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Same thing with Google Ads, often your account will get suspended for no sane reason and you need an insider to reactivate it, or you're starting from scratch.

Same thing with Google Ads, often your account will get suspended for no sane reason and you need an insider to reactivate it, or you're starting from scratch. Appealing only sends you through a kafkaesque circle of hell of support staff who are unable to answer any questions or fix anything, they won't even tell you what exactly you violated or how to return into their good graces. It's effectively a black market that formed because the official channels abdicated from their responsibilities or provide a terrible service even to paying customers, at least SMBs who aren't big enough for a Google to care.

JohnMakin 2y ago
> Same thing with Google Ads, often your account will get suspended for no sane reason and you need an insider to reactivate it, or you're starting from scratch. Yep. Absurd and completely common. There is pretty much no one to reach out to otherwise. Lost an account with several thousand dollars in it this way. I consider this straight up theft, and it's been like this for a long time.
- immibis 2y ago
  Lawsuit will get that back. Companies are supposed to behave sanely because they know if they don't the court will force them to and it's a lot more trouble. But we don't sue companies any more, so they can do whatever.
  - JohnMakin 2y ago
    It isn’t really practical to sue a large company with essentially infinite resources that can drag out something for years, and can always turn around and say “you violated TOS” or some other spurious reason that will get them out of it. I’m not trying to be dismissive, but just go search online for google support threads of people dealing with the exact same issue I had - it’s common and no amount of lol law is going to deal with it short of serious consequences. A thousand individuals suing for a thousand dollars isn’t going to move that needle, like at all.
dylan604 2y ago
> Appealing only sends you through a kafkaesque circle of hell of support staff who are unable to answer any questions or fix anything. This is strange to me in that you're implying there is actually staff. Are you actually having a human employed by Google acting in the role of support that cannot help solve the issue?
- thesuperbigfrog 2y ago
  >> Are you actually having a human employed by Google acting in the role of support that cannot help solve the issue? That is exactly what happened to my coworker. She bought a Pixel phone from the Google Store and it got lost in shipping. Shipment tracking showed it arriving at the carrier's hub and never leaving for a month. She called customer service and the first tier workers followed a script that was essentially "apologize and ask the customer to check back later". After many missed "it should start moving again by $DATE" promises, she was able to get the case escalated to Tier 2 workers. They said they had the ability to create a replacement order, but there was no available inventory in the phone color she had originally ordered. They also had no answer about how to prevent a possible replacement order from shipping the same way and potentially getting stuck. Finally she was able to get the case escalated to Tier 3 support. The tier 3 worker created a replacement order with an upgraded phone compared to the original order and ensured it would ship from a different warehouse than the original order that got lost. All this took six weeks and many frustrating hours on the phone for her. And this was for an order directly from the Google Store website.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    > She called customer service of which party in this problem? seems like contacting the carrier would have been more productive. contacting Googs about a delayed package seems like the wrong direction to follow. i realize this verges on victim blaming, but just trying to suggest other methods of problem solving.
    - genewitch 2y ago
      the carrier would also never say "you need to contact the manufacturer"
crmd 2y ago
I like to imagine how insanely good Google’s customer service would be if no company including them captured more than 5-10% of market share.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 2y ago
  Yep, it feels like them being a monopoly effectively kills every incentive for them to try harder. It's reminiscent of bureaucracy in third world countries where you will not get your passport issued or renewed until you grease enough palms of the right people who feel entitled to a certain level of corruption for their respective role.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    > until you grease enough palms of the right people who feel entitled to a certain level of corruption for their respective role. The capitalist way of looking at that would be they maximally decreased the market price of their service, and the bribery is simply accounting for externalities that you weren't paying for in that market price. Or in other words, bribery is their support-funding model.
    - 6510 2y ago
      The model involves artificial scarcity and setting examples. You don't give a passport to 1000 people, charge $5 and you have $5000 charge $500 and you have $50 000, charge $5000 and you have $100 000, charge $20 000 and you have $200 000. I know one story where a prison charged 1 million for release. If extended family is not extremely poor they should really put their 3-50 k into the bag each to avoid all kinds of free services like torturing the victim and getting abducted themselves. If you [say] didn't buy the passport it is only fair to put you in prison? $20 000 is much more value for money than you think!
  - crmd 2y ago
    100%. Monopoly destroys value for every market participant except for major shareholders of the monopolist.
  - 2y ago

