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Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned

366 points by theturtletalks 4y ago

iliekcomputers 4y ago
Losing my google account has to be a worst nightmare scenario. I've started disentangling slowly, starting with mail, but Google Photos is just so convenient.
- theturtletalks 4y ago
  I ordered a Chromecast on the Google store a couple years back and the item never came. Google wouldn’t refund or reship and I was so close to doing a chargeback, but 20 wasn’t worth the trouble. I’m so glad I didn’t. Now I know to buy Google products from elsewhere and slowly migrate away from Gmail.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    This feels like a huge gap in consumer protections. Retaliatory account bans seem like they should not be legal when a retailer fails to deliver. Of course this is all exacerbated by how large the entities in question are and how the same account may govern access to multiple services.
    - bcrosby95 4y ago
      Especially ejecting someone from e.g. their email if the payment isn't email related.
      - idontpost 4y ago
        It's ripe for anti-trust action.
        smolder 4y ago
        Unfortunately, the political climate of the US is not ripe for anti-trust action, at least not with any teeth.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      I feel like this is treating the symptoms rather than the cause. Companies shouldn’t be allowed to have such a tight grip on a consumer’s digital life such that an account ban is crippling.
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        They're both problems. Smaller companies shouldn't be able to retaliate against a valid chargeback either.
        kube-system 4y ago
        Should they be able to retaliate against an invalid chargeback? Chargeback fraud is a thing.
        Dylan16807 4y ago
        Sure! But only if they have reasonable system for telling the difference.
        kube-system 4y ago
        Everyone thinks their system is reasonable, that's the whole problem. Banks obviously don't think chargeback fraud is fraud when they perform fraudulent chargebacks. They think they're reasonably legit, which is why they perform them. Retailers also think their fraud prevention systems are reasonable. Reasonable means different things to different people and it certainly doesn't mean infallible. Nobody in any of these situations thinks they are being unreasonable.
        Dylan16807 4y ago
        > Everyone thinks their system is reasonable Okay? I didn't say they get to choose. Was the implication of "shouldn't be able" not clear enough? You'd have externally imposed rules. And in this case google hasn't expressed that they think the process was reasonable, they're just refusing to do anything.
    - pbhjpbhj 4y ago
      Agreed. Steam froze my account to punish a PayPal dispute, the amount they would not refund was ~£2. Their refusal was contrary to UK law. Small story about Steam. They sold me a broken game, in UK one can return broken things according to the Consumer Rights Act, specifically including digital goods. Steam said, at length, they would not refund me: the game would crash (losing some settings) after ~30 minutes, I spent more than 2h of playtime trying to fix it [it's a 50h+ game, I'd have accepted an 8p reduction in my refund!]. I complained to PayPal. PayPal decided in my favour -- ie in keeping with UK law. Steam didn't dispute PayPal's findings but instead froze my Steam account (and I assume paid PayPal the money back). PayPal made me whole, financially. My Steam account was blocked for a month or so. Ongoing they "punish" me by making it hard for me to give them money -- which is good for me, but my kids are not keen! WhyTF would I complain over a few £. It's the principle, clearly. It was very interesting to me to see how a big company can ignore the law in this way. But also spend what must amount to quite a bit of customer service time just to avoid a minimal refund. All I wanted was a refund for a game Steam sold, that was broken and wouldn't be fixed. I did cursory searching for bugs before buying, but hadn't found this particular one before my purchase. You know what I did with the refund money, bought the next game in the same series, because it was only the bug that I didn't like, and I paid more money for it than the game they wouldn't refund ... mad, eh!
moviuro 4y ago
Before this happens to you too: rclone[0] can be used to sync (or pull) data from Google's services to a local machine. It's pretty slow, but it "just works"^TM [0] https://rclone.org https://rclone.org, https://rclone.org/drive/ https://rclone.org/drive/, https://rclone.org/googlephotos/ https://rclone.org/googlephotos/
- mschulkind 4y ago
  Google takeout is a much much better option.
  - moviuro 4y ago
    Which cannot be automated, AFAICT. I'm syncing pictures of 4 GooglePhoto accounts twice a week each on a machine at home. Fire and forget. But yeah, Google takeout can be done once a month if you have time to spare for that task.
    - roywiggins 4y ago
      rclone's documentation warns you that you can't actually get the original resolution photos back out via the Photos API. Better than nothing, obviously, but...
      - Scaevolus 4y ago
        There's also this, which uses Chrome DevTools to automatically scrape it all: https://github.com/perkeep/gphotos-cdp https://github.com/perkeep/gphotos-cdp
      - 10729287 4y ago
        ... just a confirmation that signing for anything on google just makes you their hostage. I'm happy I quit them 5 years ago after I couldn't have access to my mail anymore after I stepped down my paid drive access to free one and I didn't have space anymore to receive emails.
MrYellowP 4y ago
I thought all companies are doing that by default?
- williamscales 4y ago
  I haven't heard that. I can see two perspectives: 1. If a chargeback is issued, that means the company messed up massively and they should investigate, not ban the user 2. Some people fraudulently issue chargebacks and we assume our support would solve all legitimate issues, therefore it's a ban. Probably the answer is to use risk signals about users to inform an investigation.
  - cokeandpepsi 4y ago
    in this case google support recomended the writer issue a chargeback when their policy was to ban all accounts who issue chargebacks yeah i'm going avoid buying anything directly from google
  - kjs3 4y ago
    Your point 1 isn't really true. People charge back businesses all the time for any reason up to and including "I don't want to pay for this and this is how I don't have to". It's a huge problem for folks like eBay sellers, for example.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      Neither point is reliably true. They are the extremes of a spectrum.
      - williamscales 4y ago
        Exactly. It would have been clearer if I had added "in the middle:" after "the answer is".
- theturtletalks 4y ago
  Many do, but I would just assume they ban the user from buying more items from the Google Store instead of banning his whole email account.
unixbotnuke 4y ago
I did a chargeback against Google as they wouldn’t refund fraudulent Adsense charges. My account didn’t get banned.
- londons_explore 4y ago
  5 years from now, some engineer will probably say "oh, the adsense billing chargeback processing system seems to have been stuck for years, and the workqueue is overflowing. Lets restart it and let it work through the backlog.". Then bam, your account is gone.
  - unixbotnuke 4y ago
    Ugh I hope not. But that is incentive to migrate away from google serivces.
Brystephor 4y ago
I work in payments. This is pretty normal AFAIK. Doing a chargeback is a good way to be "fired" as a customer and not allowed to use that companies services anymore.
- theturtletalks 4y ago
  Yes, this is true. I never knew doing a chargeback against the Google Store would get your email account banned. Google can do what it wants, I just wanted to let people know so they think twice before doing a chargeback against Google.
  - charcircuit 4y ago
    Your Google Store account IS the some account as your email account.
  - Brystephor 4y ago
    It's definitely surprising. Chargebacks cause additional issues for a company which is why they're treated more severely than something like a late payment, refunds, etc. It seems like a lot of folks are surprised by a chargeback causing a loss of access to the company services so wanted to share my experience that this is not abnormal. Big companies tend to do this.
  - Ferret7446 4y ago
    Chargebacks get you banned from pretty much every single company/service.
- toomanyrichies 4y ago
  Isn't this a great way to motivate users to respond by setting up throw-away accounts, with disposable forwarding emails and Privacy.com-generated credit card numbers? True, this is a multi-step process, but it also seems like something which could be automated.
  - lnsru 4y ago
    I was told by experienced web developer to do exactly this: every time I need something for Google I must create new address and new identity. If something goes wrong only project related identity gets destroyed and I can access other accounts.
thefurdrake 4y ago
A more-measured approach would be to just disable your ability to purchase/engage with purchased services/products. Of course, Google is actively motivated to make forcing them to face consequences for mishandling product disputes punishable by complete ostracization from their "ecosystem". On the one hand, this feels like a Surprised Pikachu moment: Of course a chargeback, the final legal method through which you have issues redressed, is a valid reason to deny you further access to a private company's platform. On the other hand, I've been decoupling my life from Google's services for a reason, and I'm not the only one. Google has ceased providing products for my needs superior enough to the competition to merit putting up with the ever-looming threat of their hegemonic bullshit.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pcurve 4y ago
  Agreed. This is rather shitty thing for them to do, since most people don't use Google for ecommerce, but for just about everything else.
- narrator 4y ago
  I wonder if the Google+ social network failed because people were paranoid that they could lose their whole digital life for making ban-worthy posts on Google+.
  - jamiek88 4y ago
    Nah, it was just lame. Forced corporate ‘fun’ never works.
- jackson1442 4y ago
  > Of course a chargeback, the final legal method through which you have issues redressed, is a valid reason to deny you further access to a private company's platform. Normally I would agree, but a representative from google told OP to do a chargeback!
nickphx 4y ago
