13 ms·

Aussie ISV buys ads to wake up Google support

288 points by vlasky 7y ago

jay_kyburz 7y ago
Gotta post on Hacker News if you want some Google support!
- LilBytes 7y ago
  Maybe OP is Google Support and he's found this is the best 'internal' escalation point for the forms he's seen come in and not been actioned. ;-)
  - Applethief 7y ago
    That's brilliant. I'm not even mad.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    Or OP is a Google shareholder and wants you to buy ads to solve all of your Googly problems.
    - jackvalentine 7y ago
      It's not a great idea, but it's also not the worst idea - an adwords like bid system for google to respond to your support ticket.
  - Crosseye_Jack 7y ago
    That made me wonder if internal communication is just as bad and this went through my head. Google Boss: Hey employee 254199, I’m pleased to tell you that your request for maternally leave has been granted. Google Employee 254199: Gee thanks, but little Tommy is now 2 fucking years old....
- davidgerard 7y ago
  As you can see above, Google aren't that easily fooled! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20712209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20712209 At least AWS are actually quite good at providing support to paying customers, such as raising API limits ...
funkidredd 7y ago
Wow!! My company made HackerNews! Yeah, what an arseache it's been - and just checked and nothing has been actioned still despite the negative coverage. Google truly don't give a shit I'm afraid.
- schappim 7y ago
  Great work! Out of interest why does an Aussie company charge in GBP?
  - funkidredd 7y ago
    We're a GDPR solution smooshed in with the questionnaire builder mate. Primarily aimed at the UK market, but with the California GDPR equivalent kicking off Jan 1st..
  - ShinTakuya 7y ago
    Possibly their main target market or could be a British company that was acquired.
- jackyinger 7y ago
  It’s a clever strategy, and I think anyone who’s touched a computer in the last decade sympathizes. It’s terribly maddening how impervious these tech megaliths are as individuals or small business. What’s funny is that interactions between large tech companies can be very fluid in my experience. I guess there’s not a big power discontinuity in the big to big case...
- Hitton 7y ago
  They are probably salty that you used LinkedIn ads instead of their own.
  - funkidredd 7y ago
    Had to use their adwords API before too. Can confirm: Made us jump through hoops on automated systems there too. Their contempt towards developers is breathtaking. I'd be happy to pay for support but duck that if I can't get a simple API rate increase PLUS a load of negative press can't even budge them into this simple action.
repairisntcheap 7y ago
I decided to escalate support with a major multi billion dollar tech company in a unique way... I took a one-way plane ticket to the city of their HQ, went to the front desk, then when I was rebuffed, i escalated my issues to a major news outlet. .. I also considered Facebook live right in front of their headquarters on public property, but fortunately didn't need to... I was very polite about everything... Never demanding or angry- always expressing gratitude for the incredible opportunity I had with this company! Amazingly, my unorthodox escalation procedure worked-- I wasn't sure if it would. My point in writing this is to say- great job thinking outside the box! Even if you can't fly to Google HQ, continue to think outside the box. Some ideas include Hire someone at taskrabbit or Craigslist, or a FB jobs page, to go to their front desk, or if unsuccessful, to hold a sign on public property in front of Google's HQ, you can get a banner or sign professionally made (online process are pretty reasonably priced). You could Skype with your stand-in. It would be really fun to get a Skype video call on a big iPad... or try something else. Everybody thought I was crazy. I was. Crazy people get noticed, and often get results. Whatever the outcome, being able to tell an awesome story is always fun! Good luck, mate!
- ehnto 7y ago
  I had a PM who's support strategy was to complain directly to the company's twitter handle. Apparently the people who run the social media accounts sit higher in the org chart than support staff because it almost always got us a faster response.
  - bmiller2 7y ago
    100% yes. Works with almost everything. Trash guys missed your bin? Blow em up on Twitter. Cable company shrinking your bandwidth? Blow em up. Instant results
  - repairisntcheap 7y ago
    Nice... I think this is often good a good strategy, but super big companies like Google have a lot of noise on Twitter. Opening up your own, unique, support channel, like this company has done can sometimes be more successful because everyone loves a great story.
Animats 7y ago
If you want to put stuff on your own sites, what do you need Google Tag Manager for? That's a thing for injecting semi-hostile code into other sites.