JohnMakin 2y ago

> Same thing with Google Ads, often your account will get suspended for no sane reason and you need an insider to reactivate it, or you're starting from scratch. Yep. Absurd and completely common. There is pretty much no one to reach out to otherwise. Lost an account with several thousand dollars in it this way. I consider this straight up theft, and it's been like this for a long time.

immibis 2y ago
Lawsuit will get that back. Companies are supposed to behave sanely because they know if they don't the court will force them to and it's a lot more trouble. But we don't sue companies any more, so they can do whatever.
- JohnMakin 2y ago
  It isn’t really practical to sue a large company with essentially infinite resources that can drag out something for years, and can always turn around and say “you violated TOS” or some other spurious reason that will get them out of it. I’m not trying to be dismissive, but just go search online for google support threads of people dealing with the exact same issue I had - it’s common and no amount of lol law is going to deal with it short of serious consequences. A thousand individuals suing for a thousand dollars isn’t going to move that needle, like at all.

dylan604 2y ago

> Appealing only sends you through a kafkaesque circle of hell of support staff who are unable to answer any questions or fix anything. This is strange to me in that you're implying there is actually staff. Are you actually having a human employed by Google acting in the role of support that cannot help solve the issue?

thesuperbigfrog 2y ago
>> Are you actually having a human employed by Google acting in the role of support that cannot help solve the issue? That is exactly what happened to my coworker. She bought a Pixel phone from the Google Store and it got lost in shipping. Shipment tracking showed it arriving at the carrier's hub and never leaving for a month. She called customer service and the first tier workers followed a script that was essentially "apologize and ask the customer to check back later". After many missed "it should start moving again by $DATE" promises, she was able to get the case escalated to Tier 2 workers. They said they had the ability to create a replacement order, but there was no available inventory in the phone color she had originally ordered. They also had no answer about how to prevent a possible replacement order from shipping the same way and potentially getting stuck. Finally she was able to get the case escalated to Tier 3 support. The tier 3 worker created a replacement order with an upgraded phone compared to the original order and ensured it would ship from a different warehouse than the original order that got lost. All this took six weeks and many frustrating hours on the phone for her. And this was for an order directly from the Google Store website.
- dylan604 2y ago
  > She called customer service of which party in this problem? seems like contacting the carrier would have been more productive. contacting Googs about a delayed package seems like the wrong direction to follow. i realize this verges on victim blaming, but just trying to suggest other methods of problem solving.
  - genewitch 2y ago
    the carrier would also never say "you need to contact the manufacturer"

crmd 2y ago

I like to imagine how insanely good Google’s customer service would be if no company including them captured more than 5-10% of market share.

8f2ab37a-ed6c 2y ago
Yep, it feels like them being a monopoly effectively kills every incentive for them to try harder. It's reminiscent of bureaucracy in third world countries where you will not get your passport issued or renewed until you grease enough palms of the right people who feel entitled to a certain level of corruption for their respective role.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  > until you grease enough palms of the right people who feel entitled to a certain level of corruption for their respective role. The capitalist way of looking at that would be they maximally decreased the market price of their service, and the bribery is simply accounting for externalities that you weren't paying for in that market price. Or in other words, bribery is their support-funding model.
  - 6510 2y ago
    The model involves artificial scarcity and setting examples. You don't give a passport to 1000 people, charge $5 and you have $5000 charge $500 and you have $50 000, charge $5000 and you have $100 000, charge $20 000 and you have $200 000. I know one story where a prison charged 1 million for release. If extended family is not extremely poor they should really put their 3-50 k into the bag each to avoid all kinds of free services like torturing the victim and getting abducted themselves. If you [say] didn't buy the passport it is only fair to put you in prison? $20 000 is much more value for money than you think!
- crmd 2y ago
  100%. Monopoly destroys value for every market participant except for major shareholders of the monopolist.
- 2y ago