A chargeback can be initiated for any number of reasons.. It's good business practice to disable the account of someone claiming fraud, to prevent more fraud.. :D
- theptip 4y ago
  Presumably not permanently.
  - adastra22 4y ago
    Of course permanently. But what’s unacceptable here is canceling the email account too.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      > Of course permanently. Not if your motivation is avoiding the fraud the user just told you about. You'd investigate more. Definitely not "of course".
      - adastra22 4y ago
        It still makes sense to ban, for the same reason insurance premiums go up even if your claim is no-fault. Your marginal value as a user is less than the cost of a single chargeback, ergo ban.
- MerelyMortal 4y ago
  You're right, a company cannot commit fraud if they have no one to commit fraud against.
DueDilligence 4y ago
.. glad I ditched those socio/psycopaths ages ago.
cletus 4y ago
Many people (including me) raised this issue internally at Google more than a decade ago now during the Google+ era. Vic Gundotra decided that not using your "real name" was a bannable offense despite the many legitimate concerns people brought up [1]. This was of course an automatic process and there were (completely predictably) false positives. This would kill your entire Google account, Gmail included. I was one of many voices who argued that was completely stupid. The worst thing that should happen is a policy violation on a given service should terminate or suspend that service only. It should NEVER kill Gmail. Why? Because the end result is people will ultimately only use their Google account for Gmail. That's what I have done since and what I recommend everyone else do. Never tie your Google account to any other Google product. You may well regret it. It's wild to me that this is still the case. The issue isn't large enough for any executive to care. That means the decision will come down to a few stubborn individuals (probably a VP of PM) who are maintaining this position. There's nothing you can buy from the Google Store that you can't get from Best Buy or Amazon and those will be infinitely more accountable. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMqZ2PPOLik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMqZ2PPOLik
- thrashh 4y ago
  Google is run by people who think like robots
- londons_explore 4y ago
  Per-service bans seems like the obvious thing. Sure, there will be some rough edges (what when I am banned from GDrive but not Gmail, but then I click the 'save to drive' button in gmail?). Who will test that codepath? How about when i DDoS the antivirus service API? - does that mean my email will no longer be scanned? But a few rough edges for a few users seems better than a few users very unhappy and enough to become negative PR sources for life.
  - GlitchMr 4y ago
    Technically Google already has per-service bans for Google Ads and YouTube. That doesn't help if you get banned for a reason unrelated to those services however.
user3939382 4y ago
Over the years I’ve read so many horror stories of people being locked out of their Google accounts for a wide variety of reasons. Trying to get Google’s help is like pleading for help by sending messages to /dev/null. I’ve migrated everything I possibly can off their services as a result. Google Maps and YouTube I find hard or impossible to really replace but I don’t have any critical data there. I remember how exciting it was when Google IPOed (2005?). I was rooting for them. Every passing year my opinion of them diminishes further.
- FredPret 4y ago
  Don't Be Evil turned into Don't Use Google
trap_goes_hot 4y ago
I don't usually stick my neck out for Google, but I kinda get this policy. Charge-backs are the "nuclear" option, and both parties will take this unkindly. I understand in this case, it was suggested by the customer rep, which was a mistake.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Also it is wrong tool for other than actually fraudulent as in stolen cc details. Sadly the expensive way is court or arbitration. I wish there was some reasonable method like insurance I could buy that would fight for me instead in these cases.
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ssharp 4y ago
I’d recommend taking a few steps before doing a chargeback in cases like this: 1. Search around for back channel support. Google things like “executive customer support”. Often times these emails get published by bloggers, forums, etc. You can also look up support VP /Director’s names and then guess their email (e.g. first.last@example.com) and tell them your story. 2. Send a signature-required letter detailing out the issue, steps taken, and your requested resolution These two steps get you significantly closer to having a person who can actually solve your problem actually look into the issue.
- dhimes 4y ago
  Why should we have to work so hard to get decent support?
- jackweirdy 4y ago
  Another depending on your jurisdiction is the court process in your area. In the U.K. we have the Money claim online service, to start proceedings against a company or person who owe money. There is a nominal fee starting at £30 and if companies don’t respond the court will de facto rule in your favour.
  - patmcc 4y ago
    That might work to get your money back, but I'll bet Google also has a policy of firing customers who take them to court.
- michaelmrose 4y ago
  It would make more sense to first back up all your stuff switch all accounts to the new email address, set up email forwarding for a month, and then issue the chargeback. From what you are saying this is actually an easier process and unlike your suggestion will surely succeed 100% of the time. Then you aren't anyone's hostage.
rvz 4y ago
Good, and as expected. This is completely normal for companies to do this and there is a 99% chance that doing a chargeback will get your account immediately terminated. You cannot have it both ways with chargebacks and keeping your account as I have said before [0] as it is rife with abuse and friendly fraud and the merchant reserves the right to suspend, terminate and ban your account if you do so as per their ToS. So this is of course hardly a surprise here. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32173942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32173942
- wincy 4y ago
  Okay but if you contact Google support and they say “initiate a chargeback” and you do so, should you get banned?
  - toast0 4y ago
    Of course. Getting support from Google is against Google policies, so they're free to ban you.
- Encrust6221 4y ago
  I think the difference here is that the OP of that post claims the representative told him to chargeback as the resolution to his issue. In their position, I would've probably done the same.
petee 4y ago
I had to return a new DOA phone once to Google Fi; despite having a tracking number, and being delivered back to them on the final return window day, they still charged me full new price for my used-replacement phone, after the return was already delivered. Dealing with support was near impossible, no one had power to override the order, until finally I said I'd chargeback, then they were suddenly able to cancel it... Obviously I'd never actually charge back though, as shown here, I assumed I'd get the boot
kapildev 4y ago
Certainly makes me want to look for ways to get away from Google.
creeble 4y ago
TIL never to buy physical products directly from Google! Or for that matter to never use Google Pay, even if the c/c charge isn't run by them. You could go from "credit card buyer protection" to Google Doomsday with a single disputed charge. I wonder how they handle "bank reversals", where a report of a stolen card (but not specifically a customer-generated chargeback) results in a reversal of the charge by the bank and issuance of a new c/c? The difference being that a customer-generated chargeback for "goods or services not delivered" is handled differently by the bank than a "my card was stolen, reverse these charges" issue.
- creeble 4y ago
  To further my question: I have a c/c I use for Google. Said card # is stolen, and used to buy Google services (under a different ID). I call the bank, they cancel the card and refund the amounts charged to Google for the unknown services. What is the chance of Google cancelling my other account, since it was on the same card?
  - tlogan 4y ago
    > What is the chance of Google cancelling my other account, > since it was on the same card? Quite high. Majority of companies have this automated.
- polotics 4y ago
  Very good point about Google Pay. I never thought of that but you're right. If some vendor's misbehaviour ends up cascading in my losing access tp my Google account this would be catastrophic. Thanks a lot. Removing it now.
- tlogan 4y ago
  I would rather suggest the following: do not buy anything worth more than $99 from companies which do not offer human support. And if you decide to do chargeback assume that that is a "nuclear option": that you will never be able to use that company again.
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roywiggins 4y ago
Seems like a plausible denial-of-service attack vector, if you really want to ruin someone's day (or worse) and can hack their credit card account.
United857 4y ago
Hopefully governments are looking into these customer service (or lack there of) for big tech. Google services are almost as important as banking or telcos for many people so there should be also some oversight here. (Disclaimer: I’m a employee of one of Googles peer companies, but still only speaking for myself)
GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago
Sounds like people should avoid paying google for anything if they rely on the google ecosystem
charcircuit 4y ago
Every service does this. If you chargeback usually you will get banned. You should always get a refund by talking to support. Chargebacks cost the company extra fees and can lead to problems if they get too many.
- CogitoCogito 4y ago
  I entirely disagree. I bet very few companies wouldn’t undo a similar ban when the company itself recommended the chargeback.
- creatonez 4y ago
  > You should always get a refund by talking to support In the original post, the author had multiple conversations with support, and the support agent told them to do a chargeback. And another support agent later acknowledged that the support agent was not supposed to say that, but that the ban remains in place regardless.
logicalmonster 4y ago
