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As an aside, I am curious the motivation for customers to staff huge company support forums. In some ways, it’s nice for there to be a responsive community, but

As an aside, I am curious the motivation for customers to staff huge company support forums. In some ways, it’s nice for there to be a responsive community, but in other ways, I think a trillion dollar company should pay for excellent customer service. E.g. in this case their volunteer customer service is left with this and there is no way to even know if Google sees this: “Sorry Yeonjoong, As a group of volunteers, we do not have access to user accounts and can only help by sharing our experiences. In this case there is nothing we can do. “

ChatGTP 3y ago
They're not a trillion dollar company because they hire good support staff and pay them well. It's a shame they don't do this.
betaby 3y ago
I puzzled why non-employees even involved in such discussions. There is absolutely zero help they can provide in such cases.
- unleaded 3y ago
  ? Maybe not in cases like this but quite a few times I've googled an issue with a google/microsoft product, found a post on their forums with an answer from a Verified Service Technician or something like that saying "Update your drivers, run sfc /scannow, and turn it off and on again", then run the same search with "reddit" at the end and got an actual answer
  - wildrhythms 3y ago
    On the contrary, I've found those 'Microsoft experts' on the official forums to have less knowledge and poorer troubleshooting skills than a tier 1 helpdesk technician.
    - mattkevan 3y ago
      The community ‘experts’ on the Adobe forums can be actively hostile and rude. I posted a question a while back questioning why After Effects drive-by installs Cinema 4D without warning, and they just could not understand why the lack of notification or consent was a problem, feeling strongly that I should shut up and be grateful even the tiniest of blessings our lords and masters at Adobe see fit to bestow upon our hard drives.
- android42 3y ago
  Same here, especially since most of the time it's an unhelpful answer that dodges the actual problem or generic advice that doesn't apply, then they mark it as solved. Which then furthers the question, why? I could understand the odd person just trying to be helpful because they had the same problem, found the post with no solution, figured it out, then answered with theirs, but for the ones who seem to spend countless hours ranking up, either by gaming it, or the few actually being helpful, does it lead to a chance of being hired or something? Creating a system like that almost feels like it should be illegal, almost like the companies that give extensive case studies for interviews and take the work with no intention of hiring the interviewees, or unpaid internships where they don't even bother teaching and just give grunt work.
- cwillu 3y ago
  The “employees” you can talk to can't provide any help either; have a current billing issue due to a ui error, and there's no escalation path, it's just increasing unlikely variants of “try pressing the button on a brand new stock android device using the foo app in safe mode”.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    I keep getting $0.49 and other random amounts charged to an ancient card by Google (one that I long ago used for the business). This is a massive nuisance but there is absolutely no way to trace these payments to anything in any of the Google products I'm using. So I have to keep this card alive and that's more than a bit problematic because that legal entity has merged with another and the bank really wants that card gone (which makes no sense, but that's what they want). So, here I am, stuck between two idiotic bureaucracies with no way to resolve the problem on either side. Google doesn't answer to anything, the bank is - at least on paper, I've managed to stretch this for three years now - unwilling to bend their rules because the amounts are so tiny. But you can see the ghost of what I'm worried about: you'll see that if that card eventually does get cancelled that that $0.49 or whatever is a reason to lock my account or some other idiotic move.
    - humpydumpy 3y ago
      this is a simple problem. Google is doing weird stuff, not replying to your questions - clearly not something you want to have a relationship with. So move away from google, cancel your card, problem solved.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        For an unrealistic definition of 'simple'.
        humpydumpy 3y ago
        'simple' in that the solution is obvious. If this obvious solution is unrealistic for you, then you have made yourself too dependent on google, or are just unwilling to solve the problem. In both cases just stop whining.
- Faark 3y ago
  Having done pretty much this a lifetime ago: A lot of the first level bug support work is basically deduplication (Incl "have you tried...") and asking for aditional/specific information. Excessively browsing a bug tracker is one of the best qualifications, and if you're doing so anyway, why not also help a few lost users here and there? At least that's where it starts... :D
  - yencabulator 3y ago
