14 ms·

This is a general issue with google. If their system decides it doesn't like you, then you're out of luck. You'll never get them to fix it.

by ronsor 8y ago

zenexer 8y ago
I recently had nearly the same exact problem with Microsoft. Security department is a black box—zero communication. A friend working for Microsoft even escalated my case internally at the time, but nobody could do or see anything. My account was eventually unfrozen without so much as an email to notify me, never mind an explanation. The point is, this issue isn’t limited to Google.
- jlarocco 8y ago
  Wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft saw how much money Google saves by not having support, and decided to follow their lead. They used to have decent support.
  - magduf 8y ago
    With Microsoft, it makes good sense for them to not have any support. They can save a lot of money that way, and there's simply no downside. Does it anger customers? Sure, but who cares? It's not like the customers are going to abandon Microsoft. With Google, there is at least a chance they could move to the Apple ecosystem.
    - woolvalley 8y ago
      Why wouldn't I abandon MSFT? There is google docs, chromebooks and mac os already. Only a small power user use case needs to stick with office specifically nowadays.
      - jessaustin 8y ago
        Lots of people already abandoned them years ago. It might be the sort of thing that isn't a problem... up until the moment the firm goes out of business.
      - dabockster 8y ago
        Last I checked, Windows is still the OS of choice for consumers, businesses, the space station (check the recent HN post and zoom in on one of the ThinkPads), etc. So MSFT still has a good chokehold on modern computing.
        eitland 8y ago
        > So MSFT still has a good chokehold on modern computing. Many of us breathe quite freely (at work we're free to us any OS as long we don't bother IT.) It has like this for a little more than half of of my 10 last years (notable exceptions: 3.5 years as sysadmin on old system running Windows, 4 months consulting and 3 months with a boss who demanded everything ran Linux.) Oh: and almost everyone demands we host on Linux or on cloud.
        magduf 8y ago
        As I said above, everyone who would abandon MS, already has (this apparently includes you). Everyone who hasn't yet, never will. So at this point, MS has nothing to lose by treating their customers like crap. The people who still use MS desktops certainly aren't going to switch to Linux, and the people who use MS servers and other business products are locked in and probably not interested in changing anyway because all their IT expertise is invested in that ecosystem. The people who demand you run everything on Linux aren't MS customers at this point, so MS doesn't care about pissing them off.
      - magduf 8y ago
        Oh, I hear people complain all the time about them and how they're going to switch to Linux (usually because of Win10's spying), but I actually have yet to see anyone make the jump. It's all just hot air. Anyone who actually would abandon MSFT already did so, many years ago. People who haven't abandoned them by now, will never do so.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    It’s always been questionable. Nowadays even Premier is garbage. The guidance from a TAM is to log calls before 10AM local time, so that the support don’t queue you to a desk that will pretend to contact you after you’re gone home. The funniest thing is that if you answer after hours, you get someone not prepared to do anything, as he’s there to attempt contact to push the call out so they hit the SLA.
  - fernandotakai 8y ago
    i don't know but last august i had an issue with my surface and i talked with chat support as well as phone support without any issues.
    - jjeaff 8y ago
      There are so many companies that could make customer service an absolute breeze compared to the nightmare they have created by just offering customer service chat with reps that are actually empowered to do something. Of the few companies I know that have chat support, a very select few can do anything more than apologize and give you a phone number to call or place to open a ticket.
  - gambiting 8y ago
    As an Xbox developer, Microsoft support is actually pretty good. They reply to questions pretty quickly and when needed you can even speak directly to the engineers responsible for the parts of the system. But then again, I imagine Xbox development team and their number of customers(developers) is tiny compared to the rest of Microsoft, so they can allow this kind of tight support.
  - alasdair_ 8y ago
    >They used to have decent support. In 2001 it was apparently on par with the "Psychic Friends Hotline" - https://slashdot.org/story/01/04/27/1715203/microsoft-tech-suport-vs-psychic-friends https://slashdot.org/story/01/04/27/1715203/microsoft-tech-s...
    - lol768 8y ago
      Archive mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20000424210912/www.bmug.org/news/articles/MSvsPF.html https://web.archive.org/web/20000424210912/www.bmug.org/news...
- mattynice 8y ago
  The difference is Microsoft doesn't provide you with your phone service do they? I think this highlights the dangers of bundling all of your services through a single point of failure. Something Google probably is the most known for.
- desireco42 8y ago
  My experience with Microsoft is very positive one. I had issue once with Windows on my old gaming machine. I called them, regular support couldn't help me, but they scheduled call with their dev center or something. I got to talk with very knowledgable lady, who not only directed me what to do to resolve problem, but also explained well what was the issue and all made perfect sense. I was genuinely impressed. I think this was because my issue was not trivial and I got to talk with developers.
  - eitland 8y ago
