6 ms·

Google needs a fucking customer support line already. Make it a 900 number if they need to and charge $20 per call, but for the love of cheese the number of tim

Google needs a fucking customer support line already. Make it a 900 number if they need to and charge $20 per call, but for the love of cheese the number of times something goes horribly wrong and there is little to no recourse is silly. They refuse to let people pay for their services and thus establish a billing verification channel but they're asking users to put tons of important information into them with no recourse if something does happen.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- ulf 15y ago
  The service is not free, you just don't pay with money.
  - Herald_MJ 15y ago
    Even more reason to offer a support line then?
- cemerick 15y ago
  Google accounts aren't just yet-another-email-address anymore. While I like to think of my gmail account as a throwaway (I still only use it for testing email delivery from my proper email accounts), my entire Android "profile" is linked through it. If I fat-finger some signup form somewhere, or my stupid cousin decides to play a prank on me with my signed-in Google account, or something else bad happens unrelated to this "underage"/COPPA policy, I have no recourse to recover from a lockout? That's stupid, and impacts something very important to me. While Google may or may not get any money from my use of Android, they are (by their own hand) accountable for my experience there, which includes not ever being irrevocably locked out of the "cloud" resources that the phone depends upon.
  - rdtsc 15y ago
    So how much are you paying for your gmail account? Probably $0. Guess how much time should Google wants to spend providing you with tech support? Probably 0 (unless you manage to create negative PR then not supporting you might cost them some bad karma so then it is cheaper to just have someone call you and fix your issue). Expecting to get something for nothing is unrealistic. To Google you are just one of hundreds of millions of users whose surfing habits and email account usage they indirectly sell to their real paying customers. If you wants technical service you have to pay for it.
    - nkassis 15y ago
      Well they could just charge for premium accounts, I for one would pay 20 bucks a month for a Google sub with support. Google Apps isn't exactly affordable to the average person and I bet the support options are pretty horrible.
    - gnosis 15y ago
      You are paying them, indirectly. You are giving them information about yourself and your interests, which is valuable to them. Google would provide good customer support if they cared about maintaining goodwill with the public. And, looking at some other replies here, it seems they do try (to some extent). They're not stupid. But articles and threads like these are a PR disaster, and they will hurt their bottom line in the long run. They do not want people switching to another search engine or telling their friends to boycott Google or Google's advertisers.
    - cemerick 15y ago
      Right, I pay $0 for gmail itself, but I pay a lot of money for my Android phone and the service that goes along with it. If they don't get a slice of that, that's their fault, not mine. In any case, if that phone gets bricked, or requires being reset and associated with a "blank" google profile because of an erroneous and irreversible lockout on my current profile/account, the blame will squarely rest with Google. They're the 2nd most visible counterparty to my smartphone usage, and numero uno when it comes to data services.
    - 15y ago
rickdale 15y ago
I couldn't agree with you more. My family owned an autoparts business in the worst part of the country, where we had multiple robberies and shootings resulting in fatalities. When we were building the online business, Googles automatic listings had my mothers home address listed as the business address. This was very dangerous for my mom and not very comforting. It took them over 2 weeks to change the information (I know the process has changed for business listings). At the time though I felt thoroughly helpless. I called some sort of google help number then and they basically told me they couldn't help.
troels 15y ago
Google actually provides a paid service, google apps. I wonder - If the father set up an account on his own domain with google apps and gave his son an account, would the TOS still apply? I'm guessing not. And in any case, there would probably be a way to retrieve the data after having the account locked.
- spindritf 15y ago
  Google Profiles (and so Google+) is not available for Google Apps accounts anyway. It's actually one of the few Google products/services still not available https://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=181865 https://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...
  - dbingham 15y ago
    Any idea if and when Google Profiles will be available for Google Apps? Anyone?
  - troels 15y ago
    True, but he still wouldn't have compromised his email account. That was the main problem here.
jdietrich 15y ago
You are not Google's customer. You are their product. Google make their money by selling your data and your attention to advertisers. Charging you money and treating you like a customer creates a conflict of interest that they really don't want to deal with. Google's strategy of "scalable customer service" is no accident.
- dlikhten 15y ago
  And THERE is your answer. They cannot sell info for a <13yo. So therefore they demand you be 13. To them its a liability. My 4.y.o. uses the web constantly and is becoming quite proficient at it. I would be pissed if they disabled her account too.
- code_duck 15y ago
  This is a commonly heard statement, but it doesn't actually make sense. Like any company which sells advertising, there are two levels of product: the products they charge money for (e.g. ads and customer info), and the products which attract people who enable the former - gmail, search, etc. If they do a bad job at creating and servicing products which draw people to the site, people will not go there and Google will not make money. So, is gmail 'not a product'? No, that's absurd.
  - michaelpinto 15y ago
    Not true if you think about — look at any other traditional company that lives off of advertising like a TV network or even a newspaper: At the end of the day they don't really have the same sort of customer service that you might see at a restaurant where you can send it back. And in some of the worst cases there's even a distain for the viewers. The opposite of this might be an Apple where you pay for a product and get A+ customer service.
    - code_duck 15y ago
      Lack of customer service is not related to whether something is a 'product', or 'you are the product'. It's simply a lack of customer service.
cschmidt 15y ago
That's exactly why I use Fastmail.fm rather than Gmail. I pay them some small amount of money each year, and in exchange they provide actual customer support. Nothing ever has gone wrong, but they're there if I need them. Incidentally, their TOS says: This Service is provided to individuals who are at least 18 years old or minors who have parental permission to open and maintain an account. Which seems much more reasonable.
- jc123 15y ago
  This Service is provided to individuals who are at least 18 years old or minors who have parental permission to open and maintain an account. Great clause you found. Hope they honor that one, and change/remove other contradictory clauses. (edit: fix italics)
  - cschmidt 15y ago
    Just to be clear, when I said "their" I meant Fastmail.fm, not Gmail.
bane 15y ago
We use GAE as a paying customer. There is absolutely no solid line of communication with anybody on the team when something blows up. "Use the forum". Yes Google, that's a sound idea, why don't I post a bunch of a business proprietary information on your user forum...brilliant. A little over a week ago we had a user post a Wormwall to Reddit and it had something like 130 thousand requests in a couple of hours. Because Google (unbeknownst to us) caps GAE accounts to 12 instances, we ended up scaling to precisely 12 instances, then crapping out. A full 60% of requests to our site were not even served. I know, I'll get on the GAE site and look up some kind of professional support number, or email address or something. Nothing. A few hours of banging around (all while our site was literally catching fire) and I finally found a form where I can request an increase in instances. 9 days later? Nothing. No response. No increase in instance cap. No communications whatsoever. A complete and total black hole. It's so absurd it's ridiculous.
- guelo 15y ago
  Just being pedantic here but your site was not literally catching fire.
  - guelo 15y ago
    The reason using 'literally' in this way is so annoying is that 'literally' is used to indicate 'as amazing as the following sounds it actually happened, it is not a figure of speech', so when people go ahead and try to use it as a figure of speech they are lying to the reader and showing their ignorance of the word.
  - bane 15y ago
    No...really...there were flames...and smoke...and everything.
- code_duck 15y ago
  So... why are you using AppEngine instead of another service?
  - bane 15y ago
gaetanomarano 15y ago
[ goopl.us ] millions people will cry due to Google -- --

