5 ms·

This is the part that's going to bite them when antitrust comes around. They are largely unaccountable and there's no real way to get a hold of a human being u

by ok_coo 7y ago

This is the part that's going to bite them when antitrust comes around. They are largely unaccountable and there's no real way to get a hold of a human being unless you shame them on social media and it gets enough traction.

gtirloni 7y ago
If you're a paying customer, you definitely can get a human being to look at your problem. The difficulty in this case is the people operating SMTP servers are not paying customers, the free Gmail users are not paying customers and the GSuite paying customers don't think it's their problem (after all, the spam filters works quite well these days and lots of people are on Gmail, making the problem very small in the receiving end of this situation). It seems an external force will have to push Google in the right direction (of having systems in place to deal with the exceptions). If that's going to be public outcry, legislation, etc... We will see. On the automation front, it seems Gmail could do a better job at tracking sender reputation over time (i.e. you haven't send spam in a while, we'll be more lenient with our spam rules).
- luckylion 7y ago
  > If you're a paying customer, you definitely can get a human being to look at your problem. Doubt. We're paying ~$10k/month on ads. The Ads API is rate limited, but it's either broken or has arcane logic, so about every 4-6 weeks, the usual workload will trigger it and we're shut out for 12-24 hours. Can talk to ad support whenever I want, but all they are good for is optimizing campaigns and explaining the UI. No option to get to technical support, no option for ads support to escalate. Of course, we might not be a large enough customer, but it certainly isn't about "paying".
  - gtirloni 7y ago
    Here's the form to make a complaint about customer support: https://support.google.com/google-ads/contact/aw_complaint https://support.google.com/google-ads/contact/aw_complaint
    - luckylion 7y ago
      Thank you, but I and pretty much everybody at the company has given up months ago. We've tried everything we could (well, I guess we should've tried to go viral on HN or twitter...) and it got ignored again and again. It has become a bit of a rite of passage when somebody new arrives, they see the error ticket for the first time and are eager to dig into it and solve a long standing problem. It's like a trust fall, only the lesson is not to trust, and you learn that lesson by falling.
- marcinzm 7y ago
  >If you're a paying customer, you definitely can get a human being to look at your problem. Based on the number of hacker news posts from people who pay them money and are locked out of their accounts by automated systems with no recourse I'd say that's utterly false. Maybe you meant to say "if you pay them enough money" which is true. But most people don't have that much money to pay them.
  - gtirloni 7y ago
    I'm not saying Google's support is stellar but there's a lot of misinformation going around. It's become a meme to say you can't reach a human at Google, they will shutdown new apps after an year, etc. Have you had direct experience with Google support? My experience has been pretty regular but maybe I'm an outlier.
  - rukuu001 7y ago
    Recently we recovered a GSuite account that was still in the trial period! We hadn't even entered billing info :) The process took a while (about a week) but we did get the account back. Things have changed a little bit since Google just presented a wall for support requests to bounce off.
- mostlysimilar 7y ago
  > If you're a paying customer, you definitely can get a human being to look at your problem. I may not be giving them money directly, but my use of their products contributes to their billions in ad revenue. Without us free users providing eyeballs for their ad network they would be significantly less rich. It's upsetting that the default response to complaints about Google's terrible customer service is "if you don't pay them you aren't a customer." Most of their value comes from us, it most certainly isn't a one-way relationship.

by ok_coo 7y ago

gtirloni 7y ago

If you're a paying customer, you definitely can get a human being to look at your problem. The difficulty in this case is the people operating SMTP servers are not paying customers, the free Gmail users are not paying customers and the GSuite paying customers don't think it's their problem (after all, the spam filters works quite well these days and lots of people are on Gmail, making the problem very small in the receiving end of this situation). It seems an external force will have to push Google in the right direction (of having systems in place to deal with the exceptions). If that's going to be public outcry, legislation, etc... We will see. On the automation front, it seems Gmail could do a better job at tracking sender reputation over time (i.e. you haven't send spam in a while, we'll be more lenient with our spam rules).

luckylion 7y ago
> If you're a paying customer, you definitely can get a human being to look at your problem. Doubt. We're paying ~$10k/month on ads. The Ads API is rate limited, but it's either broken or has arcane logic, so about every 4-6 weeks, the usual workload will trigger it and we're shut out for 12-24 hours. Can talk to ad support whenever I want, but all they are good for is optimizing campaigns and explaining the UI. No option to get to technical support, no option for ads support to escalate. Of course, we might not be a large enough customer, but it certainly isn't about "paying".
- gtirloni 7y ago
  Here's the form to make a complaint about customer support: https://support.google.com/google-ads/contact/aw_complaint https://support.google.com/google-ads/contact/aw_complaint
  - luckylion 7y ago
    Thank you, but I and pretty much everybody at the company has given up months ago. We've tried everything we could (well, I guess we should've tried to go viral on HN or twitter...) and it got ignored again and again. It has become a bit of a rite of passage when somebody new arrives, they see the error ticket for the first time and are eager to dig into it and solve a long standing problem. It's like a trust fall, only the lesson is not to trust, and you learn that lesson by falling.
marcinzm 7y ago
>If you're a paying customer, you definitely can get a human being to look at your problem. Based on the number of hacker news posts from people who pay them money and are locked out of their accounts by automated systems with no recourse I'd say that's utterly false. Maybe you meant to say "if you pay them enough money" which is true. But most people don't have that much money to pay them.
- gtirloni 7y ago
  I'm not saying Google's support is stellar but there's a lot of misinformation going around. It's become a meme to say you can't reach a human at Google, they will shutdown new apps after an year, etc. Have you had direct experience with Google support? My experience has been pretty regular but maybe I'm an outlier.
- rukuu001 7y ago
  Recently we recovered a GSuite account that was still in the trial period! We hadn't even entered billing info :) The process took a while (about a week) but we did get the account back. Things have changed a little bit since Google just presented a wall for support requests to bounce off.
mostlysimilar 7y ago
> If you're a paying customer, you definitely can get a human being to look at your problem. I may not be giving them money directly, but my use of their products contributes to their billions in ad revenue. Without us free users providing eyeballs for their ad network they would be significantly less rich. It's upsetting that the default response to complaints about Google's terrible customer service is "if you don't pay them you aren't a customer." Most of their value comes from us, it most certainly isn't a one-way relationship.