- andybak 7y ago
  Because "your own site" might mean "email your freelance dev and wait 3 days", "open a ticket with IT and wait a week" or "remind oneself how that js deploy is meant to work even though working in js isn't my day job". Not everyone is allowed, wants or is comfortable with direct access to their website code.
TekMol 7y ago
As far as I know, Google Tag Manger is a tool to inject scripts into websites via an interface. So you add the Tag Manager script to your page and then you can tell Tag Manager via Google's interface to load additional scripts. Why does anybody need Google's solution here so badly? It sounds pretty easy to develop such a thing.
- hgibbs 7y ago
  Not all companies can afford in-house solutions.
  - TekMol 7y ago
    I meant not only "easy to develop" for the user but also "easy to develop" for competitors to offer an alternative to Google's Tag Manager.
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  I'll tell you why, because I often wonder why projects that claim to replace Google Analytics regularly make the top of HN front page. Google Analytics isn't about logging in when someone is on your website. It's about how it connects that data point to Google's huge dataset about everyone. Google Analytics tells you what kind of people are visiting your site (aka, segments): age, location, etc. Also, more often than not, these tools aren't as capable as GA to design and watch conversion tunnels and behaviours. And then there's the whole binding with Google Ads. Replacing GA with only an Apache or php/node URL logger is missing the whole point of GA.
  - TekMol 7y ago
    The article is about Tag Manager, not about Analytics.
    - johnchristopher 7y ago
      The tag manager is only a cog in the Analytics stack.
Animats 7y ago
Back when there were telegrams, I once sent a telegram to Kentucky Fried Chicken corporate HQ to complain about a franchisee that was leaving unsold food under the heat lamps for so long it tasted awful. KFC happened to be one of the few nearby eateries open late. Cost about $20 to send a telegram, which was delivered by a Western Union messenger. I was contacted by KFC corporate HQ and given lots of coupons. Then I was contacted by regional HQ and given more coupons. Then by the franchisee. More coupons and an apology. The food quality improved markedly. For a while.
- nineteen999 7y ago
  > The food quality improved markedly. For a while. Until you ran out of coupons?
  - dvdbloc 7y ago
    Free food always tastes better, right?
    - mayankkaizen 7y ago
      Not necessarily. Not always.
- ssully 7y ago
  Out of curiosity, do you remember why you didn't just call or send a letter? I have zero familiarity with what it was like to send a telegram, but I imagine even 40 years ago it would be more difficult to send a telegram then a letter or phone call.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    40 years ago telegrams were as obsolete for most communication as they are today, sending them was (as it is now [0]) largely a way of saying “this message is important enough for me to pay an exorbitant fee to have physical media remotely produced and hand delivered”. [0] you can still send telegrams: https://www.itelegram.com/ https://www.itelegram.com/
stephenr 7y ago
So, the TLDR is: the skeezy tracking shit Google provide other companies to use, so they can get in on the skeezy tracking shenanigans is fucked and hamstrings their ability to be skeezy. Good. Fuck Google, but fuck you too for using this shit.
ec109685 7y ago
Google stinks at customer service. Compare this to Slack, which answers everyone of their customer's /feedback's.
throwamay1241 7y ago
I helped my mother reformat her computer remotely. We successfully ported her mail client but managed to lose her gmail password - meaning we had enough access to send/receive emails but not create new sessions. The account was created some time in 2006. A week prior to the reformat she had changed jobs, and lost the mobile phone number associated with her account. The second factor email was associated with my account, I could see reset codes come through which were relayed to her but would result in an 'oops, something went wrong'. My guess is a bug due to account age / whatever. I figured we had enough evidence to obtain a password reset, so I googled for gmail support contact details. There are none. I then tried repeatedly to contact Google via twitter, all my tweets were ignored - probably because I only have like 20 followers. In the end, my mother ended up porting her old mobile number to a prepaid sim, as $previouscompany had disconnected the number entirely, and used that as the second factor to reset the account. Pretty damn frustrating that Google doesn't have any unpaid inbound support _AT ALL_. Next time I'll consider paying a twitter influencer to impersonate me (or my mother), or paying for adspace, or using a mail service that exposes at least some form of support.