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

ulf 15y ago
The service is not free, you just don't pay with money.
- Herald_MJ 15y ago
  Even more reason to offer a support line then?
cemerick 15y ago
Google accounts aren't just yet-another-email-address anymore. While I like to think of my gmail account as a throwaway (I still only use it for testing email delivery from my proper email accounts), my entire Android "profile" is linked through it. If I fat-finger some signup form somewhere, or my stupid cousin decides to play a prank on me with my signed-in Google account, or something else bad happens unrelated to this "underage"/COPPA policy, I have no recourse to recover from a lockout? That's stupid, and impacts something very important to me. While Google may or may not get any money from my use of Android, they are (by their own hand) accountable for my experience there, which includes not ever being irrevocably locked out of the "cloud" resources that the phone depends upon.
- rdtsc 15y ago
  So how much are you paying for your gmail account? Probably $0. Guess how much time should Google wants to spend providing you with tech support? Probably 0 (unless you manage to create negative PR then not supporting you might cost them some bad karma so then it is cheaper to just have someone call you and fix your issue). Expecting to get something for nothing is unrealistic. To Google you are just one of hundreds of millions of users whose surfing habits and email account usage they indirectly sell to their real paying customers. If you wants technical service you have to pay for it.
  - nkassis 15y ago
    Well they could just charge for premium accounts, I for one would pay 20 bucks a month for a Google sub with support. Google Apps isn't exactly affordable to the average person and I bet the support options are pretty horrible.
  - gnosis 15y ago
    You are paying them, indirectly. You are giving them information about yourself and your interests, which is valuable to them. Google would provide good customer support if they cared about maintaining goodwill with the public. And, looking at some other replies here, it seems they do try (to some extent). They're not stupid. But articles and threads like these are a PR disaster, and they will hurt their bottom line in the long run. They do not want people switching to another search engine or telling their friends to boycott Google or Google's advertisers.
  - cemerick 15y ago
    Right, I pay $0 for gmail itself, but I pay a lot of money for my Android phone and the service that goes along with it. If they don't get a slice of that, that's their fault, not mine. In any case, if that phone gets bricked, or requires being reset and associated with a "blank" google profile because of an erroneous and irreversible lockout on my current profile/account, the blame will squarely rest with Google. They're the 2nd most visible counterparty to my smartphone usage, and numero uno when it comes to data services.
  - 15y ago

rickdale 15y ago

I couldn't agree with you more. My family owned an autoparts business in the worst part of the country, where we had multiple robberies and shootings resulting in fatalities. When we were building the online business, Googles automatic listings had my mothers home address listed as the business address. This was very dangerous for my mom and not very comforting. It took them over 2 weeks to change the information (I know the process has changed for business listings). At the time though I felt thoroughly helpless. I called some sort of google help number then and they basically told me they couldn't help.