    If only they had something useful. The mystery is why somebody replies like this person, who added absolutely nothing to the conversation and is a "Diamond Product Expert": https://support.google.com/drive/thread/245055606?hl=en&msgid=245082799 https://support.google.com/drive/thread/245055606?hl=en&msgi...
- nikanj 3y ago
  There is absolutely zero help google employees can provide too
  - simfree 3y ago
    This is not true, Googlers (at least Kirkland office based ones) can file an internal ticket if they care. Hence the common recommendation to start spamming first.last@Google.com addresses until you annoy someone internal who is willing to file a ticket on your behalf if you don't have any capable Googlers in your social graph.
    - KMag 3y ago
      At least when I worked at Google over a decade ago, I'm pretty sure first.last@Google.com didn't route to my inbox. (And roughly 70 people worldwide share my surname, according to one of those sites that shows you where people with your surname live.)
- HenryBemis 3y ago
  I am sure that whoever created this ticket had checked a couple of things (trash/bin) and was adamant that the state of the 'drive' was back in May 2023. Considering through the amount of times that someone said "did you try turning it off and on again?" AND it has has solved the problem, make such forum users/helpers like that very useful.
gumby 3y ago
User generated content is the future, doncha know?
choppaface 3y ago
For most popular consumer products, there will be expert users who want to help. Official forums are a great way to engage those experts. Otherwise the experts will just start their own forums (and often do) e.g. forums for cars / mechanical issues. Should Google be paying more to provide customer service? Absolutely! But it’s just not in Google’s culture to do customer service. Google likes to develop products with extremely lean / efficient burn rates. Googlers value efficiency orders of magnitude more than human connection.
- freetanga 3y ago
  That last line is true. If it’s ok with you, I will print it, frame it and place it in my office so next time the GCP Sales Rep comes begging for a share of our cloud presence I can tell him to thank Mr Pichar for their 4th place.
  - choppaface 3y ago
    Worst “customer service” I’ve ever had with Google is with their Google Cloud FDEs and PMs. The best strategy is to use Google Cloud as leverage to re-negotiate AWS or Azure bills or use free gcloud credits and then don’t sign. Don’t ignore them, treat them as they treat you.
SanjayMehta 3y ago
It’s a deliberate strategy to reduce costs on the part of the company. They “gamify” volunteer support with badges etc. One place I worked called it “Level 0” support in that it cost the company zero dollars.
YPPH 3y ago
It's frankly infuriating when you get generic responses from someone who has no internal systems access, means to address the problem, or ability to escalate to an engineer. Often these purported super users reply with silly generic suggestions, or meaningless requests for information. There's nothing worse than posting highly specific debugging information to a forum, which is not read by engineers, and is instead replied to by someone suggesting you try logging out and in again. For example, in this thread, "Device", "Drive for desktop version", and "Sync mode" isn't remotely relevant to restoring user files. And the super user cannot do anything with that information. If that information is truly necessary, a Google engineer can post in the thread requesting it. And they do it all for a meaningless diamond badge. You may as well have AI doing it.
- Ferret7446 3y ago
  You are not the target audience. The lower 99% of users do not know how to right justify text. For them, the "community support" is valuable. I don't deny that AI could take over that role soon
- immibis 3y ago
  It's the equivalent of getting ChatGPT to apologize to users except instead of a computer it's volunteer slave labour.
- Mistletoe 3y ago
  It’s so frustrating when you Google your problem and you read some Google or Apple or Microsoft product support page and see people like this responding. They absolutely never have the solution and it will still be marked as problem solved.
  - android42 3y ago
    > They absolutely never have the solution and it will still be marked as problem solved. This exactly, it's the most frustrating thing ever as a user, and makes me wonder what the point of these forums even is.
softinio 3y ago
My understanding is the volunteers do make some money helping via services like this: https://www.directly.com https://www.directly.com (looks like they got acquired and had some big companies using them so google using something similar I imagine: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/css-corp-acquires-san-francisco-based-directlys-ondemand-business-301505027.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/css-corp-acquires-s...)
sangnoir 3y ago
> As an aside, I am curious the motivation for customers to staff huge company support forums My guess is it's the same motivation for those who volunteer to help others in any other support forum. Human nature does not change based on the market cap of the company (if any) behind the product. What difference do you expect between this, and Stack Overflow contributors for Microsoft SQL Server or Blender? I wouldn't expect there to be a difference in motivation: some people simply enjoy helping others (even if it's in return of made-up internet points).