To me, the issue with Google's products and services is that they're not willing to provide any human customer service to resolve the real issues. Now, of course, I understand that even Google can't reasonably be expected to provide free 24/7 customer support for the entire Internet. If they had a normal phone number available where anybody could reach a human at any time, every confused person would call them with issues that are completely unrelated to Google's actual products and even Google would be overwhelmed. The solution is to figure out some payment level for support that dissuades casual abuse of customer service, but is still reasonable for people to use in an emergency to save their business or communication accounts. I'm convinced that at least some people have lost jobs and companies, had their lives ruined, or even committed suicide over being completely unable to salvage everything they've worked for all of their lives. This should be horrifying to every Google employee.
- hedora 4y ago
  > Now, of course, I understand that even Google can't reasonably be expected to provide free 24/7 customer support for the entire Internet. Microsoft did this back in the 1990's. It provided a strong financial incentive to reduce the number of support calls generated per Windows installation, which is what they ended up doing.
  - dhimes 4y ago
    And often Microsoft would not put the charge through, at least if you were working to try to solve the problem without them. I don't know what their criteria were, but I don't think I ever paid despite calling a few times.
    - snotrockets 4y ago
      The terms I remember (note that there are so many different Microsoft licensing agreements, so yours could’ve been totally different) were that you weren’t charged if the problem you called for was indeed a problem with Microsoft software. And that definition was quite liberal: not just obvious software bugs, but also confusing documentation, etc. In other words, as long as you RTFM before you called, it was free.
yieldcrv 4y ago
You can notify the CFPB and the FTC, these are US federal consumer protection agencies, they can strongarm companies into your form of compliance. The EU has some institutions showing muscle too. Big states like California can also do similar. But don't forget Delaware, their agencies may not get a lot of attention but they have leverage due to the commonality of companies incorporating there. Same for Cayman Islands.
anonymousDan 4y ago
Does anyone know if google ban your account but you have email forwarding enabled on gmail, will it continue to forward emails to another external account (even temporarily)?
tpl 4y ago
This is more common than people know I think. Issuing chargeback is a great way to get dropped as a customer.
neilv 4y ago
When I saw the headline, my first reaction was "You did a chargeback against a huge company from which you can't afford to be auto-unpersonned?! You crazy!" Then I skimmed TFA, and they said that a CSR for the company told them to. Maybe HN escalation will work, this time. But we should really figure out how the critical unique huge consumer tech companies can solve their due process problems, and be more consistent with US principles of society.
- tstrimple 4y ago
  US law doesn't seem to align with "US principles of society" if we even have such a thing. Without better consumer protection laws companies aren't going to improve in this respect.
- mcronce 4y ago
  A good start, at least with Google, might be for them to give anything resembling a fuck about their non-advertising customers. My experience is that they seem to have this mindset that if you aren't paying them for advertising specifically, you're not a customer, you're a user - the product - which is true if you aren't paying them at all, but isn't even remotely the case when you're giving them money in exchange for a product. Absolutely horrendous customer service every time I've needed to contact them.
  - brewdad 4y ago
    So the question becomes, why do you continue to give them money? I can't think of a single service they provide where they are the only game in town.
  - trollied 4y ago
    Don’t worry, you can traffic billions of ads a month & they still won’t care. Madness. Everything is automated.
ultra_nick 4y ago
What's the best email alternative to gmail?
- deltarholamda 4y ago
  There are a lot of 3rd party ones: Protonmail, Hey, even Gandi has a service. Getting "free" email is, I think, a thing of the past. You want to be a customer, not a product. I run my own email, but getting delivery can be a pain, so I also use Mailgun as an SMTP relay. It's worth paying them for this service.
- bob1029 4y ago
  If you don't mind paying a bit and only need a few accounts, AWS Workmail is actually pretty decent. I use my own domain for it as well (also managed thru AWS). I've been using this setup for ~4 years now.
- macintux 4y ago
  I’ve used Fastmail for…two decades? Some very long period of time. Very happy, although I don’t use Gmail so I can’t compare features.
thriftwy 4y ago
I wonder if they are still liable to hand out your data to you under EU data protection laws.
ferminaut 4y ago
I placed an order for a Pixel Watch on Black Friday as a gift. Spent $380 or so on the watch+band. Site said it would be delivered on Nov 29-Dec 2nd (and status was updated to 'Pending Shipment'). Well, Dec 5th rolled around, still wasnt shipped. Since the status was 'pending shipment' you cannot cancel the order. I contacted google asking them to cancel my order. Two weeks later, it's still not shipped, CS rep is basically useless ("we are investigating! Thanks for your patience! :)"). Did a chargeback yesterday. Now I am running Google Takeout. Trying to figure out what happens to the domains & google fi service when my account is banned. I am now realizing I am banking too much of my life on a company that offers 0 customer service. On the off chance someone from Google sees this, Case is 8-4940000033434. Is apple any better? Who can I transfer my google domains to? Who can I transfer my google workspaces to?
- theturtletalks 4y ago
  Call your card and tell them to cancel the chargeback.
  - ferminaut 4y ago
    This served as a wake up call more than anything to break my reliance on google. I wont be cancelling the chargeback.
- georgemcbay 4y ago
  I don't use any Apple products at all, but it seems like they'd have to be better if only because they have physical stores you can go in and complain your way up the retail chain to force some sort of response. Google in my experience is basically a giant black hole if you need any real service on the consumer side. This is one of the various reasons that like others in this thread I've disconnected myself from any reliance on Google services over the past few years. Having the vast majority of my digital identity linked to a single gmail account was super convenient, but there's way too much downside risk if someone at google decides to shut you out for any reason.
- snielson 4y ago
  Transfer your domains to cloudflare.
dom96 4y ago
That's an interesting coincidence. I have been pondering whether to do a chargeback on a food order that Deliveroo failed to deliver. The support refused to refund until I told them I would do a chargeback. I was wondering what the consequences of doing the chargeback would be, but if even the threat of performing one changes their stance on a refund I guess it can't be that bad.
- stuaxo 4y ago
  Complaining on twitter seems to make get them to refund.
r3trohack3r 4y ago
Honestly, the top comment is more concerning: https://old.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/zndbku/tifu_by_accidentally_buying_two_google_pixels_and/j0grq9k/ https://old.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/zndbku/tifu_by_accide... Account stolen. Obvious fraudulent charges. EA refuses to make it right. Customer rightfully disputes the charges. EA closes their account locking them out of an entire catalogue of content THEY HAD PAID for. This whole “you don’t really own digital content” ruse needs to be popped. A company shouldn’t be able to kick you off their platform if you have purchased content from them without refunding that content or providing you physical copies of the content they’re revoking your on demand access to. This whole “you give me $20 for a one time purchase and I’ll let you watch this movie for anywhere between 100ms and 100,000 years mostly at our discretion” isn’t business - it’s fraud and it’s shameful regulators haven’t stepped in yet. To be clear this is about digital purchases, not digital rentals and streaming services.
- deweller 4y ago
  This is a use case that public blockchains could solve for us. Having a decentralized proof of digital rights ownership on a public blockchain could separate the content provider (Amazon / Google / EA) from the actual media they provide by storing it on IPFS or some other decentralized file store. There would need to be a lot of work done to make this happen and big companies would have to get on board. It doesn't seem likely now, but it might happen with enough pressure or the right disruptive catalyst.
  - Arrath 4y ago
    I just consider myself the owner of the content once I have paid for it, regardless of platform. I also consider that as meaning I have carte blanche to gain possession of that content however I see fit, since I have paid for it. Torrents and cracks to the rescue, no need for blockchain technobabble.
  - halestock 4y ago
    > big companies would have to get on board Will never happen.
  - 4y ago
ninth_ant 4y ago
So many posts here about how this is expected and normal behaviour by a company to react to a chargeback in this way. But it’s different when it’s a company that provides your email, your browser, your phone, your entertainment, your car interface, your telecom, your operating systems, your office productivity suite, your online storage solution, and your method of communicating with your friends and family. I’m not going to blame the victim, but encourage future victims to stop using Google products whenever possible.
binarymax 4y ago
The only monetary relationship I have with Google is a paid youtube sub. I actively avoid getting involved in any business relationship with Google because of the mountain of evidence that it’s a bad idea. No Google suite. No Google cloud. No hardware. Google is an advertising company. They make their money from advertising and the rest of the revenue is a pittance to them, so they have no incentive to provide any support or empathy. Avoid doing non-advertising business with Google at all costs.
- perrohunter 4y ago
  I'm in the same boat as you, only youtube left, I moved all services away from google and I'm working actively to move us away from Google Cloud, funny, I think I started using google around 2001 and now I want to stop using it because of all these incidents. Also their OSS sucks, they won't take any PRs from externals.
  - bornfreddy 4y ago
    While on topic, how independent is Go? Is Google still the main decision maker there?
anon291 4y ago