    I had a problem with an old USD10 purhase through their Windows store. They called me back and sorted the problem the same afternoon. Was genuinely impressed, haven't seen anything like that since IBM PC support in the 90ties.
NorthOf33rd 8y ago
Yep. a few years ago I signed up for a promo where if I spent a certain amount in the app store, I'd get a free chromecast. Never got it. No recourse available. At all. It's really strange that this level of "service" is acceptable.
- ThrustVectoring 8y ago
  >No recourse available. You can sue Google in small claims court for the value of the undelivered Chromecast and for the court fees you spent on suing them.
  - IOT_Apprentice 8y ago
    someone should take that do not pay bot that fights traffic tickets and apply it to suing Google et al over these issues. https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/12/15960080/chatbot-ai-legal-donotpay-us-uk https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/12/15960080/chatbot-ai-legal...
  - ronsor 8y ago
    but it's generally not worth your time or money to do so
    - tracker1 8y ago
      But it'd be interesting to see a LOT more small-claims court suits... a million paper cuts to bring some humility and service to the beast.
      - rchaud 8y ago
        This won't happen, because Congress has done its best to try to limit action against corporations by trying to define everything under the sun as 'frivolous lawsuits that are clogging up our courts'.
    - ThrustVectoring 8y ago
      True. The demand letter you write prior to filing a lawsuit will usually be enough, though. At some point someone runs the calculation between giving you what you want and fighting a lawsuit in small claims, and decides to give you things instead.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
duxup 8y ago
It turns out it didn't take computer AI "taking over" to just arbitrarily decide you're out, or wrong, or whatever with no recourse. A company of humans have decided that's ok.
- jonsen 8y ago
  No single human says this is ok. There is no human consensus this is ok. This is a form of non-human intelligence taking over.
  - clairity 8y ago
    it's not an "intelligence" so much as emergent properties of systems. there are fields like system dynamics and macroeconomics that study such things.
    - waqf 8y ago
      Yes — but all "intelligence" is an emergent property of systems. And because the system in this instance is not a human brain, it's non-human intelligence.
      - ghazak 8y ago
        It’s not really intelligence, so much as selection pressure in the direction of high margin. Evolution isn’t “intelligence” either, but still leads to interesting or highly honed solutions to problems.
        istjohn 8y ago
        It's certainly not selection pressure. Google's systems did not evolve because similar companies out-competed and reproduced more effeciently than dissimilar companies. The metaphor doesn't work at all.
        ghazak 8y ago
chooseaname 8y ago
> You'll never get them to fix it. I honestly don't think they know how. What I mean is, this just hasn't ever been a concern for them because their services were free so they don't have a history of customer service.
ploxiln 8y ago
This is also a problem with Square, and Stripe, and Paypal ... it's an unsolvable fraud/scammer problem. Basically, if there was customer support that could fix the problem, then skilled scammers can get money and control out of them. They can do it a lot better than you can get your stuff re-enabled, they know just when to say what to whom. Verizon just accepts the inefficiency, and also over-charges random customers, sometimes hands over control of a phone number to a scammer so they can get auth codes over SMS, has clueless support, etc. Google hasn't accepted this way of the world yet (but in scaling up the support has necessarily become disempowered). It is very frustrating. It's a nature of things going mass-market. Just a few people, everything can be nice. Too many people, scams and fraud become big problems.
- wyldfire 8y ago
  > This is also a problem with Square, and Stripe, and Paypal ... it's an unsolvable fraud/scammer problem. It's compounded by the fact that Google has the primary element of your 21st century identity: your email address.
  - jjeaff 8y ago
    I recommend anyone who likes Gmail to use your own domain name@example.com and just forward all messages to your Gmail address. Only give out your own example.com email and set it as the reply to. Even the cheap budget registrars offer email forwarding for free and I have never had any trouble. This gives you the benefits of free Gmail without handing your entire life over to them. At least with a tld there is some due process and rules to protect you.
    - neetdeth 8y ago
      Are there actually rules and due process? I was under the impression that it's just a convention that the registrar won't seize your domain unless they really, really dislike you. edit: I shouldn't be oblique in my comments. I'm of course referring to the whole Daily Stormer fiasco.
MrZongle2 8y ago
"You'll never get them to fix it." And, quite honestly, why would they at this point? They have millions of other customers they can ignore, that are still paying. Where are they going to complain? And how would other users in the same boat find such complaints? It's certainly not right, but there's no strong incentive for Google to change how they're doing business right now.
zaarn 8y ago
You can get them to fix it in 1 simple step: 1. Stir up enough shit on social media that some higher up at Google basically does ''sudo fix-problem <customer>''. Of course, then google apologizes and promises to fix things for everyone else but they don't.
droidist2 8y ago
>If their system decides it doesn't like you, then you're out of luck. You'll never get them to fix it. Exactly right. The only way to get them to even look at it is to have a friend who works at Google or have tons of Twitter followers and pressure them by tweeting the story.

