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> I knew this was impossible, because… There’s an easier tell. It’s impossible because you can’t to get Google to help you at all about any account issues, nev

> I knew this was impossible, because… There’s an easier tell. It’s impossible because you can’t to get Google to help you at all about any account issues, never mind them being as proactive as to call you. In other words if Google call you, it’s not Google. It’s slightly depressing that there are probably more fake Google support staff than real ones.

AlienRobot 2y ago
If it weren't for the routine ex-Googler postmortem blog post shared on HN I'd think Google doesn't even have human employees. The greatest mystery of my life is what is a "Google Product Expert" on their community forums whom I assume: 1. isn't an employee speaking as the company. 2. is someone given the title by the company. 3. spends a lot of time answering questions despite not being paid for it. 4. can contact Google employees somehow. The only perks for this that Google lists is that you can join a secret club of Google Product Experts. It feels like gig economy applied to customer support.
- nox101 2y ago
  several huge companies do this. here's one https://discussions.apple.com https://discussions.apple.com so frustrating
  - rawgabbit 2y ago
    But if you have a problem and you need to show that you own appleid xxxx@xxx.com, can’t you go to an Apple Store and they will help you? I believe the frustration with Google is that there is not an actual human the regular person can talk to.
    - nox101 2y ago
      I don't live within 200 miles of a apple store
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    Apple isn’t a good example to use here because you can contact a human at Apple very easily: https://support.apple.com/contact https://support.apple.com/contact They will even remote into your device and walk you through how to do something.
bad_haircut72 2y ago
They will reach put to try and help sell you more ad spend. If that was a scam its very good cause they set up my adwords campaign for me.
- thanksgiving 2y ago
  I have a similar anecdote which isn't very relevant except it felt like googlers now care about how they can help make google more money. I would have never expected engineers at Google to care about how to make more money for google like doesn't the money just flow in...
Nzen 2y ago
In case you would like a concrete example to ground the cynicism about corporate trade offs around customer support, I recommend watching Jill Bearup's 10 minute video [0] about this week's demonetization. For example, she has to deal with some form that she "can't submit", a customer service contact 12 time zones away (so email replies are 12 hours delayed), and an account manager who is non-responsive. In her court, are some unaffiliated google employees giving guidance, but only because they were already part of her youtube watching audience. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RZHajVV9PA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RZHajVV9PA
- maeil 2y ago
  > For example, she has to deal with some form that she "can't submit", a customer service contact 12 time zones away (so email replies are 12 hours delayed), At that point I'd set up an LLM agent to reply for me. Big Tech are no longer the only ones who can pretend to be a human.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
    I smell a product idea...
avidiax 2y ago
I feel Google, Facebook, etc. all need to setup actual phone numbers and chat rooms, and make them rank highly on searches for "Google support phone number", "Google fraud department", "Google account recovery department", "Google Live Support Chat" etc. Then those numbers should simply play a message that this is the only official phone number, and no human will ever call from or answer this number, and the company does not offer customer support or appeals to account problems. They also need to make searching for fraud phone numbers return anti-fraud messaging rather than what it currently does. Seems like the entire 844-906 exchange is fraudulent [1]. I had a family member that just got scammed because they panicked after their Facebook account got banned, basically exactly like [2]. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=844-906 https://www.google.com/search?q=844-906 [2] https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/01/31/511824829/-facebook-customer-service-is-a-scam-literally https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/01/31/51...
- otteromkram 2y ago
  Where do you think Google would rank its own support, help, etc., contact pages and info if not at the top of searches like the ones you mentioned?
  - fn-mote 2y ago
    The problem is the subjunctive here. It's not where the _would_ rank ... it's where they currently _do_ rank. In my test, the AI Overview produced accurate information ("Google does not offer phone support for account recovery") but none of the other hits on the first page say anything like "Phone support calls are always fraud. Google will not call you."
    - Super_Jambo 2y ago
      I think the point they are making is that google will let the fraudsters pay to place higher than the warnings because it's profitable to do so.
  - dustyventure 2y ago
coliveira 2y ago
