8 ms·

Google Voice lost my business number. How I got it back, and what I learned.

201 points by jjkmk 14y ago

amalag 14y ago
So the amount of money google needs to pay dedicated support staff to field customer complaints will not be covered by their Google voice revenue. Or they simply don't care and a few numbers falling through the cracks won't hurt their revenue.
raverbashing 14y ago
A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine was shut out of Google Apps (yes, the paying one) for "abuse" Just like that, leaving them locked out of their (company) emails. There is a support line but it's helpless, it said "Your account may be unlocked in 72h" Yes, may be unlocked. This is not a proper answer to a paying customer Google. So I lost my confidence in Google Apps, if I need a similar service better contract from somebody else. (It's been a while but I still haven't heard the rest of the story)
- amalag 14y ago
  What good alternatives are there to Google apps? I may hate them for not having support, but because it's such a good product i may be forced to use it.
  - ams6110 14y ago
    Word? Excel?
  - jeffclark 14y ago
    Back before Google Apps, I was using 1and1 for hosted Exchange.
  - ditojim 14y ago
    You get support if you pay for Google Apps for Business.
    - amalag 14y ago
      This person claims he was locked out of his paid google apps for business account. I think one solution is to purchase through a google apps provider. You pay the same costs but they get some cut of the money for providing service. I think this is the model Google wants to implement, have another company handle simple support and they can handle real issues when contacted by the company, not the end users. I think this actually happened for us, but it is invisible. We had an issue with Mac mail and google apps when we started. It wasn't behaving properly. We contacted our provider who I think contacted google and an engineer actually looked at the logs and explained it as a bug in Mac mail which after a timeout was initiating more connections and flooding the server. Anyway I think google apps providers probably can provide sufficient support, maybe google voice just needs to get there.
      - raverbashing 14y ago
        Exactly. It was a payed account. Providers may be a good idea, although I'm skeptical about the ability of Google Apps providers of having direct channels to Google support. Your story is certainly interesting and favorable in that aspect.
        amalag 14y ago
        The provider claimed he had his chat list filled with google engineers because he would go out to googleplex and met them. Dunno if it's true, but my idea was that I am going to pay the same amount for google apps and these people will be more responsive if i do have issues. I think it worked out.
      - ChuckMcM 14y ago
        "This person claims he was locked out of his paid google apps for business account." Yes he did. And he didn't include what his service representative told him. You see on my paid account under the tools "Manage this account" there is a support tab, and that tab lets you send email to a real person with your account id and generally they respond reasonably quickly. So what what did they say? Now the poster says "locked out of his account" what did that mean? Can't login? Or can't send email? Can't use Drive? Can't use Calendar? Was it just him or everyone who uses the account? When you're paying for a service, if your service provider denies you that service you can sue them more easily. Now I have been emailed when my logging application tried to send a bunch of emails, I was notified that it had been 'spamming' and disabled until the spam stopped. I sent back a nice explanation of what our systems were doing, and a whitelist of addresses that could send that sort of email, and they set it up. No more issue. The bottom line is that there are missing bits in this anecdote that would help give context to the 'abuse' comment. But they are missing.
  - meaty 14y ago
    Seriously just use office with a hosted exchange account somewhere. It just works and doesn't suffer from this sort of pain. If your exchange hosting company goes down or dumps you, you have a copy of your mailbox, calendar etc already in a PST file on your disk.
  - shoota 14y ago
    Office 365?
  - adrr 14y ago
    Google apps has support if your big enough.
  - antidoh 14y ago
    Anything else, if you run your business on it. Seriously. Edit: Or your schoolwork, or anything important.
  - SoftwareMaven 14y ago
    I really like the collaborative editing environment, but my concern over the potential danger of a loss of data that I have no control over means I'd give that up without thinking twice. My solution is Dropbox and native apps.
  - rhplus 14y ago
    Office 365? Free versions of the Word and Excel webapps can be tried via SkyDrive[1] and you can try the native app integration using the Office 2013 preview [2]. Other strong alternatives could be Zoho[3] or Zimbra[4], depending on your exact requirements. [1] https://skydrive.live.com/ https://skydrive.live.com/ [2] http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/ http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/ [3] http://www.zoho.com/productivity-apps.html http://www.zoho.com/productivity-apps.html [4] http://www.zimbra.com/products/ http://www.zimbra.com/products/
option_greek 14y ago
Something has to be done about these kind of goof-ups when dealing with Google customer service. It's ridiculous that their primary contact point for servicing paid customers is a online forum manned by volunteers.