This is off-topic, but I tried canceling my Google services subscription for a domain I no longer owned, and was unable to. There was no way to contact google, and they kept charging me. I ended up asking AmEx to delete the charges, and they did. Still nothing from Google, other than requests to pay them for no service provided. I really wish they had someone I could call.
bilalq 4y ago
I'd love to see a thorough guide on removing one's reliance on Google products/services. I much prefer Android over iOS, but the fear of Google just being able to completely shut me off on a whim keeps me up at night and is seriously tempting me to switch. I pay Google for Fi, Pixel phones, Home/Nest devices, One Storage for Photos/Gmail/Drive, YouTube Music, and probably some other stuff. My company pays Google for Google Workspace and their 30% IAP tax. Despite being a paying customer, I know that there's a pretty decent chance of all of that getting shut down with absolutely no recourse for no reasonable cause. It's clear the bad PR from this isn't enough to make Google care. At this point, there needs to be regulatory pressure to stop the casual cruelty.
- TechBro8615 4y ago
  This seems like a good starting point: https://github.com/tycrek/degoogle https://github.com/tycrek/degoogle
popotamonga 4y ago
I bought some stuff yesterday on Hearthstone via google, payment got out never got my stuff. Was exactly afraid of that, wont risk it for $10, but also will never buy again
rwky 4y ago
It's not only Google. Same thing happened to us with Hertz (car rental). We rented a card when we got home we found extra charges on our card. Contacted Hertz and fell into the black hole of customer support. After a month or so gave up and issued a chargeback. Went to rent a car again a few months later only to find out we're black listed. I wouldn't be surprised if it's standard practice at a lot of companies to black list you if you make a chargeback.
WhackyIdeas 4y ago
This is the kind of spiteful behaviour I’d expect from someone like Elon Musk… “Oh you think you can do a chargeback on us?!… We will fu#king destroy you at the touch of a button. We are untouchable. We are Google motherf#ker!”
eternityforest 4y ago
This is really scary. I've always been a big fan of Google's products despite their issues, and losing an account would probably be 100x worse than losing all important documents at once. Unfortunately there's no real alternative to Google with full parity, aside from other proprietary platforms that have major downsides like Apple's high cost and incompatibility. There are open source voice assistants, but not every service supports them. And the things the do support might not have whatever crazy optimization Google does to make Keep load instantly from the widget. There are other email providers, but few free ones I would trust more than Google, small companies disappear all the time, and Google has a relatively good record of avoiding data breaches. Nobody except Google provides the APIs Android apps use, probably 60% of the usefulness of my phone would go away without their services, I would guess. Chrome could be taken over by the FOSS community if need be, although they have a habit of ripping out features so you might as well just use FF. There's alternatives for finding lost phones and recording location history... but what's the battery life like, and do they have the ability to remote lock a phone? I'm not sure how anyone would get away from Google without losing a lot. It doesn't seem like anyone but Apple has anywhere near that kind of integration platform. And the FOSS community seems to have little interest in duplicating the things that make Google what it is. Google provides dozens of minor conveniences that would be questionably worth it if you had to set them up individually, and definitely not worth it if they were even slightly worse implemented. It's extra concerning since a Pixel is high on my list for my next phone.
marbu 4y ago
Because of stories like this, I use my primary google account just for gmail, which is for official communication and identity only basically. I would not set my credit card there, neither I use it for GCP nor Android.
tylercubell 4y ago
I placed my first-ever order on the Google store last year for a Pixel phone. Then a FedEx employee left a voicemail asking suspicious questions about my package. Then my phone went missing. FedEx later said they had no record of an employee calling me and would "investigate". It took two weeks of relentlessly following up to get a replacement. FedEx was never able to locate my stolen/missing phone. Never order directly from Google and avoid FedEx at all costs.
esalman 4y ago
I have a 13 year old Google account. I only added a credit card couple of months back to help out a friend because his Gapps access was blocked. My new year resolution is to find an alternative to Gapps so that I don't have to do "business" with Google on my or anyone else's behalf.
zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago
I was worried about this and this is why I let Google charge me $300+ for some ads I didn't want ran. I ran a hemp business from 2018 to 2020. I had Google ads going in 2018 but then the ads got taken down because I was using some banned words. I forgot about the ads and never deleted them. They were disabled so I thought that was good enough. Sometime in 2020, after I had gone out of business, I was charged for some ads that ran. Google's policy on CBD ads had changed and they started showing my ads again. I couldn't figure out how to contact a human and I didn't want my account banned so I didn't do a chargeback.
pugworthy 4y ago
Has this actually happened to others as well? With Google in particular? edit I think dang's post kind of declares what I was implying with my question.
richwater 4y ago
Amazon has a lot of problems, but at least you can talk to actual humans who speak fucking english.
dang 4y ago
This title is breaking the HN guideline about titles: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html In fact it is doing all three things we ask people not to do: it's editorialized, it's linkbait (sensational/indignant), and it's arguably misleading because it's making a general claim while the linked article is the narration of (one side of) one example—and note that its title never claims to be otherwise. When a HN title is more linkbait, more misleading, and more editorialized than the corresponding title on Reddit, that's probably a bad sign. More generally, I don't think a $BigCo horror story on Reddit is likely to be much of a basis for a substantive HN discussion. There just isn't enough information—all it will do is evoke people's pre-existing opinions and judgments (not to mention indignation). The comments will be generic and repetitive of previous discussions in the same bucket. This is mostly what we're trying to avoid on HN. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=generic%20discussion%20by%3Adang%20-flamewars%20-flamewar&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
- theturtletalks 4y ago
  The original title is a TIFU post and I don't think those are allowed on HN. The title is not misleading since most companies will ban you if you do a chargeback. The thing to note here is that a chargeback was done against the Google Store and the Gmail account was banned. My goal wasn't to editorialize, I just wanted to let people know that their Gmail account was at risk if they did a chargeback against any of Google's services. This was new information to me and a lot of people on this thread.
  - coffee33go 4y ago
    Perhaps you could have 's/will/may'
  - hunter2_ 4y ago
    I think if you wanted to "Tell HN" about Google's terms of service (which might very well include that a chargeback gets your entire account banned), that's fine, you could do that by leaving the URL field empty or setting it to a better source than a single anecdote. You could even link to the anecdote from the text field. But as it stands, there's a mismatch between the title and TFA.
nhod 4y ago
This also happens with Amazon, FWIW. We were doing a reconciliation on our credit card statements and saw some charges from Amazon that didn't correspond to anything in our order history, for like $30 or so. (Amazon charges as it ships, so in large orders where not all items ship together you can be charged random amounts). We ended up charging them back. Amazon nuked my account. I've been an Amazon customer since the beginning, almost 30 years, and have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with them. For this $30 chargeback, they yanked back all of my Kindle books, Amazon Prime movie purchases, etc. I got shifted from the normally incredibly helpful and friendly Amazon Customer Support to one hosted in the Upside-Down and manned by an army of demogorgons. They were essentially debt collectors, and had the attitude to match. Zero understanding or empathy. Incredibly aggressive, unpleasant, and unhelpful. I ended up reversing the chargeback, which of course took two weeks, and it worked itself out in the end. But wow, customer LTV the size of mine could have been blown up for such a small thing. Seems like someone isn't doing the math inside Amazon.
- bornfreddy 4y ago
  Did you move your spending elsewhere? If not then their math worked correctly. I think we need to be principled when dealing with companies. This is the only way to make them behave as they should.
  - FredPret 4y ago
    That's the core idea of capitalism. Punish the bad companies. Reward the good companies. Your definition of good is whatever it is. And the system adjusts over time. Products and services will improve at the learning rate that the market imposes.
thatwasunusual 4y ago
> Bought two phones by accident, returned one of them, package was lost and a representative told me to do a chargeback if I wanted my money back. Did that, Google account got banned. I don't believe|understand this. Why would Google ban someone's account just because of this? A Google account is a personal thing, and this is about logistics.
rickyc091 4y ago
So I placed an order for a MBP 16" from Apple around Black Friday and UPS lost my package during transit. It was not lost after delivery. It's been over two weeks going between Apple's support team and UPS. UPS tells me to file a claim on their website and they can't address this through phone support, but they closed my case. Apple tells me they are waiting for UPS to respond to them before they can refund my order. I'm not getting anywhere from either party. My only recourse seems to file a dispute so I can get my money back to place a replacement order, but being blacklisted by Apple is exactly what I fear. If anyone has any thoughts, please let me know. I'd expect a company like Apple to have a better policy for replacing lost computers. While I understand fraud, I've made numerous purchases in the past with the same account.
Anthonymorphy 4y ago
[flagged]

