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I propose Google Human™, a new service that gets you in contact with a Google support person, where you pay a rate of $5.00/mo to get premium Human™ support ser

I propose Google Human™, a new service that gets you in contact with a Google support person, where you pay a rate of $5.00/mo to get premium Human™ support services, so you can get back into your account without having to yell over social media in an outrage and 'escalate' your issue to Google employees over Hackernews or Twitter.

stuff4ben 4y ago
To be deprecated and sunset within 2 years for no apparent reason.
- Tagbert 4y ago
  And partially replaced by a new product, Sapiens™, which includes some of the same features but not all of them.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    And, in particular, not the ones you relied on.
nosianu 4y ago
Too bad low-level support workers cannot do anything. All they will be able to do is read the AI-auto-generated text to you and answer your questions by reading from the prepared responses. You pay for having a human read to you what the computer system produced. For supporters to be cheap and exchangeable (for the business) they are bound to executing the prepared algorithm and script without option to deviate. Often they cannot even access relevant information about you, never mind updating anything in the database. To get someone able to actually make decisions, especially when they are against a measure the system automatically put in place following its programmed or AI-.derived rules, you need to go at least two levels higher. Even "managers" often - usually? - only have digression within pre-determined possibilities and scenarios. It's going to be like this: https://twitter.com/cnbc/status/1447916881009127430 https://twitter.com/cnbc/status/1447916881009127430
- ricardobayes 4y ago
  100% true. What to say to get escalated to these levels? In situations like this I asked to escalate it but was denied. Said there was 'nothing they could do' and parroted the relevant sections to ad nauseum.
  - favourable 4y ago
    Largely, support has been relegated to very extensive and exhaustive FAQs and if your issue is not found in them, you have to pick up the phone and spend 5 hours trying to reach a human at Google, or yell all over social media as a last resort.
    - bluGill 4y ago
      You can find a number for google? I've been trying to find Ebay's number for months. Support told me I have to call them, but they are not allowed to tell me the phone number. I'm not enough of an influencer to get my rants here noticed.
- SteveGerencser 4y ago
  What I find funny is that low level support at Google can't do anything at all to help you, unless it's a low level Google Ads rep. Then they ask for carte blanche access to make any and all changes to your Ads account to 'help you'. It all comes down to which direction, and how much, the money is flowing with them.
jeffbee 4y ago
Google One comes with phone, chat, or email support in 23 languages. Hit the support button and they call you within minutes, which is a support system on par with Bloomberg terminals. $1.99/month.
- tyingq 4y ago
  I wouldn't be terribly surprised if none of those options would actually fix "locked out of your Google account".
- mysterydip 4y ago
  That's a good metric, but can they solve any of the "locked out of account" problems?
  - dmd 4y ago
    No, because you need to be logged in to use it.
- cube00 4y ago
  > Under the locked account, I have a paid subscription with both Google One and YouTube Music. According to this article being a Google One member didn't help them.
- Melatonic 4y ago
  Didnt know this - I was gonna subscribe potentially to GSuite for personal stuff but I guess I already have official support. Probably will just stick with that then! edit: As people are pointing out below, however, is there no way to use Google One support if you are locked out of your account?
erdos4d 4y ago
This has so much extortion potential I'm surprised all the major tech companies aren't doing it and milking it for all it's worth. It's amazing they have left this cash on the table for this long.
tptacek 4y ago
This isn't really a story about missing access to human tech support at Google so much as it is a story about Account Recovery, The Hardest Problem In Authentication. Anything Google did to make it take just a day or two to recover a totally locked account would be abused ceaselessly to take over people's accounts. There are no good answers here. A lot of things that work as one-offs or rarities will stop working if everyone does them. If there's a FCC form you can file that short-circuits Google's current process, and it becomes popular, that form is going to stop working. Restoring your access to a locked account is simply less important than ensuring strangers can't "restore" access to your account. Obviously, one good change Google could make here would be to refuse to accept Google Voice numbers as an authentication factor.
- melony 4y ago
  AWS has a decent (corporate) solution to this. They simply outsource account recovery and user attestation to the state and the finance industry. You stake money on a financial medallion (a contractual instrument that's a guarantee of sorts). Presumably you will get sued and armed men will come after you if you commit fraud. It doesn't scale well outside of the big cities but it could be a viable option for Google.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Requiring physical presence in some manner makes identity verification, if not failsafe, a lot harder and riskier to spoof. I observe that my broker was allowing transfers over the phone early in the pandemic. But when I did a similar transaction earlier this year, they were back to needing me to go into an office.
- underdeserver 4y ago
  I completely disagree. There have been complaints after complaints about people being locked out of accounts, and there are no easy ways to recover - often no way at all. To say that the paid support you're paying for can't help you access the service you're paying for, that's a bit rich. > Restoring your access to a locked account is simply less important than ensuring strangers can't "restore" access to your account. That's a false dichotomy. If you can pay, say, $200, and get 30 minutes with a tech who has access to your email and can go through a manual, interactive process to verify you are who you say you are - for example, if you can prove you hold the credit card that's been used to pay for Google One for the past couple of years - well, these "strangers" are going to have to work REALLY hard to "restore" their access to your account. Probably well more than $200 and more than it costs to install a keylogger and sniff your password anyway.

stuff4ben 4y ago

To be deprecated and sunset within 2 years for no apparent reason.