This is a general issue with google. If their system decides it doesn't like you, then you're out of luck. You'll never get them to fix it.

by ronsor 8y ago

This is a general issue with google. If their system decides it doesn't like you, then you're out of luck. You'll never get them to fix it.

zenexer 8y ago

I recently had nearly the same exact problem with Microsoft. Security department is a black box—zero communication. A friend working for Microsoft even escalated my case internally at the time, but nobody could do or see anything. My account was eventually unfrozen without so much as an email to notify me, never mind an explanation. The point is, this issue isn’t limited to Google.

jlarocco 8y ago
Wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft saw how much money Google saves by not having support, and decided to follow their lead. They used to have decent support.
- magduf 8y ago
  With Microsoft, it makes good sense for them to not have any support. They can save a lot of money that way, and there's simply no downside. Does it anger customers? Sure, but who cares? It's not like the customers are going to abandon Microsoft. With Google, there is at least a chance they could move to the Apple ecosystem.
  - woolvalley 8y ago
    Why wouldn't I abandon MSFT? There is google docs, chromebooks and mac os already. Only a small power user use case needs to stick with office specifically nowadays.
    - jessaustin 8y ago
      Lots of people already abandoned them years ago. It might be the sort of thing that isn't a problem... up until the moment the firm goes out of business.
    - dabockster 8y ago
      Last I checked, Windows is still the OS of choice for consumers, businesses, the space station (check the recent HN post and zoom in on one of the ThinkPads), etc. So MSFT still has a good chokehold on modern computing.
      - eitland 8y ago
        > So MSFT still has a good chokehold on modern computing. Many of us breathe quite freely (at work we're free to us any OS as long we don't bother IT.) It has like this for a little more than half of of my 10 last years (notable exceptions: 3.5 years as sysadmin on old system running Windows, 4 months consulting and 3 months with a boss who demanded everything ran Linux.) Oh: and almost everyone demands we host on Linux or on cloud.
        magduf 8y ago
        As I said above, everyone who would abandon MS, already has (this apparently includes you). Everyone who hasn't yet, never will. So at this point, MS has nothing to lose by treating their customers like crap. The people who still use MS desktops certainly aren't going to switch to Linux, and the people who use MS servers and other business products are locked in and probably not interested in changing anyway because all their IT expertise is invested in that ecosystem. The people who demand you run everything on Linux aren't MS customers at this point, so MS doesn't care about pissing them off.
    - magduf 8y ago
      Oh, I hear people complain all the time about them and how they're going to switch to Linux (usually because of Win10's spying), but I actually have yet to see anyone make the jump. It's all just hot air. Anyone who actually would abandon MSFT already did so, many years ago. People who haven't abandoned them by now, will never do so.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  It’s always been questionable. Nowadays even Premier is garbage. The guidance from a TAM is to log calls before 10AM local time, so that the support don’t queue you to a desk that will pretend to contact you after you’re gone home. The funniest thing is that if you answer after hours, you get someone not prepared to do anything, as he’s there to attempt contact to push the call out so they hit the SLA.
- fernandotakai 8y ago
  i don't know but last august i had an issue with my surface and i talked with chat support as well as phone support without any issues.