- heavenlyblue 7y ago
  >> Next time I'll consider paying a twitter influencer to impersonate me That seems like a great idea in general :)
- exDM69 7y ago
  > Pretty damn frustrating that Google doesn't have any unpaid inbound support _AT ALL_. Frustrating? Yes. Surprising? No. Afaik, there isn't even any paid support for individual customers unless you have some sort of business account. I find this a bit unreasonable, but I wouldn't expect any free service that involves a paid employee from any service I don't pay for (with money, not privacy). They can't be making many dollars per year per user. A single support call answered by a human would take years' worth of income from said user. I'm amazed at how many people do not realize this, and still rely on these "free" services even for their jobs. To give an example: recently, a popular blogger lost their Instagram account and it was sold to a 3rd party (because they had lots of followers, I suppose). Blogging is their day job and Instagram is a major source of readers for them, so they depend on it for their living. The account was probably stolen by using a reused password from some password dump and they didn't have 2FA enabled. In the end, the blogger got back their account because they were a part of a traditional media publishing organization which had a business account with Facebook, Inc and were able to escalate it that way. Had they not had this account, it would have been lost. There are lots and lots of professions where social media presence is required to bring in the customers (e.g. woodworkers these days depend on Instagram!) or even monetization from their account directly. If you depend on Google, Facebook, Youtube, etc to earn a living, you should consider a business account or at least do your best to secure the account (2FA, no password reuse, etc).
marsRoverDev 7y ago
I feel lucky to personally know Google employees. The times when I've had an issue and gone via the public channels there has been radio silence. Directly report it via a google employee and it generally gets dealt with. It should not be this way.
- funkidredd 7y ago
  Mate, if you could possibly help me with this, is give a decent chunk to a charity of your choice.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- lucb1e 7y ago
  Knew a google employee as well but they never managed to get anything arranged outside their own department. These days I avoid putting myself in a position where I need Google support.
marcus_holmes 7y ago
I dismantled a business a couple of years ago. I let the domain lapse, dismantled everything. Forgot to cancel Google Apps. I noticed the charge still coming out of my bank account a while later, and tried to get it canceled. Couldn't log in, wasn't given the option to use the backup account, couldn't receive an email. Contacted google support. A few emails later they accept that I'm the person who is paying the bill, but refuse to cancel the account. Their last support message is "you'll have to dispute the charge with your bank". On to bank support, who don't have a category for "service is being provided but refusing to cancel" sigh Needless to say, never using a Google service again.
- Brian_K_White 7y ago
  At the point you inform the service provider you no longer want the service, the next time they charge your account is simple fraud or theft, and that is something your bank better damned well act on. Just say it like that. "X is stealing from this account. This is a fraudulent transaction." That frames it in a way they understand and they have a box for that. It's also just like a former employee using passwords they are no longer authorized to use. It doesn't matter that they once had that access legitimately.
- checktheorder 7y ago
  >Needless to say, never using a Google service again. The only Google services I bother with are search, maps, youtube (in a non-logged-in viewing-only capacity, not a posting-my-own-videos capacity) and the android play store (paying for apps via gift cards). I don't trust google not to cancel new services on a metaphorical moment's notice, and I don't have any faith in reaching a human being if I have a billing problem. So I make sure not to tie my life in any way to my Google account. It feels strange to say, as an old school Linux fanboy who vividly remembers the Halloween document release, but I tend to point "I want to move my business to the cloud" friends/acquaintances to Office 365 instead. Say what one will about Microsoft's scummy behaviour over the years, but no-one can claim they aren't into Office 365 for the long haul. And while it's not exactly easy to get a human being at Microsoft to fix a problem, it's certainly easier than Google.
funkidredd 7y ago
UPDATE THING FIXED! Media release and some of you here helped bigly yuge with the getting of Google to sort out. Thanks to you all. Bows
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