Losing my google account has to be a worst nightmare scenario. I've started disentangling slowly, starting with mail, but Google Photos is just so convenient.

theturtletalks 4y ago
I ordered a Chromecast on the Google store a couple years back and the item never came. Google wouldn’t refund or reship and I was so close to doing a chargeback, but 20 wasn’t worth the trouble. I’m so glad I didn’t. Now I know to buy Google products from elsewhere and slowly migrate away from Gmail.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  This feels like a huge gap in consumer protections. Retaliatory account bans seem like they should not be legal when a retailer fails to deliver. Of course this is all exacerbated by how large the entities in question are and how the same account may govern access to multiple services.
  - bcrosby95 4y ago
    Especially ejecting someone from e.g. their email if the payment isn't email related.
    - idontpost 4y ago
      It's ripe for anti-trust action.
      - smolder 4y ago
        Unfortunately, the political climate of the US is not ripe for anti-trust action, at least not with any teeth.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    I feel like this is treating the symptoms rather than the cause. Companies shouldn’t be allowed to have such a tight grip on a consumer’s digital life such that an account ban is crippling.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      They're both problems. Smaller companies shouldn't be able to retaliate against a valid chargeback either.
      - kube-system 4y ago
        Should they be able to retaliate against an invalid chargeback? Chargeback fraud is a thing.
        Dylan16807 4y ago
        Sure! But only if they have reasonable system for telling the difference.
        kube-system 4y ago
        Everyone thinks their system is reasonable, that's the whole problem. Banks obviously don't think chargeback fraud is fraud when they perform fraudulent chargebacks. They think they're reasonably legit, which is why they perform them. Retailers also think their fraud prevention systems are reasonable. Reasonable means different things to different people and it certainly doesn't mean infallible. Nobody in any of these situations thinks they are being unreasonable.
        Dylan16807 4y ago
        > Everyone thinks their system is reasonable Okay? I didn't say they get to choose. Was the implication of "shouldn't be able" not clear enough? You'd have externally imposed rules. And in this case google hasn't expressed that they think the process was reasonable, they're just refusing to do anything.
  - pbhjpbhj 4y ago
    Agreed. Steam froze my account to punish a PayPal dispute, the amount they would not refund was ~£2. Their refusal was contrary to UK law. Small story about Steam. They sold me a broken game, in UK one can return broken things according to the Consumer Rights Act, specifically including digital goods. Steam said, at length, they would not refund me: the game would crash (losing some settings) after ~30 minutes, I spent more than 2h of playtime trying to fix it [it's a 50h+ game, I'd have accepted an 8p reduction in my refund!]. I complained to PayPal. PayPal decided in my favour -- ie in keeping with UK law. Steam didn't dispute PayPal's findings but instead froze my Steam account (and I assume paid PayPal the money back). PayPal made me whole, financially. My Steam account was blocked for a month or so. Ongoing they "punish" me by making it hard for me to give them money -- which is good for me, but my kids are not keen! WhyTF would I complain over a few £. It's the principle, clearly. It was very interesting to me to see how a big company can ignore the law in this way. But also spend what must amount to quite a bit of customer service time just to avoid a minimal refund. All I wanted was a refund for a game Steam sold, that was broken and wouldn't be fixed. I did cursory searching for bugs before buying, but hadn't found this particular one before my purchase. You know what I did with the refund money, bought the next game in the same series, because it was only the bug that I didn't like, and I paid more money for it than the game they wouldn't refund ... mad, eh!

moviuro 4y ago

Before this happens to you too: rclone[0] can be used to sync (or pull) data from Google's services to a local machine. It's pretty slow, but it "just works"^TM [0] https://rclone.org https://rclone.org, https://rclone.org/drive/ https://rclone.org/drive/, https://rclone.org/googlephotos/ https://rclone.org/googlephotos/

mschulkind 4y ago
Google takeout is a much much better option.
- moviuro 4y ago
  Which cannot be automated, AFAICT. I'm syncing pictures of 4 GooglePhoto accounts twice a week each on a machine at home. Fire and forget. But yeah, Google takeout can be done once a month if you have time to spare for that task.
  - roywiggins 4y ago
    rclone's documentation warns you that you can't actually get the original resolution photos back out via the Photos API. Better than nothing, obviously, but...
    - Scaevolus 4y ago
      There's also this, which uses Chrome DevTools to automatically scrape it all: https://github.com/perkeep/gphotos-cdp https://github.com/perkeep/gphotos-cdp
    - 10729287 4y ago
      ... just a confirmation that signing for anything on google just makes you their hostage. I'm happy I quit them 5 years ago after I couldn't have access to my mail anymore after I stepped down my paid drive access to free one and I didn't have space anymore to receive emails.

MrYellowP 4y ago

I thought all companies are doing that by default?

williamscales 4y ago
I haven't heard that. I can see two perspectives: 1. If a chargeback is issued, that means the company messed up massively and they should investigate, not ban the user 2. Some people fraudulently issue chargebacks and we assume our support would solve all legitimate issues, therefore it's a ban. Probably the answer is to use risk signals about users to inform an investigation.
- cokeandpepsi 4y ago
  in this case google support recomended the writer issue a chargeback when their policy was to ban all accounts who issue chargebacks yeah i'm going avoid buying anything directly from google
- kjs3 4y ago
  Your point 1 isn't really true. People charge back businesses all the time for any reason up to and including "I don't want to pay for this and this is how I don't have to". It's a huge problem for folks like eBay sellers, for example.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    Neither point is reliably true. They are the extremes of a spectrum.
    - williamscales 4y ago
      Exactly. It would have been clearer if I had added "in the middle:" after "the answer is".
theturtletalks 4y ago
Many do, but I would just assume they ban the user from buying more items from the Google Store instead of banning his whole email account.

unixbotnuke 4y ago

I did a chargeback against Google as they wouldn’t refund fraudulent Adsense charges. My account didn’t get banned.

londons_explore 4y ago
5 years from now, some engineer will probably say "oh, the adsense billing chargeback processing system seems to have been stuck for years, and the workqueue is overflowing. Lets restart it and let it work through the backlog.". Then bam, your account is gone.
- unixbotnuke 4y ago
  Ugh I hope not. But that is incentive to migrate away from google serivces.

Brystephor 4y ago

I work in payments. This is pretty normal AFAIK. Doing a chargeback is a good way to be "fired" as a customer and not allowed to use that companies services anymore.

theturtletalks 4y ago
Yes, this is true. I never knew doing a chargeback against the Google Store would get your email account banned. Google can do what it wants, I just wanted to let people know so they think twice before doing a chargeback against Google.
- charcircuit 4y ago
  Your Google Store account IS the some account as your email account.
- Brystephor 4y ago
  It's definitely surprising. Chargebacks cause additional issues for a company which is why they're treated more severely than something like a late payment, refunds, etc. It seems like a lot of folks are surprised by a chargeback causing a loss of access to the company services so wanted to share my experience that this is not abnormal. Big companies tend to do this.
- Ferret7446 4y ago
  Chargebacks get you banned from pretty much every single company/service.
toomanyrichies 4y ago
Isn't this a great way to motivate users to respond by setting up throw-away accounts, with disposable forwarding emails and Privacy.com-generated credit card numbers? True, this is a multi-step process, but it also seems like something which could be automated.
- lnsru 4y ago
  I was told by experienced web developer to do exactly this: every time I need something for Google I must create new address and new identity. If something goes wrong only project related identity gets destroyed and I can access other accounts.

thefurdrake 4y ago

A more-measured approach would be to just disable your ability to purchase/engage with purchased services/products. Of course, Google is actively motivated to make forcing them to face consequences for mishandling product disputes punishable by complete ostracization from their "ecosystem". On the one hand, this feels like a Surprised Pikachu moment: Of course a chargeback, the final legal method through which you have issues redressed, is a valid reason to deny you further access to a private company's platform. On the other hand, I've been decoupling my life from Google's services for a reason, and I'm not the only one. Google has ceased providing products for my needs superior enough to the competition to merit putting up with the ever-looming threat of their hegemonic bullshit.