- onetokeoverthe 3y ago
  [dead]
- freetanga 3y ago
  I think Market Cap relates -loosely- to financial capacity of the company to have employees playing the support role. On the paying tiers of FAANG-like, Is crazy that these companies charge market price for their services yet the support is usually quite poor.
  - Scoundreller 3y ago
    A lot of people have forgotten that you can actually call companies and they do/will assist. Called Walmart and they got extra bike racks installed at my location. Have had to call eBay a number of times as a small-time seller. PayPal too. Got Google to replace my chromecast remote and they went through thorough troubleshooting steps before RMAing it. Of course, there are plenty of exceptions but not worth pretending that paid (by the vendor) support doesn’t exist.
    - b112 3y ago
      I believed, until you said PayPal support was helpful. PayPal support is what I envision the DMV in Soviet Russia was like. The outcome is support that makes you feel like you're bothering them, is barely concealing their hostility, lies about what's happening, and one wrong word and horrible, horrible things will happen to you. That's PayPal support on the best of days, like after the support person just received a 20% raise, or had a baby. On the bad days...
johnwheeler 3y ago
It’s really sad I think. Most of the people do it because it gives them a sense of importance and authority.
no_carrier 3y ago
I was Googling Pixel Watch 2 carrier availability for the Australian market and ended up on the Google Support thread where someone had asked when certain carriers will get the watch. The "accepted answer" was one of these support volunteers who was based in Europe and all they had done was regurgitated the support article and pretended it was an authoritative answer. They added no value whatsoever and caused the thread to be over thanks to their "accepted answer". I was confused why someone had wasted their time doing this, so I snooped around a bit. As far as I can tell it's a CV building exercise for some people and nothing more.
- dboreham 3y ago
  They're taking an inverse Turing test.
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago
  Adobe forum is terrible for this, their "MVPs" will dismiss your question right away often without even understand it and then it'll just be the accepted answer, and that's at best often they'll talk to you with condescension, claim you're doing it wrong, claim it works fine for them, claim it's not really a real issue etc.
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    I actually had what appears to be a real Adobe dev pop up and tell me to delete two files from my installation which actually solved the problem I've had for half a year with Photoshop crashing on startup. I guess they are out there somewhere!
jachee 3y ago
Because the people who lost files are the product Google sells (to advertisers), not the customer.
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
"In some ways, it's nice for there to be a responsive community, but in other ways, I think a trillion dollar company should pay for excellent customer service." Surely the company must provide customer service for advertisers. Perhaps it's excellent. Not sure that people using Google Drive for free are customers. They are potential ad targets and potential sources of data useful for an online ad services business, though.
- otabdeveloper4 3y ago
  > Surely the company must provide customer service for advertisers. Perhaps it's excellent. Not really. Google is a monopoly with a huge moat, so pretty much everything they do is pretty shit. (But yeah, for actual Google customers there's actually some sort of customer support.)
renewiltord 3y ago
I see you are looking to find out information about why people staff customer support forums for free. I can help you find out information about why people staff customer support forums for free. Please follow the instructions first here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38428901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38428901
CJefferson 3y ago
I recently tried to access someone at github. A page ( https://github.com/pricing https://github.com/pricing , I am a verified teacher, what happens if I already subscribed to co-pilot ) clearly tells me to contact support. I've decided it's simply impossible to contact anyone at github, every attempt just leads to an automated reply and my post being closed. I'm not sure there is anyone there. I tried posting ont he help forum, where I (of course) never got a reply. This has made me make sure nothing I care about is only on github -- as I don't expect to any recieve any help if I have any other problems in future. I should of course be careful anyway, but when you hit these problems you realise quite how hard it is to contact any modern large company.
- immibis 3y ago
  I tried to contact Github for a GDPR complaint, and received only an automated message. If they don't respond in a month then I get the legal right to sue them, but it will have to get in line behind AWS.
- a1o 3y ago
  In the past GitHub had a specific forum that worked outside of GitHub itself, and at that forum it wasn't hard to get attention from actual GitHub employees, but since they transitioned to the generic Discussion in the feedback repository, closing the old forums, it's got to the new state of things where it's impossible to talk with people from there.