Tagbert 4y ago
And partially replaced by a new product, Sapiens™, which includes some of the same features but not all of them.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  And, in particular, not the ones you relied on.

nosianu 4y ago

Too bad low-level support workers cannot do anything. All they will be able to do is read the AI-auto-generated text to you and answer your questions by reading from the prepared responses. You pay for having a human read to you what the computer system produced. For supporters to be cheap and exchangeable (for the business) they are bound to executing the prepared algorithm and script without option to deviate. Often they cannot even access relevant information about you, never mind updating anything in the database. To get someone able to actually make decisions, especially when they are against a measure the system automatically put in place following its programmed or AI-.derived rules, you need to go at least two levels higher. Even "managers" often - usually? - only have digression within pre-determined possibilities and scenarios. It's going to be like this: https://twitter.com/cnbc/status/1447916881009127430 https://twitter.com/cnbc/status/1447916881009127430

ricardobayes 4y ago
100% true. What to say to get escalated to these levels? In situations like this I asked to escalate it but was denied. Said there was 'nothing they could do' and parroted the relevant sections to ad nauseum.
- favourable 4y ago
  Largely, support has been relegated to very extensive and exhaustive FAQs and if your issue is not found in them, you have to pick up the phone and spend 5 hours trying to reach a human at Google, or yell all over social media as a last resort.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    You can find a number for google? I've been trying to find Ebay's number for months. Support told me I have to call them, but they are not allowed to tell me the phone number. I'm not enough of an influencer to get my rants here noticed.
SteveGerencser 4y ago
What I find funny is that low level support at Google can't do anything at all to help you, unless it's a low level Google Ads rep. Then they ask for carte blanche access to make any and all changes to your Ads account to 'help you'. It all comes down to which direction, and how much, the money is flowing with them.

jeffbee 4y ago

Google One comes with phone, chat, or email support in 23 languages. Hit the support button and they call you within minutes, which is a support system on par with Bloomberg terminals. $1.99/month.

tyingq 4y ago
I wouldn't be terribly surprised if none of those options would actually fix "locked out of your Google account".
mysterydip 4y ago
That's a good metric, but can they solve any of the "locked out of account" problems?
- dmd 4y ago
  No, because you need to be logged in to use it.
cube00 4y ago
> Under the locked account, I have a paid subscription with both Google One and YouTube Music. According to this article being a Google One member didn't help them.
Melatonic 4y ago
Didnt know this - I was gonna subscribe potentially to GSuite for personal stuff but I guess I already have official support. Probably will just stick with that then! edit: As people are pointing out below, however, is there no way to use Google One support if you are locked out of your account?

erdos4d 4y ago

This has so much extortion potential I'm surprised all the major tech companies aren't doing it and milking it for all it's worth. It's amazing they have left this cash on the table for this long.

tptacek 4y ago

This isn't really a story about missing access to human tech support at Google so much as it is a story about Account Recovery, The Hardest Problem In Authentication. Anything Google did to make it take just a day or two to recover a totally locked account would be abused ceaselessly to take over people's accounts. There are no good answers here. A lot of things that work as one-offs or rarities will stop working if everyone does them. If there's a FCC form you can file that short-circuits Google's current process, and it becomes popular, that form is going to stop working. Restoring your access to a locked account is simply less important than ensuring strangers can't "restore" access to your account. Obviously, one good change Google could make here would be to refuse to accept Google Voice numbers as an authentication factor.

melony 4y ago
AWS has a decent (corporate) solution to this. They simply outsource account recovery and user attestation to the state and the finance industry. You stake money on a financial medallion (a contractual instrument that's a guarantee of sorts). Presumably you will get sued and armed men will come after you if you commit fraud. It doesn't scale well outside of the big cities but it could be a viable option for Google.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Requiring physical presence in some manner makes identity verification, if not failsafe, a lot harder and riskier to spoof. I observe that my broker was allowing transfers over the phone early in the pandemic. But when I did a similar transaction earlier this year, they were back to needing me to go into an office.
underdeserver 4y ago
I completely disagree. There have been complaints after complaints about people being locked out of accounts, and there are no easy ways to recover - often no way at all. To say that the paid support you're paying for can't help you access the service you're paying for, that's a bit rich. > Restoring your access to a locked account is simply less important than ensuring strangers can't "restore" access to your account. That's a false dichotomy. If you can pay, say, $200, and get 30 minutes with a tech who has access to your email and can go through a manual, interactive process to verify you are who you say you are - for example, if you can prove you hold the credit card that's been used to pay for Google One for the past couple of years - well, these "strangers" are going to have to work REALLY hard to "restore" their access to your account. Probably well more than $200 and more than it costs to install a keylogger and sniff your password anyway.