Somehow Google and other tech companies are not required to have a customer service that actually solves the legitimate problems customers have with their services. I wonder how they are allowed to do this not just in the US but across the world.
- cj 2y ago
  I pay for Google Workspace for my personal Gmail account. It’s billed per user (with no minimums) so it’s actually very cheap even for the “enterprise” version. The support is excellent. I can get a human on a live chat and request a screenshare and phone call session with a few clicks in under 10 minutes. But of course that’s only available to me because I pay for the business version of Google albeit for personal use.
- thephyber 2y ago
  Software is not considered a “product”, so it doesn’t come with the government protections against companies that sell defective or dangerous products. Also, you don’t pay for Google. It’s a free search engine and a free email service. You get tech support if you pay for the enterprise workspace features.
  - coliveira 2y ago
    So, if it's not a product it shouldn't be sold or leased, and people shouldn't be hired to build it.
    - thephyber 2y ago
      To be clear, I was talking about the legal regime. Your snark should be directed towards legislators, not commenters on HN.
lockyc 2y ago
Unless their salespeople are calling you
Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
Being guaranteed to be able to talk to a human would be great, but I just don't see how it can possibly scale to over 1 billion users that aren't paying like gmail has. Years ago, my brother used to work for XBox Live Tech Support, and he said that easily over half the calls he got were for things that customers could easily self-service, like a password reset. Many tech issues were fixed by the most basic troubleshooting step: Power cycling. Meanwhile, my uncle works XFinity tech support, and he'll frequently get calls when a website has an outage, not to mention how many non-technical people think any internet-related issue, such as a forgotten Google password, means calling your ISP. This doesn't even begin to talk about bad actors calling tech support to try to break into someone else's account. Google accounts are high-value targets. Once you've gotten in, there's a really good chance you could easily pivot to all of that person's other accounts. To handle the call volume that a service like Google would have, if they offered phone tech support, the amount of staff they would need would be in the hundreds of thousands, and so many of the calls they take would be wastes of time. There are a lot of non-technical people that have no idea how things work and basically think that Google IS the Internet.
- hamandcheese 2y ago
  > but I just don't see how it can possibly scale to over 1 billion users that aren't paying like gmail has. Why not charge for support? You bet your ass I would pay a support fee if my Gmail account was having issues.
  - toss1 2y ago
    Yup $19.95 per incident to talk to someone who could ACTUALLY resolve an issue would be totally worth it, especially for people who suddenly find themselves locked out for no known reason. A fee would also filter out most the silly calls, and if not, and they can resolve a password reset in 2 minutes, it is way worth it for both the caller and Google.
    - dmd 2y ago
      That exists - it’s called Google Workspace.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
eschneider 2y ago
Right? "Google support" calling is an obvious tell.
samlinnfer 2y ago
I had a legit call come from Google Maps and I called them a scammer and various other names.
SeanAnderson 2y ago
I had Google call me once :) It was when I was riding in a Waymo and one of the screens in the vehicle was lagging a little bit. They made the surprising choice of calling my phone, rather than ringing the car itself, and I didn't pick up because... who picks up when your phone says, "Call from Google" :) They called the car shortly afterward to reassure me that the lagging screen wasn't an indicator that the car would underperform.
ChrisClark 2y ago
I got one of the same calls (didn't believe them). Afterwards I phoned Google support and they said the same thing, they will never call you. I had them confirm nothing was wrong with my account, just in case. So it's very possible to phone Google support, just don't believe anyone who calls you.
throaway920181 2y ago
I had a weird security alert on my Google account the other night after trying to do a "Sign in with Google" to a service I've used for years. Trying to view my account/security info kept redirecting me to a page instructing me on how to clear cookies. I clicked support and was able to get a call right away. But I pay $20/year for Google One.
TacticalCoder 2y ago
> There’s an easier tell. It’s impossible because you can’t to get Google to help you at all about any account issues, ... Paying Google apps / GSuite users can call a number and it's real humans answering (and they're very helpful). But indeed I don't think they proactively call you.
derangedHorse 2y ago
> It’s slightly depressing that there are probably more fake Google support staff than real ones. I've never thought of it that way but you're right! Dealing with support at most tech companies is a horrible experience and is usually something I research before using a product where a failure in service provision could lead to catastrophic results.