- smithcoin 3y ago
  It’s impossible to get them to respond to my emails with a paid account. I have an enterprise account with a dedicated rep. To increase the number of seats on your contract you have to request that they do it. I had run out of seats and with a new dev starting it took a few days and emails to get the guy to do anything. I’m try to give you MORE money and it’s like pulling teeth. They’re my only option with Gitlab’s insane price increase.
  - Obscurity4340 3y ago
    Why do people use it at all over companies that have an incentive to offer and maintain a superior cloud product? Like why not Dropbox or Sync?
guluarte 3y ago
gamification, companies know people will do it for free so why pay?
- anuraaga 3y ago
  It would probably be worth paying/staffing whatever though since people may do something for free, but it may not be enough to make a happy end user. Not all companies miss this, Amazon has strict SLAs on responding to user requests, and this even includes GitHub issues. Personally, I find it rare, though not non-existent, to have a good experience with Google customer support or OSS while Amazon generally feels pretty good. Maybe just lucky of course but the brand effect is obvious to me and perhaps worth the companies spending a bit on.
  - iinnPP 3y ago
    I also experience generally great support(compared to average) from Amazon. Google has been the worst support I have ever dealt with. Google support is also poorly trained on social engineering.
gmgmgmgmgm 3y ago
They're just copying Apple? https://discussions.apple.com/welcome https://discussions.apple.com/welcome
izacus 3y ago
> In some ways, it’s nice for there to be a responsive community, but in other ways, I think a trillion dollar company should pay for excellent customer service. Not sure how much you're following financial news these days, but trillion dollar companies are getting outright massacred on Wall Street if they dare spend money on things deemed "unnecessary" by the bankers. Customer support organizations were the ones most targeted and hit by layoffs across the board to cut costs. After all, Google products are still being used after they fired large amount of support staff (not that support experience was good with them). It's a good example for other corporations to do the same - it's not like you'll go elsewhere, riiiight? Time to "cut the fat" (term I've seen on HN). (And that doesn't include internal pressures in these corporations to avoid unpromoteable, unsexy, expensive and boring work of supporting customers.)
Podgajski 3y ago
“ I think a trillion dollar company should pay for excellent customer service.” How do you think the became a trillion dollar company????!!!
- amelius 3y ago
  We should just ban ads so the customers are the customers and not the product. This entire construct should be illegal.
  - blagie 3y ago
    The unspoken secret here is that ads distort markets, suck up resources, and thereby make economies less efficient. Banning them would be an economic boon. There. I said the quiet part outloud.
    - cpcallen 3y ago
      I mostly agree with you, but I wonder if this view is a little simplistic. Where a competitive marketplace exists I don't see ads (especially ads purchased by big incumbent vendors) adding any value: it would be better overall if competitors spent that money improving the product (or service) rather than trying to persuade customers to purchase a less-good product (measuring "good" as value/cost, since there is a place for lower quality but lower cost options). But I do think there might be an economic argument in favour of at least some advertising to bring awareness of new market entrants, and especially of new categories of product/service. (One counterargument might be that this should properly be the role of journalists, and I agree that in an ideal world it would be. But the current dismal quality of the mainstream media suggests that economic incentives may actively hinder having ideal journalism…)
      - amelius 3y ago
        Ads could have a place on dedicated websites, where people go to learn about products. So we see ads only when we want to, and not whenever the company wants to distract us which is basically always. If this means people see fewer ads, then that's a great way to reduce over-consumption.
Angostura 3y ago
I used to be a ‘Helper’ on Reddit’s /r/Applehelp. Mainly a little tickle of pleasure in helping someone out combined with the pleasing puzzle solving. Left Reddit after the whole 3rd party app shenanigans sadly.
hnburnsy 3y ago
It is ironic that to be in the Google Play store, you must offer customer support... https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/113477?hl=en https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ... >For each of your apps, you must: >Respond to user questions about paid apps or in-app purchases on time: You must respond to customer support questions within three business days. If Google contacts you about an urgent product issue, you must respond within 24 hours.
- mcv 3y ago
  Rules for thee but not for me.
JohnFen 3y ago
> I think a trillion dollar company should pay for excellent customer service. Or any customer service. The support forums are worthless except for really trivial things that can be resolved equally well elsewhere.