  - jjeaff 8y ago
    There are so many companies that could make customer service an absolute breeze compared to the nightmare they have created by just offering customer service chat with reps that are actually empowered to do something. Of the few companies I know that have chat support, a very select few can do anything more than apologize and give you a phone number to call or place to open a ticket.
- gambiting 8y ago
  As an Xbox developer, Microsoft support is actually pretty good. They reply to questions pretty quickly and when needed you can even speak directly to the engineers responsible for the parts of the system. But then again, I imagine Xbox development team and their number of customers(developers) is tiny compared to the rest of Microsoft, so they can allow this kind of tight support.
- alasdair_ 8y ago
  >They used to have decent support. In 2001 it was apparently on par with the "Psychic Friends Hotline" - https://slashdot.org/story/01/04/27/1715203/microsoft-tech-suport-vs-psychic-friends https://slashdot.org/story/01/04/27/1715203/microsoft-tech-s...
  - lol768 8y ago
    Archive mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20000424210912/www.bmug.org/news/articles/MSvsPF.html https://web.archive.org/web/20000424210912/www.bmug.org/news...
mattynice 8y ago
The difference is Microsoft doesn't provide you with your phone service do they? I think this highlights the dangers of bundling all of your services through a single point of failure. Something Google probably is the most known for.
desireco42 8y ago
My experience with Microsoft is very positive one. I had issue once with Windows on my old gaming machine. I called them, regular support couldn't help me, but they scheduled call with their dev center or something. I got to talk with very knowledgable lady, who not only directed me what to do to resolve problem, but also explained well what was the issue and all made perfect sense. I was genuinely impressed. I think this was because my issue was not trivial and I got to talk with developers.
- eitland 8y ago
  I had a problem with an old USD10 purhase through their Windows store. They called me back and sorted the problem the same afternoon. Was genuinely impressed, haven't seen anything like that since IBM PC support in the 90ties.

NorthOf33rd 8y ago

Yep. a few years ago I signed up for a promo where if I spent a certain amount in the app store, I'd get a free chromecast. Never got it. No recourse available. At all. It's really strange that this level of "service" is acceptable.

ThrustVectoring 8y ago
>No recourse available. You can sue Google in small claims court for the value of the undelivered Chromecast and for the court fees you spent on suing them.
- IOT_Apprentice 8y ago
  someone should take that do not pay bot that fights traffic tickets and apply it to suing Google et al over these issues. https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/12/15960080/chatbot-ai-legal-donotpay-us-uk https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/12/15960080/chatbot-ai-legal...
- ronsor 8y ago
  but it's generally not worth your time or money to do so
  - tracker1 8y ago
    But it'd be interesting to see a LOT more small-claims court suits... a million paper cuts to bring some humility and service to the beast.
    - rchaud 8y ago
      This won't happen, because Congress has done its best to try to limit action against corporations by trying to define everything under the sun as 'frivolous lawsuits that are clogging up our courts'.
  - ThrustVectoring 8y ago
    True. The demand letter you write prior to filing a lawsuit will usually be enough, though. At some point someone runs the calculation between giving you what you want and fighting a lawsuit in small claims, and decides to give you things instead.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