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pcurve 4y ago
Agreed. This is rather shitty thing for them to do, since most people don't use Google for ecommerce, but for just about everything else.
narrator 4y ago
I wonder if the Google+ social network failed because people were paranoid that they could lose their whole digital life for making ban-worthy posts on Google+.
- jamiek88 4y ago
  Nah, it was just lame. Forced corporate ‘fun’ never works.
jackson1442 4y ago
> Of course a chargeback, the final legal method through which you have issues redressed, is a valid reason to deny you further access to a private company's platform. Normally I would agree, but a representative from google told OP to do a chargeback!

nickphx 4y ago

A chargeback can be initiated for any number of reasons.. It's good business practice to disable the account of someone claiming fraud, to prevent more fraud.. :D

theptip 4y ago
Presumably not permanently.
- adastra22 4y ago
  Of course permanently. But what’s unacceptable here is canceling the email account too.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    > Of course permanently. Not if your motivation is avoiding the fraud the user just told you about. You'd investigate more. Definitely not "of course".
    - adastra22 4y ago
      It still makes sense to ban, for the same reason insurance premiums go up even if your claim is no-fault. Your marginal value as a user is less than the cost of a single chargeback, ergo ban.
MerelyMortal 4y ago
You're right, a company cannot commit fraud if they have no one to commit fraud against.

DueDilligence 4y ago

.. glad I ditched those socio/psycopaths ages ago.

cletus 4y ago

Many people (including me) raised this issue internally at Google more than a decade ago now during the Google+ era. Vic Gundotra decided that not using your "real name" was a bannable offense despite the many legitimate concerns people brought up [1]. This was of course an automatic process and there were (completely predictably) false positives. This would kill your entire Google account, Gmail included. I was one of many voices who argued that was completely stupid. The worst thing that should happen is a policy violation on a given service should terminate or suspend that service only. It should NEVER kill Gmail. Why? Because the end result is people will ultimately only use their Google account for Gmail. That's what I have done since and what I recommend everyone else do. Never tie your Google account to any other Google product. You may well regret it. It's wild to me that this is still the case. The issue isn't large enough for any executive to care. That means the decision will come down to a few stubborn individuals (probably a VP of PM) who are maintaining this position. There's nothing you can buy from the Google Store that you can't get from Best Buy or Amazon and those will be infinitely more accountable. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMqZ2PPOLik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMqZ2PPOLik

thrashh 4y ago
Google is run by people who think like robots
londons_explore 4y ago
Per-service bans seems like the obvious thing. Sure, there will be some rough edges (what when I am banned from GDrive but not Gmail, but then I click the 'save to drive' button in gmail?). Who will test that codepath? How about when i DDoS the antivirus service API? - does that mean my email will no longer be scanned? But a few rough edges for a few users seems better than a few users very unhappy and enough to become negative PR sources for life.
- GlitchMr 4y ago
  Technically Google already has per-service bans for Google Ads and YouTube. That doesn't help if you get banned for a reason unrelated to those services however.

user3939382 4y ago

Over the years I’ve read so many horror stories of people being locked out of their Google accounts for a wide variety of reasons. Trying to get Google’s help is like pleading for help by sending messages to /dev/null. I’ve migrated everything I possibly can off their services as a result. Google Maps and YouTube I find hard or impossible to really replace but I don’t have any critical data there. I remember how exciting it was when Google IPOed (2005?). I was rooting for them. Every passing year my opinion of them diminishes further.

FredPret 4y ago
Don't Be Evil turned into Don't Use Google

trap_goes_hot 4y ago

I don't usually stick my neck out for Google, but I kinda get this policy. Charge-backs are the "nuclear" option, and both parties will take this unkindly. I understand in this case, it was suggested by the customer rep, which was a mistake.

Ekaros 4y ago
Also it is wrong tool for other than actually fraudulent as in stolen cc details. Sadly the expensive way is court or arbitration. I wish there was some reasonable method like insurance I could buy that would fight for me instead in these cases.

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ssharp 4y ago

I’d recommend taking a few steps before doing a chargeback in cases like this: 1. Search around for back channel support. Google things like “executive customer support”. Often times these emails get published by bloggers, forums, etc. You can also look up support VP /Director’s names and then guess their email (e.g. first.last@example.com) and tell them your story. 2. Send a signature-required letter detailing out the issue, steps taken, and your requested resolution These two steps get you significantly closer to having a person who can actually solve your problem actually look into the issue.

dhimes 4y ago
Why should we have to work so hard to get decent support?
jackweirdy 4y ago
Another depending on your jurisdiction is the court process in your area. In the U.K. we have the Money claim online service, to start proceedings against a company or person who owe money. There is a nominal fee starting at £30 and if companies don’t respond the court will de facto rule in your favour.
- patmcc 4y ago
  That might work to get your money back, but I'll bet Google also has a policy of firing customers who take them to court.
michaelmrose 4y ago
It would make more sense to first back up all your stuff switch all accounts to the new email address, set up email forwarding for a month, and then issue the chargeback. From what you are saying this is actually an easier process and unlike your suggestion will surely succeed 100% of the time. Then you aren't anyone's hostage.

rvz 4y ago

Good, and as expected. This is completely normal for companies to do this and there is a 99% chance that doing a chargeback will get your account immediately terminated. You cannot have it both ways with chargebacks and keeping your account as I have said before [0] as it is rife with abuse and friendly fraud and the merchant reserves the right to suspend, terminate and ban your account if you do so as per their ToS. So this is of course hardly a surprise here. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32173942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32173942

wincy 4y ago
Okay but if you contact Google support and they say “initiate a chargeback” and you do so, should you get banned?
- toast0 4y ago
  Of course. Getting support from Google is against Google policies, so they're free to ban you.
Encrust6221 4y ago
I think the difference here is that the OP of that post claims the representative told him to chargeback as the resolution to his issue. In their position, I would've probably done the same.

petee 4y ago

I had to return a new DOA phone once to Google Fi; despite having a tracking number, and being delivered back to them on the final return window day, they still charged me full new price for my used-replacement phone, after the return was already delivered. Dealing with support was near impossible, no one had power to override the order, until finally I said I'd chargeback, then they were suddenly able to cancel it... Obviously I'd never actually charge back though, as shown here, I assumed I'd get the boot

kapildev 4y ago

Certainly makes me want to look for ways to get away from Google.

creeble 4y ago

TIL never to buy physical products directly from Google! Or for that matter to never use Google Pay, even if the c/c charge isn't run by them. You could go from "credit card buyer protection" to Google Doomsday with a single disputed charge. I wonder how they handle "bank reversals", where a report of a stolen card (but not specifically a customer-generated chargeback) results in a reversal of the charge by the bank and issuance of a new c/c? The difference being that a customer-generated chargeback for "goods or services not delivered" is handled differently by the bank than a "my card was stolen, reverse these charges" issue.

creeble 4y ago
To further my question: I have a c/c I use for Google. Said card # is stolen, and used to buy Google services (under a different ID). I call the bank, they cancel the card and refund the amounts charged to Google for the unknown services. What is the chance of Google cancelling my other account, since it was on the same card?
- tlogan 4y ago
  > What is the chance of Google cancelling my other account, > since it was on the same card? Quite high. Majority of companies have this automated.
polotics 4y ago
Very good point about Google Pay. I never thought of that but you're right. If some vendor's misbehaviour ends up cascading in my losing access tp my Google account this would be catastrophic. Thanks a lot. Removing it now.
tlogan 4y ago
I would rather suggest the following: do not buy anything worth more than $99 from companies which do not offer human support. And if you decide to do chargeback assume that that is a "nuclear option": that you will never be able to use that company again.

deleted 4y ago

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roywiggins 4y ago

Seems like a plausible denial-of-service attack vector, if you really want to ruin someone's day (or worse) and can hack their credit card account.

United857 4y ago

Hopefully governments are looking into these customer service (or lack there of) for big tech. Google services are almost as important as banking or telcos for many people so there should be also some oversight here. (Disclaimer: I’m a employee of one of Googles peer companies, but still only speaking for myself)

GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago

Sounds like people should avoid paying google for anything if they rely on the google ecosystem

charcircuit 4y ago

Every service does this. If you chargeback usually you will get banned. You should always get a refund by talking to support. Chargebacks cost the company extra fees and can lead to problems if they get too many.