288 points by vlasky 7y ago

jay_kyburz 7y ago

Gotta post on Hacker News if you want some Google support!

LilBytes 7y ago
Maybe OP is Google Support and he's found this is the best 'internal' escalation point for the forms he's seen come in and not been actioned. ;-)
- Applethief 7y ago
  That's brilliant. I'm not even mad.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  Or OP is a Google shareholder and wants you to buy ads to solve all of your Googly problems.
  - jackvalentine 7y ago
    It's not a great idea, but it's also not the worst idea - an adwords like bid system for google to respond to your support ticket.
- Crosseye_Jack 7y ago
  That made me wonder if internal communication is just as bad and this went through my head. Google Boss: Hey employee 254199, I’m pleased to tell you that your request for maternally leave has been granted. Google Employee 254199: Gee thanks, but little Tommy is now 2 fucking years old....
davidgerard 7y ago
As you can see above, Google aren't that easily fooled! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20712209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20712209 At least AWS are actually quite good at providing support to paying customers, such as raising API limits ...

funkidredd 7y ago

Wow!! My company made HackerNews! Yeah, what an arseache it's been - and just checked and nothing has been actioned still despite the negative coverage. Google truly don't give a shit I'm afraid.

schappim 7y ago
Great work! Out of interest why does an Aussie company charge in GBP?
- funkidredd 7y ago
  We're a GDPR solution smooshed in with the questionnaire builder mate. Primarily aimed at the UK market, but with the California GDPR equivalent kicking off Jan 1st..
- ShinTakuya 7y ago
  Possibly their main target market or could be a British company that was acquired.
jackyinger 7y ago
It’s a clever strategy, and I think anyone who’s touched a computer in the last decade sympathizes. It’s terribly maddening how impervious these tech megaliths are as individuals or small business. What’s funny is that interactions between large tech companies can be very fluid in my experience. I guess there’s not a big power discontinuity in the big to big case...
Hitton 7y ago
They are probably salty that you used LinkedIn ads instead of their own.
- funkidredd 7y ago
  Had to use their adwords API before too. Can confirm: Made us jump through hoops on automated systems there too. Their contempt towards developers is breathtaking. I'd be happy to pay for support but duck that if I can't get a simple API rate increase PLUS a load of negative press can't even budge them into this simple action.

repairisntcheap 7y ago

I decided to escalate support with a major multi billion dollar tech company in a unique way... I took a one-way plane ticket to the city of their HQ, went to the front desk, then when I was rebuffed, i escalated my issues to a major news outlet. .. I also considered Facebook live right in front of their headquarters on public property, but fortunately didn't need to... I was very polite about everything... Never demanding or angry- always expressing gratitude for the incredible opportunity I had with this company! Amazingly, my unorthodox escalation procedure worked-- I wasn't sure if it would. My point in writing this is to say- great job thinking outside the box! Even if you can't fly to Google HQ, continue to think outside the box. Some ideas include Hire someone at taskrabbit or Craigslist, or a FB jobs page, to go to their front desk, or if unsuccessful, to hold a sign on public property in front of Google's HQ, you can get a banner or sign professionally made (online process are pretty reasonably priced). You could Skype with your stand-in. It would be really fun to get a Skype video call on a big iPad... or try something else. Everybody thought I was crazy. I was. Crazy people get noticed, and often get results. Whatever the outcome, being able to tell an awesome story is always fun! Good luck, mate!

ehnto 7y ago
I had a PM who's support strategy was to complain directly to the company's twitter handle. Apparently the people who run the social media accounts sit higher in the org chart than support staff because it almost always got us a faster response.
- bmiller2 7y ago
  100% yes. Works with almost everything. Trash guys missed your bin? Blow em up on Twitter. Cable company shrinking your bandwidth? Blow em up. Instant results
- repairisntcheap 7y ago
  Nice... I think this is often good a good strategy, but super big companies like Google have a lot of noise on Twitter. Opening up your own, unique, support channel, like this company has done can sometimes be more successful because everyone loves a great story.