- mgkimsal 14y ago
  quit using them. perhaps people dropping service with them MIGHT send a message? Companies that have has waiting lists for people to use their free service don't usually seem to give a hoot about customer service.
  - option_greek 14y ago
    IMHO, it should be stronger than that. When they charge people money for products, they are responsible for supporting them whether they accept it or not. Aren't there any legal protections for customers in scenarios like this ?
    - mgkimsal 14y ago
      Yes, if they're charging money, I agree. I also think the revenue those money-paying customers bring is such a small slice of the pie that they simply don't care. But yes, there possibly are some consumer protection laws in place. Good luck finding anyone willing to try to sue Google over this though.
    - dangrossman 14y ago
      > Aren't there any legal protections for customers in scenarios like this ? Sure, but to avail yourself of these legal protections, you need to go through the legal system -- filing a suit in court. The law might guarantee you'll get what you paid for, but it can't force Google to offer phone support.
      - damncabbage 14y ago
        What about Small Claims court?
mgkimsal 14y ago
"I own a Samsung Galaxy 3, a Nexus 7, run over 10 paid Google Biz Apps accounts, and will continue to use and recommend Google services to my clients and friends." Why? Vote with your dollars. Oh, wait - you're already paying them and realized you have no reliable support. Look, I use gmail too, and google search, and adwords. The gmail going away might be somewhat problematic, but I also run my own mail servers for other addresses, and shifting to those as my primary for everything wouldn't be too hard - a small PITA, but not devastating. I expect a better level of service for something I'm paying cash for. To continue to support them just means its harder for other companies that might be providing good service to get traction. I've recommended twilio and tropo to various people, and the first reaction is "oh it's like google voice?" the second reaction is "WTF? I have to PAY?! Google Voice is free!" This seems suspiciously like MS 15 years ago using profits their dominance (monopoly) in one market to get in to another market.
- jdboyd 14y ago
  When I look at the web pages for Twilio and Tropo, it isn't clear that they are actually replacements for Google Voice.
  - mgkimsal 14y ago
    You're right - they're essentially a step removed, although I'm working on webvbx.com which would be an easier on-ramp to using twilio as a hosted service.
  - taf2 14y ago
    I think this is an appropriate time for me to mention the service calltrackingmetrics.com. We offer a service, that allows you to manage the call flow as well as track many other features of a call - but in this case I believe the major selling point is we have people who answer the phone and work really hard to make sure your phone numbers port over to our system without issue. The Twilio team also helps make sure this process is exceptional.
  - kevinburke 14y ago
    The target audiences are a little different, but you can replicate the functionality of a Google Voice number pretty easily. You can forward voice calls with a little bit of XML - https://www.twilio.com/labs/twimlets/forward https://www.twilio.com/labs/twimlets/forward for example - or use something like SendHub to view/reply to incoming SMS messages.
Tmmrn 14y ago
What about just calling the general google phone number and asking them to connect you to someone who can help with google voice? http://www.google.com/intl/en/contact/ http://www.google.com/intl/en/contact/
- silverbax88 14y ago
  I am not trying to be snide, but you must not have ever tried that. Finding someone to answer a question at Google will require some serious legwork.
  - michaelhoffman 14y ago
    Have you ever tried that?
  - Tmmrn 14y ago
    Indeed I have not tried it. It was just a question because I would have expected him at least to try it.
silverbax88 14y ago
This week I had an epiphany when dealing with both Google and Microsoft on support issues. The issues are this: when you need an answer to a question about something from your bank, such as, say, a fee that suddenly appears on your statement, you can pick up the phone and find someone at the company who will at least give you slow service to answer your question. But with Google and Microsoft, there is no support department. You need to know how a specific service is charged? Good luck. You need to know why a needed parameter is missing on their API documentation? Forget it. Basically companies like Google and Microsoft want to toss their products out into the wild and then go back behind closed doors to noodle on something else. It baffles me as to why enterprise businesses are able to do this.