CogitoCogito 4y ago
I entirely disagree. I bet very few companies wouldn’t undo a similar ban when the company itself recommended the chargeback.
creatonez 4y ago
> You should always get a refund by talking to support In the original post, the author had multiple conversations with support, and the support agent told them to do a chargeback. And another support agent later acknowledged that the support agent was not supposed to say that, but that the ban remains in place regardless.

logicalmonster 4y ago

To me, the issue with Google's products and services is that they're not willing to provide any human customer service to resolve the real issues. Now, of course, I understand that even Google can't reasonably be expected to provide free 24/7 customer support for the entire Internet. If they had a normal phone number available where anybody could reach a human at any time, every confused person would call them with issues that are completely unrelated to Google's actual products and even Google would be overwhelmed. The solution is to figure out some payment level for support that dissuades casual abuse of customer service, but is still reasonable for people to use in an emergency to save their business or communication accounts. I'm convinced that at least some people have lost jobs and companies, had their lives ruined, or even committed suicide over being completely unable to salvage everything they've worked for all of their lives. This should be horrifying to every Google employee.

hedora 4y ago
> Now, of course, I understand that even Google can't reasonably be expected to provide free 24/7 customer support for the entire Internet. Microsoft did this back in the 1990's. It provided a strong financial incentive to reduce the number of support calls generated per Windows installation, which is what they ended up doing.
- dhimes 4y ago
  And often Microsoft would not put the charge through, at least if you were working to try to solve the problem without them. I don't know what their criteria were, but I don't think I ever paid despite calling a few times.
  - snotrockets 4y ago
    The terms I remember (note that there are so many different Microsoft licensing agreements, so yours could’ve been totally different) were that you weren’t charged if the problem you called for was indeed a problem with Microsoft software. And that definition was quite liberal: not just obvious software bugs, but also confusing documentation, etc. In other words, as long as you RTFM before you called, it was free.

yieldcrv 4y ago

You can notify the CFPB and the FTC, these are US federal consumer protection agencies, they can strongarm companies into your form of compliance. The EU has some institutions showing muscle too. Big states like California can also do similar. But don't forget Delaware, their agencies may not get a lot of attention but they have leverage due to the commonality of companies incorporating there. Same for Cayman Islands.

anonymousDan 4y ago

Does anyone know if google ban your account but you have email forwarding enabled on gmail, will it continue to forward emails to another external account (even temporarily)?

tpl 4y ago

This is more common than people know I think. Issuing chargeback is a great way to get dropped as a customer.

neilv 4y ago

When I saw the headline, my first reaction was "You did a chargeback against a huge company from which you can't afford to be auto-unpersonned?! You crazy!" Then I skimmed TFA, and they said that a CSR for the company told them to. Maybe HN escalation will work, this time. But we should really figure out how the critical unique huge consumer tech companies can solve their due process problems, and be more consistent with US principles of society.

tstrimple 4y ago
US law doesn't seem to align with "US principles of society" if we even have such a thing. Without better consumer protection laws companies aren't going to improve in this respect.
mcronce 4y ago
A good start, at least with Google, might be for them to give anything resembling a fuck about their non-advertising customers. My experience is that they seem to have this mindset that if you aren't paying them for advertising specifically, you're not a customer, you're a user - the product - which is true if you aren't paying them at all, but isn't even remotely the case when you're giving them money in exchange for a product. Absolutely horrendous customer service every time I've needed to contact them.
- brewdad 4y ago
  So the question becomes, why do you continue to give them money? I can't think of a single service they provide where they are the only game in town.
- trollied 4y ago
  Don’t worry, you can traffic billions of ads a month & they still won’t care. Madness. Everything is automated.

ultra_nick 4y ago

What's the best email alternative to gmail?

deltarholamda 4y ago
There are a lot of 3rd party ones: Protonmail, Hey, even Gandi has a service. Getting "free" email is, I think, a thing of the past. You want to be a customer, not a product. I run my own email, but getting delivery can be a pain, so I also use Mailgun as an SMTP relay. It's worth paying them for this service.
bob1029 4y ago
If you don't mind paying a bit and only need a few accounts, AWS Workmail is actually pretty decent. I use my own domain for it as well (also managed thru AWS). I've been using this setup for ~4 years now.
macintux 4y ago
I’ve used Fastmail for…two decades? Some very long period of time. Very happy, although I don’t use Gmail so I can’t compare features.

thriftwy 4y ago

I wonder if they are still liable to hand out your data to you under EU data protection laws.

ferminaut 4y ago

I placed an order for a Pixel Watch on Black Friday as a gift. Spent $380 or so on the watch+band. Site said it would be delivered on Nov 29-Dec 2nd (and status was updated to 'Pending Shipment'). Well, Dec 5th rolled around, still wasnt shipped. Since the status was 'pending shipment' you cannot cancel the order. I contacted google asking them to cancel my order. Two weeks later, it's still not shipped, CS rep is basically useless ("we are investigating! Thanks for your patience! :)"). Did a chargeback yesterday. Now I am running Google Takeout. Trying to figure out what happens to the domains & google fi service when my account is banned. I am now realizing I am banking too much of my life on a company that offers 0 customer service. On the off chance someone from Google sees this, Case is 8-4940000033434. Is apple any better? Who can I transfer my google domains to? Who can I transfer my google workspaces to?

theturtletalks 4y ago
Call your card and tell them to cancel the chargeback.
- ferminaut 4y ago
  This served as a wake up call more than anything to break my reliance on google. I wont be cancelling the chargeback.
georgemcbay 4y ago
I don't use any Apple products at all, but it seems like they'd have to be better if only because they have physical stores you can go in and complain your way up the retail chain to force some sort of response. Google in my experience is basically a giant black hole if you need any real service on the consumer side. This is one of the various reasons that like others in this thread I've disconnected myself from any reliance on Google services over the past few years. Having the vast majority of my digital identity linked to a single gmail account was super convenient, but there's way too much downside risk if someone at google decides to shut you out for any reason.
snielson 4y ago
Transfer your domains to cloudflare.

dom96 4y ago

That's an interesting coincidence. I have been pondering whether to do a chargeback on a food order that Deliveroo failed to deliver. The support refused to refund until I told them I would do a chargeback. I was wondering what the consequences of doing the chargeback would be, but if even the threat of performing one changes their stance on a refund I guess it can't be that bad.

stuaxo 4y ago
Complaining on twitter seems to make get them to refund.

r3trohack3r 4y ago

Honestly, the top comment is more concerning: https://old.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/zndbku/tifu_by_accidentally_buying_two_google_pixels_and/j0grq9k/ https://old.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/zndbku/tifu_by_accide... Account stolen. Obvious fraudulent charges. EA refuses to make it right. Customer rightfully disputes the charges. EA closes their account locking them out of an entire catalogue of content THEY HAD PAID for. This whole “you don’t really own digital content” ruse needs to be popped. A company shouldn’t be able to kick you off their platform if you have purchased content from them without refunding that content or providing you physical copies of the content they’re revoking your on demand access to. This whole “you give me $20 for a one time purchase and I’ll let you watch this movie for anywhere between 100ms and 100,000 years mostly at our discretion” isn’t business - it’s fraud and it’s shameful regulators haven’t stepped in yet. To be clear this is about digital purchases, not digital rentals and streaming services.

deweller 4y ago
This is a use case that public blockchains could solve for us. Having a decentralized proof of digital rights ownership on a public blockchain could separate the content provider (Amazon / Google / EA) from the actual media they provide by storing it on IPFS or some other decentralized file store. There would need to be a lot of work done to make this happen and big companies would have to get on board. It doesn't seem likely now, but it might happen with enough pressure or the right disruptive catalyst.
- Arrath 4y ago
  I just consider myself the owner of the content once I have paid for it, regardless of platform. I also consider that as meaning I have carte blanche to gain possession of that content however I see fit, since I have paid for it. Torrents and cracks to the rescue, no need for blockchain technobabble.
- halestock 4y ago
  > big companies would have to get on board Will never happen.
- 4y ago

ninth_ant 4y ago

So many posts here about how this is expected and normal behaviour by a company to react to a chargeback in this way. But it’s different when it’s a company that provides your email, your browser, your phone, your entertainment, your car interface, your telecom, your operating systems, your office productivity suite, your online storage solution, and your method of communicating with your friends and family. I’m not going to blame the victim, but encourage future victims to stop using Google products whenever possible.

binarymax 4y ago

The only monetary relationship I have with Google is a paid youtube sub. I actively avoid getting involved in any business relationship with Google because of the mountain of evidence that it’s a bad idea. No Google suite. No Google cloud. No hardware. Google is an advertising company. They make their money from advertising and the rest of the revenue is a pittance to them, so they have no incentive to provide any support or empathy. Avoid doing non-advertising business with Google at all costs.

perrohunter 4y ago
I'm in the same boat as you, only youtube left, I moved all services away from google and I'm working actively to move us away from Google Cloud, funny, I think I started using google around 2001 and now I want to stop using it because of all these incidents. Also their OSS sucks, they won't take any PRs from externals.
- bornfreddy 4y ago
  While on topic, how independent is Go? Is Google still the main decision maker there?

anon291 4y ago

This is off-topic, but I tried canceling my Google services subscription for a domain I no longer owned, and was unable to. There was no way to contact google, and they kept charging me. I ended up asking AmEx to delete the charges, and they did. Still nothing from Google, other than requests to pay them for no service provided. I really wish they had someone I could call.

bilalq 4y ago

I'd love to see a thorough guide on removing one's reliance on Google products/services. I much prefer Android over iOS, but the fear of Google just being able to completely shut me off on a whim keeps me up at night and is seriously tempting me to switch. I pay Google for Fi, Pixel phones, Home/Nest devices, One Storage for Photos/Gmail/Drive, YouTube Music, and probably some other stuff. My company pays Google for Google Workspace and their 30% IAP tax. Despite being a paying customer, I know that there's a pretty decent chance of all of that getting shut down with absolutely no recourse for no reasonable cause. It's clear the bad PR from this isn't enough to make Google care. At this point, there needs to be regulatory pressure to stop the casual cruelty.

