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You can't compel a company to provide you with a service. That's a little too close to slavery for society's taste. If a company doesn't provide you with a serv

You can't compel a company to provide you with a service. That's a little too close to slavery for society's taste. If a company doesn't provide you with a service you agreed to, you can get damages from a court, but you have to use such services as your contract agreed. It stinks to end up on the wrong end, but that's part of the cost of getting such massive benefits for free. If you want something more reliable or with better customer service, you have to pay for it. You don't own phone numbers, emails, names, PO boxes, or addresses. You have them within a legal framework, and you can lose them in that framework. Software products may treat them as unalterable identifiers, but none of them are. Things should always be able to be changed.

3pt14159 5y ago
> You can't compel a company to provide you with a service. Yes we can. We have for centuries. These entities exist as the result of the will of the people. We are the ones that allowed the concept of corporate personhood to come into being. Rights are important, yes, but this isn't really about rights and everyone knows it. This is about Google optimizing their support staff to maximize their own ends over what would be jointly better for everyone. An email account is more important than a real address these days, and it is perfectly reasonable for us to expect that, at the very least, Google forward mail to a new account after closing it and quite frankly they should do much more than that, especially if someone is willing to pay for support time. If Google locked me out of my accounts it would cost me around 200 or 300 hours of work. I would literally pay $25k to reverse their stupid decision over the alternative. What I'm trying to say here is that the costs of type 1 error here is completely born out on the public, and one of the roles for Government is to solve these tragedy of the commons situations.
kobalsky 5y ago
> You can't compel a company to provide you with a service. That's a little too close to slavery for society's taste maybe global scale monstruous corporations should be held to a different set of standards than mom & pop shops.
oauea 5y ago
Yes you can. Just look at the laws surrounding your local utility companies.
cruano 5y ago
> You don't own phone numbers What about phone porting? [1] It's ok for Google to refuse you service, but with something so critical it should be possible for other companies to pick up you account Although having an @gmail account on outlook sounds weird [1] https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/porting-keeping-your-phone-number-when-you-change-providers https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/porting-keeping-your-ph...
marcosdumay 5y ago
That concept of slavery doesn't apply to companies. Companies are imaginary entities.

3pt14159 5y ago

> You can't compel a company to provide you with a service. Yes we can. We have for centuries. These entities exist as the result of the will of the people. We are the ones that allowed the concept of corporate personhood to come into being. Rights are important, yes, but this isn't really about rights and everyone knows it. This is about Google optimizing their support staff to maximize their own ends over what would be jointly better for everyone. An email account is more important than a real address these days, and it is perfectly reasonable for us to expect that, at the very least, Google forward mail to a new account after closing it and quite frankly they should do much more than that, especially if someone is willing to pay for support time. If Google locked me out of my accounts it would cost me around 200 or 300 hours of work. I would literally pay $25k to reverse their stupid decision over the alternative. What I'm trying to say here is that the costs of type 1 error here is completely born out on the public, and one of the roles for Government is to solve these tragedy of the commons situations.

kobalsky 5y ago

> You can't compel a company to provide you with a service. That's a little too close to slavery for society's taste maybe global scale monstruous corporations should be held to a different set of standards than mom & pop shops.

oauea 5y ago

Yes you can. Just look at the laws surrounding your local utility companies.

cruano 5y ago

> You don't own phone numbers What about phone porting? [1] It's ok for Google to refuse you service, but with something so critical it should be possible for other companies to pick up you account Although having an @gmail account on outlook sounds weird [1] https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/porting-keeping-your-phone-number-when-you-change-providers https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/porting-keeping-your-ph...

marcosdumay 5y ago

That concept of slavery doesn't apply to companies. Companies are imaginary entities.