ChatGTP 3y ago

They're not a trillion dollar company because they hire good support staff and pay them well. It's a shame they don't do this.

betaby 3y ago

I puzzled why non-employees even involved in such discussions. There is absolutely zero help they can provide in such cases.

unleaded 3y ago
? Maybe not in cases like this but quite a few times I've googled an issue with a google/microsoft product, found a post on their forums with an answer from a Verified Service Technician or something like that saying "Update your drivers, run sfc /scannow, and turn it off and on again", then run the same search with "reddit" at the end and got an actual answer
- wildrhythms 3y ago
  On the contrary, I've found those 'Microsoft experts' on the official forums to have less knowledge and poorer troubleshooting skills than a tier 1 helpdesk technician.
  - mattkevan 3y ago
    The community ‘experts’ on the Adobe forums can be actively hostile and rude. I posted a question a while back questioning why After Effects drive-by installs Cinema 4D without warning, and they just could not understand why the lack of notification or consent was a problem, feeling strongly that I should shut up and be grateful even the tiniest of blessings our lords and masters at Adobe see fit to bestow upon our hard drives.
android42 3y ago
Same here, especially since most of the time it's an unhelpful answer that dodges the actual problem or generic advice that doesn't apply, then they mark it as solved. Which then furthers the question, why? I could understand the odd person just trying to be helpful because they had the same problem, found the post with no solution, figured it out, then answered with theirs, but for the ones who seem to spend countless hours ranking up, either by gaming it, or the few actually being helpful, does it lead to a chance of being hired or something? Creating a system like that almost feels like it should be illegal, almost like the companies that give extensive case studies for interviews and take the work with no intention of hiring the interviewees, or unpaid internships where they don't even bother teaching and just give grunt work.
cwillu 3y ago
The “employees” you can talk to can't provide any help either; have a current billing issue due to a ui error, and there's no escalation path, it's just increasing unlikely variants of “try pressing the button on a brand new stock android device using the foo app in safe mode”.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  I keep getting $0.49 and other random amounts charged to an ancient card by Google (one that I long ago used for the business). This is a massive nuisance but there is absolutely no way to trace these payments to anything in any of the Google products I'm using. So I have to keep this card alive and that's more than a bit problematic because that legal entity has merged with another and the bank really wants that card gone (which makes no sense, but that's what they want). So, here I am, stuck between two idiotic bureaucracies with no way to resolve the problem on either side. Google doesn't answer to anything, the bank is - at least on paper, I've managed to stretch this for three years now - unwilling to bend their rules because the amounts are so tiny. But you can see the ghost of what I'm worried about: you'll see that if that card eventually does get cancelled that that $0.49 or whatever is a reason to lock my account or some other idiotic move.
  - humpydumpy 3y ago
    this is a simple problem. Google is doing weird stuff, not replying to your questions - clearly not something you want to have a relationship with. So move away from google, cancel your card, problem solved.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      For an unrealistic definition of 'simple'.
      - humpydumpy 3y ago
        'simple' in that the solution is obvious. If this obvious solution is unrealistic for you, then you have made yourself too dependent on google, or are just unwilling to solve the problem. In both cases just stop whining.
Faark 3y ago
Having done pretty much this a lifetime ago: A lot of the first level bug support work is basically deduplication (Incl "have you tried...") and asking for aditional/specific information. Excessively browsing a bug tracker is one of the best qualifications, and if you're doing so anyway, why not also help a few lost users here and there? At least that's where it starts... :D
- yencabulator 3y ago
  If only they had something useful. The mystery is why somebody replies like this person, who added absolutely nothing to the conversation and is a "Diamond Product Expert": https://support.google.com/drive/thread/245055606?hl=en&msgid=245082799 https://support.google.com/drive/thread/245055606?hl=en&msgi...
nikanj 3y ago
There is absolutely zero help google employees can provide too
- simfree 3y ago
  This is not true, Googlers (at least Kirkland office based ones) can file an internal ticket if they care. Hence the common recommendation to start spamming first.last@Google.com addresses until you annoy someone internal who is willing to file a ticket on your behalf if you don't have any capable Googlers in your social graph.
  - KMag 3y ago
    At least when I worked at Google over a decade ago, I'm pretty sure first.last@Google.com didn't route to my inbox. (And roughly 70 people worldwide share my surname, according to one of those sites that shows you where people with your surname live.)
HenryBemis 3y ago
I am sure that whoever created this ticket had checked a couple of things (trash/bin) and was adamant that the state of the 'drive' was back in May 2023. Considering through the amount of times that someone said "did you try turning it off and on again?" AND it has has solved the problem, make such forum users/helpers like that very useful.