AlienRobot 2y ago

If it weren't for the routine ex-Googler postmortem blog post shared on HN I'd think Google doesn't even have human employees. The greatest mystery of my life is what is a "Google Product Expert" on their community forums whom I assume: 1. isn't an employee speaking as the company. 2. is someone given the title by the company. 3. spends a lot of time answering questions despite not being paid for it. 4. can contact Google employees somehow. The only perks for this that Google lists is that you can join a secret club of Google Product Experts. It feels like gig economy applied to customer support.

nox101 2y ago
several huge companies do this. here's one https://discussions.apple.com https://discussions.apple.com so frustrating
- rawgabbit 2y ago
  But if you have a problem and you need to show that you own appleid xxxx@xxx.com, can’t you go to an Apple Store and they will help you? I believe the frustration with Google is that there is not an actual human the regular person can talk to.
  - nox101 2y ago
    I don't live within 200 miles of a apple store
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  Apple isn’t a good example to use here because you can contact a human at Apple very easily: https://support.apple.com/contact https://support.apple.com/contact They will even remote into your device and walk you through how to do something.

bad_haircut72 2y ago

They will reach put to try and help sell you more ad spend. If that was a scam its very good cause they set up my adwords campaign for me.

thanksgiving 2y ago
I have a similar anecdote which isn't very relevant except it felt like googlers now care about how they can help make google more money. I would have never expected engineers at Google to care about how to make more money for google like doesn't the money just flow in...

Nzen 2y ago

In case you would like a concrete example to ground the cynicism about corporate trade offs around customer support, I recommend watching Jill Bearup's 10 minute video [0] about this week's demonetization. For example, she has to deal with some form that she "can't submit", a customer service contact 12 time zones away (so email replies are 12 hours delayed), and an account manager who is non-responsive. In her court, are some unaffiliated google employees giving guidance, but only because they were already part of her youtube watching audience. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RZHajVV9PA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RZHajVV9PA

maeil 2y ago
> For example, she has to deal with some form that she "can't submit", a customer service contact 12 time zones away (so email replies are 12 hours delayed), At that point I'd set up an LLM agent to reply for me. Big Tech are no longer the only ones who can pretend to be a human.
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
  I smell a product idea...

avidiax 2y ago

I feel Google, Facebook, etc. all need to setup actual phone numbers and chat rooms, and make them rank highly on searches for "Google support phone number", "Google fraud department", "Google account recovery department", "Google Live Support Chat" etc. Then those numbers should simply play a message that this is the only official phone number, and no human will ever call from or answer this number, and the company does not offer customer support or appeals to account problems. They also need to make searching for fraud phone numbers return anti-fraud messaging rather than what it currently does. Seems like the entire 844-906 exchange is fraudulent [1]. I had a family member that just got scammed because they panicked after their Facebook account got banned, basically exactly like [2]. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=844-906 https://www.google.com/search?q=844-906 [2] https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/01/31/511824829/-facebook-customer-service-is-a-scam-literally https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/01/31/51...

otteromkram 2y ago
Where do you think Google would rank its own support, help, etc., contact pages and info if not at the top of searches like the ones you mentioned?
- fn-mote 2y ago
  The problem is the subjunctive here. It's not where the _would_ rank ... it's where they currently _do_ rank. In my test, the AI Overview produced accurate information ("Google does not offer phone support for account recovery") but none of the other hits on the first page say anything like "Phone support calls are always fraud. Google will not call you."
  - Super_Jambo 2y ago
    I think the point they are making is that google will let the fraudsters pay to place higher than the warnings because it's profitable to do so.
- dustyventure 2y ago

coliveira 2y ago

Somehow Google and other tech companies are not required to have a customer service that actually solves the legitimate problems customers have with their services. I wonder how they are allowed to do this not just in the US but across the world.

