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> And Facebook refuses so much as to pick up the phone to discuss it. It's part of the business model - each FB user generates so little revenue for the compan
by potatolicious 5y ago
> And Facebook refuses so much as to pick up the phone to discuss it.
It's part of the business model - each FB user generates so little revenue for the company that you can't afford to offer anything resembling "real" support channels. The company is massively profitable by sheer scale - by making a small amount of money per year off of a vast number of users.
This applies to Google as well - or really any ad-based engagement-centric business. Your individual users aren't worth enough to have human-intensive labor assigned to them, hence heavily automated support channels and little to no ability to ever have something processed by a human.
One of many reasons I pay Google to host my email rather than use a free Gmail - when you are generating a non-negligible revenue stream suddenly companies' willingness to answer emails and pick up phones increases.
When it comes to FB there's often the pithy "when you're not paying for a service you're not the customer, you're the product" - which is a simplistic take. In this case though at the very least this is true: "when you're not paying for a service your support needs are dead weight".
- milkytron 5y agoIn this case though, the customer did buy a product, the Oculus Quest.
- mavhc 5y agoFacebook revenue per US/Canada user per year ~$160
- lookalike74 5y agoI got Google One just for the telephone customer service option. They weren't very helpful for my needs in particular, but I think most people would appreciate the phone option for the $2+ a month it cost.
- xondono 5y ago> One of many reasons I pay Google to host my email rather than use a free Gmail - when you are generating a non-negligible revenue stream suddenly companies' willingness to answer emails and pick up phones increases. If you think that does any difference, I hope you good luck. Google is unreachable for support, even if you are a paying user.
- IntelMiner 5y agoAs the Terraria developer showed with Google Stadia, even if you're actively developing software for their brand new products you'll be ignored
- squeaky-clean 5y agoI managed to get in touch with a Google engineer once for help with some Adwords API stuff (our company is a large adwords agency). ...They accidentally CC'd in a public mailing list into our discussion and leaked enough information that someone would be able to use the automated support system to change the company AdWords password. There was basically no way of contacting anyone further, the engineer couldn't contact anyone that could help us. We ended up making a new adwords account.
- cowturds 5y agoI might as well been the engineer that reached out toward you. But in the end, I was let go as support is not earned any metric into performance.
- squeaky-clean 5y agoI did run into that engineer in-person at a Google event and grabbed a coffee with them. I think they're still at Google. No hard feelings but yeah getting any real support at Google is impossible and obviously not prioritized by the organization.
- cr3ative 5y agoI don't think that's true - Google One (which I subscribe to basically just to have a support fallback) offers this: https://one.google.com/about/support?hl=en_GB https://one.google.com/about/support?hl=en_GB "Live chat, email or call us".
- novok 5y agoThe guy is an ad buyer although, so they are still missing support for their traditional revenue streams for small customers. Even comcast gives you customer support if you only buy things for $20/month from them ;)
- BbzzbB 5y ago~$30/user (on 3.5B users), not exactly small if you ask me. If you do a DCF on a $30/y coupon, even assuming it doesn't grow, you'll find that Facebook's (family of products) individual users are quite valuable.
- int_19h 5y agoThis is exactly why the anti-trust sledgehammer is desperately overdue for them.