gumby 3y ago

User generated content is the future, doncha know?

choppaface 3y ago

For most popular consumer products, there will be expert users who want to help. Official forums are a great way to engage those experts. Otherwise the experts will just start their own forums (and often do) e.g. forums for cars / mechanical issues. Should Google be paying more to provide customer service? Absolutely! But it’s just not in Google’s culture to do customer service. Google likes to develop products with extremely lean / efficient burn rates. Googlers value efficiency orders of magnitude more than human connection.

freetanga 3y ago
That last line is true. If it’s ok with you, I will print it, frame it and place it in my office so next time the GCP Sales Rep comes begging for a share of our cloud presence I can tell him to thank Mr Pichar for their 4th place.
- choppaface 3y ago
  Worst “customer service” I’ve ever had with Google is with their Google Cloud FDEs and PMs. The best strategy is to use Google Cloud as leverage to re-negotiate AWS or Azure bills or use free gcloud credits and then don’t sign. Don’t ignore them, treat them as they treat you.

SanjayMehta 3y ago

It’s a deliberate strategy to reduce costs on the part of the company. They “gamify” volunteer support with badges etc. One place I worked called it “Level 0” support in that it cost the company zero dollars.

YPPH 3y ago

It's frankly infuriating when you get generic responses from someone who has no internal systems access, means to address the problem, or ability to escalate to an engineer. Often these purported super users reply with silly generic suggestions, or meaningless requests for information. There's nothing worse than posting highly specific debugging information to a forum, which is not read by engineers, and is instead replied to by someone suggesting you try logging out and in again. For example, in this thread, "Device", "Drive for desktop version", and "Sync mode" isn't remotely relevant to restoring user files. And the super user cannot do anything with that information. If that information is truly necessary, a Google engineer can post in the thread requesting it. And they do it all for a meaningless diamond badge. You may as well have AI doing it.

Ferret7446 3y ago
You are not the target audience. The lower 99% of users do not know how to right justify text. For them, the "community support" is valuable. I don't deny that AI could take over that role soon
immibis 3y ago
It's the equivalent of getting ChatGPT to apologize to users except instead of a computer it's volunteer slave labour.
Mistletoe 3y ago
It’s so frustrating when you Google your problem and you read some Google or Apple or Microsoft product support page and see people like this responding. They absolutely never have the solution and it will still be marked as problem solved.
- android42 3y ago
  > They absolutely never have the solution and it will still be marked as problem solved. This exactly, it's the most frustrating thing ever as a user, and makes me wonder what the point of these forums even is.

softinio 3y ago

My understanding is the volunteers do make some money helping via services like this: https://www.directly.com https://www.directly.com (looks like they got acquired and had some big companies using them so google using something similar I imagine: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/css-corp-acquires-san-francisco-based-directlys-ondemand-business-301505027.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/css-corp-acquires-s...)

sangnoir 3y ago

> As an aside, I am curious the motivation for customers to staff huge company support forums My guess is it's the same motivation for those who volunteer to help others in any other support forum. Human nature does not change based on the market cap of the company (if any) behind the product. What difference do you expect between this, and Stack Overflow contributors for Microsoft SQL Server or Blender? I wouldn't expect there to be a difference in motivation: some people simply enjoy helping others (even if it's in return of made-up internet points).

