quite absorbing the meaning of the actual concern/complaint. You did admit error and apologize in the blog post (perhaps not explicitly or early enough in the text for some people, but that's a separate issue), and you specified how you were going to fix it. It may take time for the reputational effects of those fixes to permeate. That's not the issue. The issue is that, here, you have, effectively, said, "but the customer could have..". Even the implication that the customer might share in the blame, no matter how objectively true it may be, takes credibility away from the sincerity of an apology and can easily be seen as evidence of the persistence of same, old attitude. Given that the statement happened after the apology, further time is unlikely to make a difference.
    - TheIronYuppie 8y ago
      Shoot, ok, let me try again. 1) This was, in NO WAY, the customer's fault. At all. Not even a little bit. They did stuff that was totally normal for a customer to do. To remedy us not accidentally flagging totally normal stuff as fraud again, we talked about 7 steps we were taking (that was the first 7 steps in the blog). 2) IF, and only IF, you'd like to take ADDITIONAL steps to avoid us accidentally flagging you, we also offered three steps (at the end of the article). However, these were totally optional. Hope that helps.
      - mmt 8y ago
        > 2) IF, and only IF, you'd like to take ADDITIONAL steps to avoid us accidentally flagging you, we also offered three steps (at the end of the article). However, these were totally optional. Getting warmer.. but: Even here, you're saying that the customer has (or could have) some role in preventing your error (accidental flagging). This is merely an issue with the wording (here, not necessarily in the OP blog). The "protect your account" wording of the blog post itself seems good, as do the specific reasons for each additional step. My only suggestions would be to add the concept of urgency in reachability to the phone number, as time sensitivity seems to be important to many (but not all) customers, and to substitute something for "don't miss important alerts" (which, again, could be read to imply blaming the customer) that has a more positive wording, that expresses that all the relevant parties would then be empowered to have visibility into those alerts (rather than avoiding the transgression of missing them). See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17567900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17567900 (which I have no idea as to the veracity of but figured I'd call your attention to) > Hope that helps. It does (at least IMO), and I hope you take my feedback in the contstructive spirit in which it is intended. (I don't personally have a strong opinion either way, as I lack enough direct experience).
perl4ever 8y ago
One problem I have had with dealing with Google (not for this particular service) is that they set up mechanisms where adding a "backup" creates a new single point of failure rather than adding redundancy. If you can't access one particular backup method of verification, your primary and other backup are of no use. It's a trap! And quite Kafkaesque. While this might not strictly apply to some other particular situation, my experience would lead me not to ever trust Google when they say "do this seemingly logical thing because it will make you safer".

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

crazysim 8y ago

Maybe the language in setting all those up should be very upfront with the benefits they provide. Or even proactive emails and large dialogs about doing that. Perhaps it should be like those sites heavily suggesting 2FA if you've been a customer long enough. If there is a concern about noise, maybe the messaging for that should pop up in the GUI in a non-ignoreable way and start on accounts with a sizable spend or have existed for some time with activity.

mmt 8y ago

I'm pretty sure that's undisputed, but it also doesn't address the concern of what happens once a customer finds themselves in that situation, whatever the reason. Furthermore, this response could be construed as reinforcing the OC's precise concern regarding Google's attitude: > that you are probably wrong.

TheIronYuppie 8y ago
I hope we can convince you all that that is no longer our attitude, but I know that only time will tell. As I mentioned above, in this case, WE were absolutely wrong, and the blog post details all the ways we're fixing it.
- mmt 8y ago
  I suspect that part of what has people worried and continuing to complain about Google's attitude and "tone-deafness" is that your responses, which are seen as being representative of GCP, based on your revealing your affiliation, suggest you're not quite absorbing the meaning of the actual concern/complaint. You did admit error and apologize in the blog post (perhaps not explicitly or early enough in the text for some people, but that's a separate issue), and you specified how you were going to fix it. It may take time for the reputational effects of those fixes to permeate. That's not the issue. The issue is that, here, you have, effectively, said, "but the customer could have..". Even the implication that the customer might share in the blame, no matter how objectively true it may be, takes credibility away from the sincerity of an apology and can easily be seen as evidence of the persistence of same, old attitude. Given that the statement happened after the apology, further time is unlikely to make a difference.
  - TheIronYuppie 8y ago
    Shoot, ok, let me try again. 1) This was, in NO WAY, the customer's fault. At all. Not even a little bit. They did stuff that was totally normal for a customer to do. To remedy us not accidentally flagging totally normal stuff as fraud again, we talked about 7 steps we were taking (that was the first 7 steps in the blog). 2) IF, and only IF, you'd like to take ADDITIONAL steps to avoid us accidentally flagging you, we also offered three steps (at the end of the article). However, these were totally optional. Hope that helps.
    - mmt 8y ago
      > 2) IF, and only IF, you'd like to take ADDITIONAL steps to avoid us accidentally flagging you, we also offered three steps (at the end of the article). However, these were totally optional. Getting warmer.. but: Even here, you're saying that the customer has (or could have) some role in preventing your error (accidental flagging). This is merely an issue with the wording (here, not necessarily in the OP blog). The "protect your account" wording of the blog post itself seems good, as do the specific reasons for each additional step. My only suggestions would be to add the concept of urgency in reachability to the phone number, as time sensitivity seems to be important to many (but not all) customers, and to substitute something for "don't miss important alerts" (which, again, could be read to imply blaming the customer) that has a more positive wording, that expresses that all the relevant parties would then be empowered to have visibility into those alerts (rather than avoiding the transgression of missing them). See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17567900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17567900 (which I have no idea as to the veracity of but figured I'd call your attention to) > Hope that helps. It does (at least IMO), and I hope you take my feedback in the contstructive spirit in which it is intended. (I don't personally have a strong opinion either way, as I lack enough direct experience).

perl4ever 8y ago

One problem I have had with dealing with Google (not for this particular service) is that they set up mechanisms where adding a "backup" creates a new single point of failure rather than adding redundancy. If you can't access one particular backup method of verification, your primary and other backup are of no use. It's a trap! And quite Kafkaesque. While this might not strictly apply to some other particular situation, my experience would lead me not to ever trust Google when they say "do this seemingly logical thing because it will make you safer".