cj 2y ago
I pay for Google Workspace for my personal Gmail account. It’s billed per user (with no minimums) so it’s actually very cheap even for the “enterprise” version. The support is excellent. I can get a human on a live chat and request a screenshare and phone call session with a few clicks in under 10 minutes. But of course that’s only available to me because I pay for the business version of Google albeit for personal use.
thephyber 2y ago
Software is not considered a “product”, so it doesn’t come with the government protections against companies that sell defective or dangerous products. Also, you don’t pay for Google. It’s a free search engine and a free email service. You get tech support if you pay for the enterprise workspace features.
- coliveira 2y ago
  So, if it's not a product it shouldn't be sold or leased, and people shouldn't be hired to build it.
  - thephyber 2y ago
    To be clear, I was talking about the legal regime. Your snark should be directed towards legislators, not commenters on HN.

lockyc 2y ago

Unless their salespeople are calling you

Sohcahtoa82 2y ago

Being guaranteed to be able to talk to a human would be great, but I just don't see how it can possibly scale to over 1 billion users that aren't paying like gmail has. Years ago, my brother used to work for XBox Live Tech Support, and he said that easily over half the calls he got were for things that customers could easily self-service, like a password reset. Many tech issues were fixed by the most basic troubleshooting step: Power cycling. Meanwhile, my uncle works XFinity tech support, and he'll frequently get calls when a website has an outage, not to mention how many non-technical people think any internet-related issue, such as a forgotten Google password, means calling your ISP. This doesn't even begin to talk about bad actors calling tech support to try to break into someone else's account. Google accounts are high-value targets. Once you've gotten in, there's a really good chance you could easily pivot to all of that person's other accounts. To handle the call volume that a service like Google would have, if they offered phone tech support, the amount of staff they would need would be in the hundreds of thousands, and so many of the calls they take would be wastes of time. There are a lot of non-technical people that have no idea how things work and basically think that Google IS the Internet.

hamandcheese 2y ago
> but I just don't see how it can possibly scale to over 1 billion users that aren't paying like gmail has. Why not charge for support? You bet your ass I would pay a support fee if my Gmail account was having issues.
- toss1 2y ago
  Yup $19.95 per incident to talk to someone who could ACTUALLY resolve an issue would be totally worth it, especially for people who suddenly find themselves locked out for no known reason. A fee would also filter out most the silly calls, and if not, and they can resolve a password reset in 2 minutes, it is way worth it for both the caller and Google.
  - dmd 2y ago
    That exists - it’s called Google Workspace.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

eschneider 2y ago

Right? "Google support" calling is an obvious tell.

samlinnfer 2y ago

I had a legit call come from Google Maps and I called them a scammer and various other names.

SeanAnderson 2y ago

I had Google call me once :) It was when I was riding in a Waymo and one of the screens in the vehicle was lagging a little bit. They made the surprising choice of calling my phone, rather than ringing the car itself, and I didn't pick up because... who picks up when your phone says, "Call from Google" :) They called the car shortly afterward to reassure me that the lagging screen wasn't an indicator that the car would underperform.

ChrisClark 2y ago

I got one of the same calls (didn't believe them). Afterwards I phoned Google support and they said the same thing, they will never call you. I had them confirm nothing was wrong with my account, just in case. So it's very possible to phone Google support, just don't believe anyone who calls you.

throaway920181 2y ago

I had a weird security alert on my Google account the other night after trying to do a "Sign in with Google" to a service I've used for years. Trying to view my account/security info kept redirecting me to a page instructing me on how to clear cookies. I clicked support and was able to get a call right away. But I pay $20/year for Google One.

TacticalCoder 2y ago

> There’s an easier tell. It’s impossible because you can’t to get Google to help you at all about any account issues, ... Paying Google apps / GSuite users can call a number and it's real humans answering (and they're very helpful). But indeed I don't think they proactively call you.

derangedHorse 2y ago

> It’s slightly depressing that there are probably more fake Google support staff than real ones. I've never thought of it that way but you're right! Dealing with support at most tech companies is a horrible experience and is usually something I research before using a product where a failure in service provision could lead to catastrophic results.