onetokeoverthe 3y ago
[dead]
freetanga 3y ago
I think Market Cap relates -loosely- to financial capacity of the company to have employees playing the support role. On the paying tiers of FAANG-like, Is crazy that these companies charge market price for their services yet the support is usually quite poor.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  A lot of people have forgotten that you can actually call companies and they do/will assist. Called Walmart and they got extra bike racks installed at my location. Have had to call eBay a number of times as a small-time seller. PayPal too. Got Google to replace my chromecast remote and they went through thorough troubleshooting steps before RMAing it. Of course, there are plenty of exceptions but not worth pretending that paid (by the vendor) support doesn’t exist.
  - b112 3y ago
    I believed, until you said PayPal support was helpful. PayPal support is what I envision the DMV in Soviet Russia was like. The outcome is support that makes you feel like you're bothering them, is barely concealing their hostility, lies about what's happening, and one wrong word and horrible, horrible things will happen to you. That's PayPal support on the best of days, like after the support person just received a 20% raise, or had a baby. On the bad days...

johnwheeler 3y ago

It’s really sad I think. Most of the people do it because it gives them a sense of importance and authority.

no_carrier 3y ago

I was Googling Pixel Watch 2 carrier availability for the Australian market and ended up on the Google Support thread where someone had asked when certain carriers will get the watch. The "accepted answer" was one of these support volunteers who was based in Europe and all they had done was regurgitated the support article and pretended it was an authoritative answer. They added no value whatsoever and caused the thread to be over thanks to their "accepted answer". I was confused why someone had wasted their time doing this, so I snooped around a bit. As far as I can tell it's a CV building exercise for some people and nothing more.

dboreham 3y ago
They're taking an inverse Turing test.
whywhywhywhy 3y ago
Adobe forum is terrible for this, their "MVPs" will dismiss your question right away often without even understand it and then it'll just be the accepted answer, and that's at best often they'll talk to you with condescension, claim you're doing it wrong, claim it works fine for them, claim it's not really a real issue etc.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  I actually had what appears to be a real Adobe dev pop up and tell me to delete two files from my installation which actually solved the problem I've had for half a year with Photoshop crashing on startup. I guess they are out there somewhere!

jachee 3y ago

Because the people who lost files are the product Google sells (to advertisers), not the customer.

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

"In some ways, it's nice for there to be a responsive community, but in other ways, I think a trillion dollar company should pay for excellent customer service." Surely the company must provide customer service for advertisers. Perhaps it's excellent. Not sure that people using Google Drive for free are customers. They are potential ad targets and potential sources of data useful for an online ad services business, though.

otabdeveloper4 3y ago
> Surely the company must provide customer service for advertisers. Perhaps it's excellent. Not really. Google is a monopoly with a huge moat, so pretty much everything they do is pretty shit. (But yeah, for actual Google customers there's actually some sort of customer support.)

renewiltord 3y ago

I see you are looking to find out information about why people staff customer support forums for free. I can help you find out information about why people staff customer support forums for free. Please follow the instructions first here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38428901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38428901

CJefferson 3y ago

I recently tried to access someone at github. A page ( https://github.com/pricing https://github.com/pricing , I am a verified teacher, what happens if I already subscribed to co-pilot ) clearly tells me to contact support. I've decided it's simply impossible to contact anyone at github, every attempt just leads to an automated reply and my post being closed. I'm not sure there is anyone there. I tried posting ont he help forum, where I (of course) never got a reply. This has made me make sure nothing I care about is only on github -- as I don't expect to any recieve any help if I have any other problems in future. I should of course be careful anyway, but when you hit these problems you realise quite how hard it is to contact any modern large company.

immibis 3y ago
I tried to contact Github for a GDPR complaint, and received only an automated message. If they don't respond in a month then I get the legal right to sue them, but it will have to get in line behind AWS.
a1o 3y ago
In the past GitHub had a specific forum that worked outside of GitHub itself, and at that forum it wasn't hard to get attention from actual GitHub employees, but since they transitioned to the generic Discussion in the feedback repository, closing the old forums, it's got to the new state of things where it's impossible to talk with people from there.
smithcoin 3y ago
It’s impossible to get them to respond to my emails with a paid account. I have an enterprise account with a dedicated rep. To increase the number of seats on your contract you have to request that they do it. I had run out of seats and with a new dev starting it took a few days and emails to get the guy to do anything. I’m try to give you MORE money and it’s like pulling teeth. They’re my only option with Gitlab’s insane price increase.
- Obscurity4340 3y ago
  Why do people use it at all over companies that have an incentive to offer and maintain a superior cloud product? Like why not Dropbox or Sync?