Animats 7y ago

If you want to put stuff on your own sites, what do you need Google Tag Manager for? That's a thing for injecting semi-hostile code into other sites.

andybak 7y ago
Because "your own site" might mean "email your freelance dev and wait 3 days", "open a ticket with IT and wait a week" or "remind oneself how that js deploy is meant to work even though working in js isn't my day job". Not everyone is allowed, wants or is comfortable with direct access to their website code.

TekMol 7y ago

As far as I know, Google Tag Manger is a tool to inject scripts into websites via an interface. So you add the Tag Manager script to your page and then you can tell Tag Manager via Google's interface to load additional scripts. Why does anybody need Google's solution here so badly? It sounds pretty easy to develop such a thing.

hgibbs 7y ago
Not all companies can afford in-house solutions.
- TekMol 7y ago
  I meant not only "easy to develop" for the user but also "easy to develop" for competitors to offer an alternative to Google's Tag Manager.
johnchristopher 7y ago
I'll tell you why, because I often wonder why projects that claim to replace Google Analytics regularly make the top of HN front page. Google Analytics isn't about logging in when someone is on your website. It's about how it connects that data point to Google's huge dataset about everyone. Google Analytics tells you what kind of people are visiting your site (aka, segments): age, location, etc. Also, more often than not, these tools aren't as capable as GA to design and watch conversion tunnels and behaviours. And then there's the whole binding with Google Ads. Replacing GA with only an Apache or php/node URL logger is missing the whole point of GA.
- TekMol 7y ago
  The article is about Tag Manager, not about Analytics.
  - johnchristopher 7y ago
    The tag manager is only a cog in the Analytics stack.

Animats 7y ago

Back when there were telegrams, I once sent a telegram to Kentucky Fried Chicken corporate HQ to complain about a franchisee that was leaving unsold food under the heat lamps for so long it tasted awful. KFC happened to be one of the few nearby eateries open late. Cost about $20 to send a telegram, which was delivered by a Western Union messenger. I was contacted by KFC corporate HQ and given lots of coupons. Then I was contacted by regional HQ and given more coupons. Then by the franchisee. More coupons and an apology. The food quality improved markedly. For a while.

nineteen999 7y ago
> The food quality improved markedly. For a while. Until you ran out of coupons?
- dvdbloc 7y ago
  Free food always tastes better, right?
  - mayankkaizen 7y ago
    Not necessarily. Not always.
ssully 7y ago
Out of curiosity, do you remember why you didn't just call or send a letter? I have zero familiarity with what it was like to send a telegram, but I imagine even 40 years ago it would be more difficult to send a telegram then a letter or phone call.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  40 years ago telegrams were as obsolete for most communication as they are today, sending them was (as it is now [0]) largely a way of saying “this message is important enough for me to pay an exorbitant fee to have physical media remotely produced and hand delivered”. [0] you can still send telegrams: https://www.itelegram.com/ https://www.itelegram.com/

stephenr 7y ago

So, the TLDR is: the skeezy tracking shit Google provide other companies to use, so they can get in on the skeezy tracking shenanigans is fucked and hamstrings their ability to be skeezy. Good. Fuck Google, but fuck you too for using this shit.

ec109685 7y ago

Google stinks at customer service. Compare this to Slack, which answers everyone of their customer's /feedback's.

throwamay1241 7y ago

I helped my mother reformat her computer remotely. We successfully ported her mail client but managed to lose her gmail password - meaning we had enough access to send/receive emails but not create new sessions. The account was created some time in 2006. A week prior to the reformat she had changed jobs, and lost the mobile phone number associated with her account. The second factor email was associated with my account, I could see reset codes come through which were relayed to her but would result in an 'oops, something went wrong'. My guess is a bug due to account age / whatever. I figured we had enough evidence to obtain a password reset, so I googled for gmail support contact details. There are none. I then tried repeatedly to contact Google via twitter, all my tweets were ignored - probably because I only have like 20 followers. In the end, my mother ended up porting her old mobile number to a prepaid sim, as $previouscompany had disconnected the number entirely, and used that as the second factor to reset the account. Pretty damn frustrating that Google doesn't have any unpaid inbound support _AT ALL_. Next time I'll consider paying a twitter influencer to impersonate me (or my mother), or paying for adspace, or using a mail service that exposes at least some form of support.