duxup 8y ago

It turns out it didn't take computer AI "taking over" to just arbitrarily decide you're out, or wrong, or whatever with no recourse. A company of humans have decided that's ok.

jonsen 8y ago
No single human says this is ok. There is no human consensus this is ok. This is a form of non-human intelligence taking over.
- clairity 8y ago
  it's not an "intelligence" so much as emergent properties of systems. there are fields like system dynamics and macroeconomics that study such things.
  - waqf 8y ago
    Yes — but all "intelligence" is an emergent property of systems. And because the system in this instance is not a human brain, it's non-human intelligence.
    - ghazak 8y ago
      It’s not really intelligence, so much as selection pressure in the direction of high margin. Evolution isn’t “intelligence” either, but still leads to interesting or highly honed solutions to problems.
      - istjohn 8y ago
        It's certainly not selection pressure. Google's systems did not evolve because similar companies out-competed and reproduced more effeciently than dissimilar companies. The metaphor doesn't work at all.
        ghazak 8y ago

chooseaname 8y ago

> You'll never get them to fix it. I honestly don't think they know how. What I mean is, this just hasn't ever been a concern for them because their services were free so they don't have a history of customer service.

ploxiln 8y ago

This is also a problem with Square, and Stripe, and Paypal ... it's an unsolvable fraud/scammer problem. Basically, if there was customer support that could fix the problem, then skilled scammers can get money and control out of them. They can do it a lot better than you can get your stuff re-enabled, they know just when to say what to whom. Verizon just accepts the inefficiency, and also over-charges random customers, sometimes hands over control of a phone number to a scammer so they can get auth codes over SMS, has clueless support, etc. Google hasn't accepted this way of the world yet (but in scaling up the support has necessarily become disempowered). It is very frustrating. It's a nature of things going mass-market. Just a few people, everything can be nice. Too many people, scams and fraud become big problems.

wyldfire 8y ago
> This is also a problem with Square, and Stripe, and Paypal ... it's an unsolvable fraud/scammer problem. It's compounded by the fact that Google has the primary element of your 21st century identity: your email address.
- jjeaff 8y ago
  I recommend anyone who likes Gmail to use your own domain name@example.com and just forward all messages to your Gmail address. Only give out your own example.com email and set it as the reply to. Even the cheap budget registrars offer email forwarding for free and I have never had any trouble. This gives you the benefits of free Gmail without handing your entire life over to them. At least with a tld there is some due process and rules to protect you.
  - neetdeth 8y ago
    Are there actually rules and due process? I was under the impression that it's just a convention that the registrar won't seize your domain unless they really, really dislike you. edit: I shouldn't be oblique in my comments. I'm of course referring to the whole Daily Stormer fiasco.

MrZongle2 8y ago

"You'll never get them to fix it." And, quite honestly, why would they at this point? They have millions of other customers they can ignore, that are still paying. Where are they going to complain? And how would other users in the same boat find such complaints? It's certainly not right, but there's no strong incentive for Google to change how they're doing business right now.

zaarn 8y ago

You can get them to fix it in 1 simple step: 1. Stir up enough shit on social media that some higher up at Google basically does ''sudo fix-problem <customer>''. Of course, then google apologizes and promises to fix things for everyone else but they don't.

droidist2 8y ago

>If their system decides it doesn't like you, then you're out of luck. You'll never get them to fix it. Exactly right. The only way to get them to even look at it is to have a friend who works at Google or have tons of Twitter followers and pressure them by tweeting the story.