TechBro8615 4y ago
This seems like a good starting point: https://github.com/tycrek/degoogle https://github.com/tycrek/degoogle

popotamonga 4y ago

I bought some stuff yesterday on Hearthstone via google, payment got out never got my stuff. Was exactly afraid of that, wont risk it for $10, but also will never buy again

rwky 4y ago

It's not only Google. Same thing happened to us with Hertz (car rental). We rented a card when we got home we found extra charges on our card. Contacted Hertz and fell into the black hole of customer support. After a month or so gave up and issued a chargeback. Went to rent a car again a few months later only to find out we're black listed. I wouldn't be surprised if it's standard practice at a lot of companies to black list you if you make a chargeback.

WhackyIdeas 4y ago

This is the kind of spiteful behaviour I’d expect from someone like Elon Musk… “Oh you think you can do a chargeback on us?!… We will fu#king destroy you at the touch of a button. We are untouchable. We are Google motherf#ker!”

eternityforest 4y ago

This is really scary. I've always been a big fan of Google's products despite their issues, and losing an account would probably be 100x worse than losing all important documents at once. Unfortunately there's no real alternative to Google with full parity, aside from other proprietary platforms that have major downsides like Apple's high cost and incompatibility. There are open source voice assistants, but not every service supports them. And the things the do support might not have whatever crazy optimization Google does to make Keep load instantly from the widget. There are other email providers, but few free ones I would trust more than Google, small companies disappear all the time, and Google has a relatively good record of avoiding data breaches. Nobody except Google provides the APIs Android apps use, probably 60% of the usefulness of my phone would go away without their services, I would guess. Chrome could be taken over by the FOSS community if need be, although they have a habit of ripping out features so you might as well just use FF. There's alternatives for finding lost phones and recording location history... but what's the battery life like, and do they have the ability to remote lock a phone? I'm not sure how anyone would get away from Google without losing a lot. It doesn't seem like anyone but Apple has anywhere near that kind of integration platform. And the FOSS community seems to have little interest in duplicating the things that make Google what it is. Google provides dozens of minor conveniences that would be questionably worth it if you had to set them up individually, and definitely not worth it if they were even slightly worse implemented. It's extra concerning since a Pixel is high on my list for my next phone.

marbu 4y ago

Because of stories like this, I use my primary google account just for gmail, which is for official communication and identity only basically. I would not set my credit card there, neither I use it for GCP nor Android.

tylercubell 4y ago

I placed my first-ever order on the Google store last year for a Pixel phone. Then a FedEx employee left a voicemail asking suspicious questions about my package. Then my phone went missing. FedEx later said they had no record of an employee calling me and would "investigate". It took two weeks of relentlessly following up to get a replacement. FedEx was never able to locate my stolen/missing phone. Never order directly from Google and avoid FedEx at all costs.

esalman 4y ago

I have a 13 year old Google account. I only added a credit card couple of months back to help out a friend because his Gapps access was blocked. My new year resolution is to find an alternative to Gapps so that I don't have to do "business" with Google on my or anyone else's behalf.

zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago

I was worried about this and this is why I let Google charge me $300+ for some ads I didn't want ran. I ran a hemp business from 2018 to 2020. I had Google ads going in 2018 but then the ads got taken down because I was using some banned words. I forgot about the ads and never deleted them. They were disabled so I thought that was good enough. Sometime in 2020, after I had gone out of business, I was charged for some ads that ran. Google's policy on CBD ads had changed and they started showing my ads again. I couldn't figure out how to contact a human and I didn't want my account banned so I didn't do a chargeback.

pugworthy 4y ago

Has this actually happened to others as well? With Google in particular? edit I think dang's post kind of declares what I was implying with my question.

richwater 4y ago

Amazon has a lot of problems, but at least you can talk to actual humans who speak fucking english.

dang 4y ago

This title is breaking the HN guideline about titles: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html In fact it is doing all three things we ask people not to do: it's editorialized, it's linkbait (sensational/indignant), and it's arguably misleading because it's making a general claim while the linked article is the narration of (one side of) one example—and note that its title never claims to be otherwise. When a HN title is more linkbait, more misleading, and more editorialized than the corresponding title on Reddit, that's probably a bad sign. More generally, I don't think a $BigCo horror story on Reddit is likely to be much of a basis for a substantive HN discussion. There just isn't enough information—all it will do is evoke people's pre-existing opinions and judgments (not to mention indignation). The comments will be generic and repetitive of previous discussions in the same bucket. This is mostly what we're trying to avoid on HN. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=generic%20discussion%20by%3Adang%20-flamewars%20-flamewar&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

theturtletalks 4y ago
The original title is a TIFU post and I don't think those are allowed on HN. The title is not misleading since most companies will ban you if you do a chargeback. The thing to note here is that a chargeback was done against the Google Store and the Gmail account was banned. My goal wasn't to editorialize, I just wanted to let people know that their Gmail account was at risk if they did a chargeback against any of Google's services. This was new information to me and a lot of people on this thread.
- coffee33go 4y ago
  Perhaps you could have 's/will/may'
- hunter2_ 4y ago
  I think if you wanted to "Tell HN" about Google's terms of service (which might very well include that a chargeback gets your entire account banned), that's fine, you could do that by leaving the URL field empty or setting it to a better source than a single anecdote. You could even link to the anecdote from the text field. But as it stands, there's a mismatch between the title and TFA.

nhod 4y ago

This also happens with Amazon, FWIW. We were doing a reconciliation on our credit card statements and saw some charges from Amazon that didn't correspond to anything in our order history, for like $30 or so. (Amazon charges as it ships, so in large orders where not all items ship together you can be charged random amounts). We ended up charging them back. Amazon nuked my account. I've been an Amazon customer since the beginning, almost 30 years, and have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with them. For this $30 chargeback, they yanked back all of my Kindle books, Amazon Prime movie purchases, etc. I got shifted from the normally incredibly helpful and friendly Amazon Customer Support to one hosted in the Upside-Down and manned by an army of demogorgons. They were essentially debt collectors, and had the attitude to match. Zero understanding or empathy. Incredibly aggressive, unpleasant, and unhelpful. I ended up reversing the chargeback, which of course took two weeks, and it worked itself out in the end. But wow, customer LTV the size of mine could have been blown up for such a small thing. Seems like someone isn't doing the math inside Amazon.

bornfreddy 4y ago
Did you move your spending elsewhere? If not then their math worked correctly. I think we need to be principled when dealing with companies. This is the only way to make them behave as they should.
- FredPret 4y ago
  That's the core idea of capitalism. Punish the bad companies. Reward the good companies. Your definition of good is whatever it is. And the system adjusts over time. Products and services will improve at the learning rate that the market imposes.

thatwasunusual 4y ago

> Bought two phones by accident, returned one of them, package was lost and a representative told me to do a chargeback if I wanted my money back. Did that, Google account got banned. I don't believe|understand this. Why would Google ban someone's account just because of this? A Google account is a personal thing, and this is about logistics.

rickyc091 4y ago

So I placed an order for a MBP 16" from Apple around Black Friday and UPS lost my package during transit. It was not lost after delivery. It's been over two weeks going between Apple's support team and UPS. UPS tells me to file a claim on their website and they can't address this through phone support, but they closed my case. Apple tells me they are waiting for UPS to respond to them before they can refund my order. I'm not getting anywhere from either party. My only recourse seems to file a dispute so I can get my money back to place a replacement order, but being blacklisted by Apple is exactly what I fear. If anyone has any thoughts, please let me know. I'd expect a company like Apple to have a better policy for replacing lost computers. While I understand fraud, I've made numerous purchases in the past with the same account.

Anthonymorphy 4y ago

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