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I had a Google Pixel phone. Less than a year old old. Treated with kid gloves. Always kept in a case. Pristine condition. An approved Google software update br
by justinlloyd 6y ago
I had a Google Pixel phone. Less than a year old old. Treated with kid gloves. Always kept in a case. Pristine condition.
An approved Google software update bricked it. This was, by all accounts, a known issue.
The phone was under warranty. I sent it back.
They shipped me a scratched up refurbished phone. It ran fine for a week then bricked itself due to the same software update. I sent that back.
They sent me another, even worse scratched up refurbished phone. That too bricked after a week due to the software update.
I've got $3,000 worth of hold charges on my CC whilst Google are playing footsie with my phones. I sent that phone back.
They "lost" it and claimed I sent back a different phone. Then that became that I sent back a phone with a different serial number. Then a different model of phone. I pressed for details but they could never tell me any details about the phone I had allegedly sent back.
They wanted me to pay for all the phones, then eventually just the one phone that was missing. Finally Google admitted "we lost the phone but that's your problem."
After a month I said "fine, you fix this shit or I am doing a charge back." They didn't fix it. I did a credit card charge back for the thousands of dollars currently on hold on my card.
Google decided to disable my Google payments account so I couldn't use the Playstore. Or buy groceries using Google Pay. Or process any subscription items attached to the Google payments account. Or access my store rewards cards stored in my Google Pay wallet.
Google still owed me for the cost of the original phone that was a brick that I no longer possessed after it was sent to Google.
I took Google to small claims, and won.
Google decided that wasn't to their liking and disabled the Google account attached to the phone.
Fuck Google.
P.S. Please stop up-voting. This is not a vote-worthy post. It is simply a "this is what happened." Save your attention for something that is worthy. Save your anger for things that matter.
- coder543 6y ago> Google decided that wasn't to their liking and disabled the Google account attached to the phone. Did you decide to go for Round 2 in small claims court and get the account un-disabled?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cnst 6y ago> Did you decide to go for Round 2 in small claims court and get the account un-disabled? Sadly, you cannot do it in Small Claims Court. SCC cannot provide injunctive relief -- you can only sue for monetary relief. To get an injunction to have the account unblocked, you'd have to sue Google in the big-boys Superior Court, and/or federal court, which may cost more and require having a proper lawyer.
- gowld 6y agoOr go through arbitration.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bilalq 6y agoThat's honestly unacceptable. Google deserves whatever anti-trust action comes their way. It's absolutely insane that they can lock you out of your phone, email, youtube, password manager, business, and everything you've ever used sign in with google for on the whims of some buggy algorithm.
- bleepblorp 6y agoStuff like this isn't the result of some faceless software algorithm that's only harming people because of 'bugs.' Consumer abuse isn't an emergent property of algorithms. They're designed, by people, to abuse consumers.
- syshum 6y agoI agree with everything except for the fact you are treating gmail, YT and other google services users as "consumers" remember if you do not pay for a service you are the product, and 90% of google services and algorithm's are deigned to control their product (aka the users) This is the root of the problem; to google and their devs you the user are not a person, are not a human, you are just raw ore for them to mine, refine, pack and resell to their consumer the advertisers
- efreak 6y agoI think you're confusing customers and consumers, which are related but different. Google users may not be their customers, but they are absolutely consumers.
- delfinom 6y agoThis is standard consumer abuse all companies practice, big and small.
- Karunamon 6y agoIsn't that last bit retaliation, and explicitly illegal on its own?
- bleepblorp 6y agoTake Google back to court. The judiciary will not be happy with Google seemingly taking a reprisal against you for wining against them in small claims court. It might be worth speaking to a lawyer to see if you can seek punitive damages.
- gravitas 6y ago> They shipped me a scratched up refurbished phone. This was me and my Nexus 5, like you I baby my phones and exercise care. An update bricked it, they sent me a scratched refurb with shaky buttons and a creaking case as a replacement. :-/
- LurkersWillLurk 6y agoI don't really know if you have a legal remedy under your state's "Unfair Trade Practices" law, but this might be one worth a complaint to your state attorney general's office or maybe a consultation with a consumer affairs attorney, if you have the money. I am pessimistic that this would go anywhere, though.
- washadjeffmad 6y agoThis is event for event what happened to me with a Pixel 3 XL, except I chickened out and ate the charge. I filed an FTC complaint and emailed my AG, though. Could you share your process and arguments? I'd really like to pursue it while I still can.
- Nextgrid 6y agoLitigation and actually hitting the scum in the wallet (the only thing they care about) is the proper and only way to discourage such behavior in the future. If every consumer wronged by a supplier did this we wouldn't be having this discussion at all because suppliers would never let such problems happen or escalate that far.