heavenlyblue 7y ago
>> Next time I'll consider paying a twitter influencer to impersonate me That seems like a great idea in general :)
exDM69 7y ago
> Pretty damn frustrating that Google doesn't have any unpaid inbound support _AT ALL_. Frustrating? Yes. Surprising? No. Afaik, there isn't even any paid support for individual customers unless you have some sort of business account. I find this a bit unreasonable, but I wouldn't expect any free service that involves a paid employee from any service I don't pay for (with money, not privacy). They can't be making many dollars per year per user. A single support call answered by a human would take years' worth of income from said user. I'm amazed at how many people do not realize this, and still rely on these "free" services even for their jobs. To give an example: recently, a popular blogger lost their Instagram account and it was sold to a 3rd party (because they had lots of followers, I suppose). Blogging is their day job and Instagram is a major source of readers for them, so they depend on it for their living. The account was probably stolen by using a reused password from some password dump and they didn't have 2FA enabled. In the end, the blogger got back their account because they were a part of a traditional media publishing organization which had a business account with Facebook, Inc and were able to escalate it that way. Had they not had this account, it would have been lost. There are lots and lots of professions where social media presence is required to bring in the customers (e.g. woodworkers these days depend on Instagram!) or even monetization from their account directly. If you depend on Google, Facebook, Youtube, etc to earn a living, you should consider a business account or at least do your best to secure the account (2FA, no password reuse, etc).

marsRoverDev 7y ago

I feel lucky to personally know Google employees. The times when I've had an issue and gone via the public channels there has been radio silence. Directly report it via a google employee and it generally gets dealt with. It should not be this way.

funkidredd 7y ago
Mate, if you could possibly help me with this, is give a decent chunk to a charity of your choice.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
lucb1e 7y ago
Knew a google employee as well but they never managed to get anything arranged outside their own department. These days I avoid putting myself in a position where I need Google support.

marcus_holmes 7y ago

I dismantled a business a couple of years ago. I let the domain lapse, dismantled everything. Forgot to cancel Google Apps. I noticed the charge still coming out of my bank account a while later, and tried to get it canceled. Couldn't log in, wasn't given the option to use the backup account, couldn't receive an email. Contacted google support. A few emails later they accept that I'm the person who is paying the bill, but refuse to cancel the account. Their last support message is "you'll have to dispute the charge with your bank". On to bank support, who don't have a category for "service is being provided but refusing to cancel" sigh Needless to say, never using a Google service again.

Brian_K_White 7y ago
At the point you inform the service provider you no longer want the service, the next time they charge your account is simple fraud or theft, and that is something your bank better damned well act on. Just say it like that. "X is stealing from this account. This is a fraudulent transaction." That frames it in a way they understand and they have a box for that. It's also just like a former employee using passwords they are no longer authorized to use. It doesn't matter that they once had that access legitimately.
checktheorder 7y ago
>Needless to say, never using a Google service again. The only Google services I bother with are search, maps, youtube (in a non-logged-in viewing-only capacity, not a posting-my-own-videos capacity) and the android play store (paying for apps via gift cards). I don't trust google not to cancel new services on a metaphorical moment's notice, and I don't have any faith in reaching a human being if I have a billing problem. So I make sure not to tie my life in any way to my Google account. It feels strange to say, as an old school Linux fanboy who vividly remembers the Halloween document release, but I tend to point "I want to move my business to the cloud" friends/acquaintances to Office 365 instead. Say what one will about Microsoft's scummy behaviour over the years, but no-one can claim they aren't into Office 365 for the long haul. And while it's not exactly easy to get a human being at Microsoft to fix a problem, it's certainly easier than Google.

funkidredd 7y ago

UPDATE THING FIXED! Media release and some of you here helped bigly yuge with the getting of Google to sort out. Thanks to you all. Bows

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]