troels 15y ago

Google actually provides a paid service, google apps. I wonder - If the father set up an account on his own domain with google apps and gave his son an account, would the TOS still apply? I'm guessing not. And in any case, there would probably be a way to retrieve the data after having the account locked.

spindritf 15y ago
Google Profiles (and so Google+) is not available for Google Apps accounts anyway. It's actually one of the few Google products/services still not available https://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=181865 https://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...
- dbingham 15y ago
  Any idea if and when Google Profiles will be available for Google Apps? Anyone?
- troels 15y ago
  True, but he still wouldn't have compromised his email account. That was the main problem here.

jdietrich 15y ago

You are not Google's customer. You are their product. Google make their money by selling your data and your attention to advertisers. Charging you money and treating you like a customer creates a conflict of interest that they really don't want to deal with. Google's strategy of "scalable customer service" is no accident.

dlikhten 15y ago
And THERE is your answer. They cannot sell info for a <13yo. So therefore they demand you be 13. To them its a liability. My 4.y.o. uses the web constantly and is becoming quite proficient at it. I would be pissed if they disabled her account too.
code_duck 15y ago
This is a commonly heard statement, but it doesn't actually make sense. Like any company which sells advertising, there are two levels of product: the products they charge money for (e.g. ads and customer info), and the products which attract people who enable the former - gmail, search, etc. If they do a bad job at creating and servicing products which draw people to the site, people will not go there and Google will not make money. So, is gmail 'not a product'? No, that's absurd.
- michaelpinto 15y ago
  Not true if you think about — look at any other traditional company that lives off of advertising like a TV network or even a newspaper: At the end of the day they don't really have the same sort of customer service that you might see at a restaurant where you can send it back. And in some of the worst cases there's even a distain for the viewers. The opposite of this might be an Apple where you pay for a product and get A+ customer service.
  - code_duck 15y ago
    Lack of customer service is not related to whether something is a 'product', or 'you are the product'. It's simply a lack of customer service.

cschmidt 15y ago

That's exactly why I use Fastmail.fm rather than Gmail. I pay them some small amount of money each year, and in exchange they provide actual customer support. Nothing ever has gone wrong, but they're there if I need them. Incidentally, their TOS says: This Service is provided to individuals who are at least 18 years old or minors who have parental permission to open and maintain an account. Which seems much more reasonable.

jc123 15y ago
This Service is provided to individuals who are at least 18 years old or minors who have parental permission to open and maintain an account. Great clause you found. Hope they honor that one, and change/remove other contradictory clauses. (edit: fix italics)
- cschmidt 15y ago
  Just to be clear, when I said "their" I meant Fastmail.fm, not Gmail.

bane 15y ago

We use GAE as a paying customer. There is absolutely no solid line of communication with anybody on the team when something blows up. "Use the forum". Yes Google, that's a sound idea, why don't I post a bunch of a business proprietary information on your user forum...brilliant. A little over a week ago we had a user post a Wormwall to Reddit and it had something like 130 thousand requests in a couple of hours. Because Google (unbeknownst to us) caps GAE accounts to 12 instances, we ended up scaling to precisely 12 instances, then crapping out. A full 60% of requests to our site were not even served. I know, I'll get on the GAE site and look up some kind of professional support number, or email address or something. Nothing. A few hours of banging around (all while our site was literally catching fire) and I finally found a form where I can request an increase in instances. 9 days later? Nothing. No response. No increase in instance cap. No communications whatsoever. A complete and total black hole. It's so absurd it's ridiculous.

guelo 15y ago
Just being pedantic here but your site was not literally catching fire.
- guelo 15y ago
  The reason using 'literally' in this way is so annoying is that 'literally' is used to indicate 'as amazing as the following sounds it actually happened, it is not a figure of speech', so when people go ahead and try to use it as a figure of speech they are lying to the reader and showing their ignorance of the word.
- bane 15y ago
  No...really...there were flames...and smoke...and everything.
code_duck 15y ago
So... why are you using AppEngine instead of another service?
- bane 15y ago

gaetanomarano 15y ago

[ goopl.us ] millions people will cry due to Google -- --