guluarte 3y ago

gamification, companies know people will do it for free so why pay?

anuraaga 3y ago
It would probably be worth paying/staffing whatever though since people may do something for free, but it may not be enough to make a happy end user. Not all companies miss this, Amazon has strict SLAs on responding to user requests, and this even includes GitHub issues. Personally, I find it rare, though not non-existent, to have a good experience with Google customer support or OSS while Amazon generally feels pretty good. Maybe just lucky of course but the brand effect is obvious to me and perhaps worth the companies spending a bit on.
- iinnPP 3y ago
  I also experience generally great support(compared to average) from Amazon. Google has been the worst support I have ever dealt with. Google support is also poorly trained on social engineering.

gmgmgmgmgm 3y ago

They're just copying Apple? https://discussions.apple.com/welcome https://discussions.apple.com/welcome

izacus 3y ago

> In some ways, it’s nice for there to be a responsive community, but in other ways, I think a trillion dollar company should pay for excellent customer service. Not sure how much you're following financial news these days, but trillion dollar companies are getting outright massacred on Wall Street if they dare spend money on things deemed "unnecessary" by the bankers. Customer support organizations were the ones most targeted and hit by layoffs across the board to cut costs. After all, Google products are still being used after they fired large amount of support staff (not that support experience was good with them). It's a good example for other corporations to do the same - it's not like you'll go elsewhere, riiiight? Time to "cut the fat" (term I've seen on HN). (And that doesn't include internal pressures in these corporations to avoid unpromoteable, unsexy, expensive and boring work of supporting customers.)

Podgajski 3y ago

“ I think a trillion dollar company should pay for excellent customer service.” How do you think the became a trillion dollar company????!!!

amelius 3y ago
We should just ban ads so the customers are the customers and not the product. This entire construct should be illegal.
- blagie 3y ago
  The unspoken secret here is that ads distort markets, suck up resources, and thereby make economies less efficient. Banning them would be an economic boon. There. I said the quiet part outloud.
  - cpcallen 3y ago
    I mostly agree with you, but I wonder if this view is a little simplistic. Where a competitive marketplace exists I don't see ads (especially ads purchased by big incumbent vendors) adding any value: it would be better overall if competitors spent that money improving the product (or service) rather than trying to persuade customers to purchase a less-good product (measuring "good" as value/cost, since there is a place for lower quality but lower cost options). But I do think there might be an economic argument in favour of at least some advertising to bring awareness of new market entrants, and especially of new categories of product/service. (One counterargument might be that this should properly be the role of journalists, and I agree that in an ideal world it would be. But the current dismal quality of the mainstream media suggests that economic incentives may actively hinder having ideal journalism…)
    - amelius 3y ago
      Ads could have a place on dedicated websites, where people go to learn about products. So we see ads only when we want to, and not whenever the company wants to distract us which is basically always. If this means people see fewer ads, then that's a great way to reduce over-consumption.

Angostura 3y ago

I used to be a ‘Helper’ on Reddit’s /r/Applehelp. Mainly a little tickle of pleasure in helping someone out combined with the pleasing puzzle solving. Left Reddit after the whole 3rd party app shenanigans sadly.

hnburnsy 3y ago

It is ironic that to be in the Google Play store, you must offer customer support... https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/113477?hl=en https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ... >For each of your apps, you must: >Respond to user questions about paid apps or in-app purchases on time: You must respond to customer support questions within three business days. If Google contacts you about an urgent product issue, you must respond within 24 hours.

mcv 3y ago
Rules for thee but not for me.

JohnFen 3y ago

> I think a trillion dollar company should pay for excellent customer service. Or any customer service. The support forums are worthless except for really trivial things that can be resolved equally well elsewhere.