- mgkimsal 14y ago
  110% agree. With 'enterprise agreements' though, which only the large companies can afford, you can get X support tickets, or call in numbers, etc. I remember working one place that had that in place, and we hit an REALLY odd SQL Server bug (or, atleast it appeared to be a bug to us). We had top level support in place, but only had X per year, and no one would authorize us to use it just yet - "keep working on it for a bit, see if you can figure out a solution", because they didn't want to "waste" one of the calls if it turned out to be our mistake. MS is in a weirder position, because offering direct support would cut out a lot of the consultants and ecosystem which they've trained/certified. You're expected to engage those people for support (although... they didn't write the software, so how they'd 'fix' something if it went wrong...?) Google has no such ecosystem to point to. Yes, who would choose a bank for your critical banking needs (or a vehicle company for fleet management, etc) where your primary or only means of support was random forum postings that were staffed by volunteer workers who had no authority to fix things? I tend to think this state of affairs evolved out of earlier beliefs that computers were "hard" and had some sort of black magic mystique around them.
  - jstclair 14y ago
    I've heard the same thing about banking the support calls for an unknown future problem, and my reaction is always the same; "We have had 2 devs working on this problem for x hours, at $y per hour. MS support calls are purchasable in packs at $z each. We passed the point for calling (really hard math here) hours ago. By the way, remind me which business school did you get your degree from?"
davidw 14y ago
I had my own Google frustrations lately: http://journal.dedasys.com/2012/10/16/the-dreaded-google-lockdown http://journal.dedasys.com/2012/10/16/the-dreaded-google-loc... Nothing as serious as a phone number that was already in use, but frustrating nonetheless. What's even more frustratingly difficult is that they do provide a tremendous amount of value with a series of fairly integrated products.... leaving would be very difficult and costly.
ed209 14y ago
I used to look for the best product on the market when I was considering a new service. I no longer do that. I now look for the product whose support will be there for me when disaster strikes. No matter what product you choose, at some point, something bad will happen.
sejje 14y ago
Has google ever commented on the "no support" policy? It's incredible to me that this is their stance. It also seems to directly violate "Do no evil" pretty frequently--effectively shutting down someone's livelihood, in this case.
- emmett 14y ago
  Google's policy isn't "do no evil". It's "Don't be evil". Subtle, but important.
  - bravoyankee 14y ago
    Your insightful comment made my day (and freaked me out a bit too). So true.
- icebraining 14y ago
  effectively shutting down someone's livelihood, in this case. They just lost a phone number on their cheap service. The fact that losing that phone number endangered someone's livelihood is not their fault.
damncabbage 14y ago
Offtopic: I'm sorry, but the font you're using is horrendously unreadable; the "i"s (for example) are mostly missing: http://i.imgur.com/cwn1Q.png http://i.imgur.com/cwn1Q.png
- Tomdarkness 14y ago
  Looks perfectly fine to me, guess it must be some kind of problem specific to your setup.
  - stan_rogers 14y ago
    Most of the page is in Verdana, and looks fine. Some parts of the page are in Vegur Light Regular, and while it works when used in headings, it's too light for body copy, even if pseudo-bolded (it's not a full pixel wide on most screens). There are only a handful of lines set in Vegur at body size in the article.
- sahaskatta 14y ago
  What OS and Browser version?
- jebblue 14y ago
  I wasn't going to complain but since someone else experienced it, they are missing for me on Google Chrome on Ubuntu 12.04.
- eridius 14y ago
  It appears your browser is not applying the faux-bolding to that font that the web page expected. This is what I see in Safari: http://d.pr/i/cI7f http://d.pr/i/cI7f
lazyjones 14y ago
Great article that highlights the main issues with fast-growing billion-dollar behemoths like Google: "[...] I was so dreamy eyed about Google that I didn’t take the proper precautions [...]". It's insane that they get away with providing 1st level support for critical infrastructure to paying customers using a forum manned by volunteers!
- mvgoogler 14y ago
  Did the OP ever say that he was a paying customer? I don't see anything concrete in the article. He says he transferred his _business_ number over, but I don't see any mention that he had a "Google Apps for Your Business" (i.e. paid) account. I'm fairly sure that Google Apps For Business does, in fact, provide telephone support. <disclaimer> I'm an engineer and not an expert on support options</disclaimer>
zdw 14y ago
Is there a comparable solution to Google Voice? I'd like voicemail, web and phone apps, text message support, and the ability to port a number in. Bonus points for fax support, which GV doesn't have. I'm sure that others are looking for a similar solution in light of this.
- druiid 14y ago
  For free? No. For pay, yes. There are tooons of people in this space. This is one of the first-movers I am aware of: http://www.phone.com/features/ http://www.phone.com/features/
- tga 14y ago
  Take a look at http://www.sonetel.com http://www.sonetel.com, they are cheaper than many other options and also available internationally.
- jebblue 14y ago
  CallCentric is pretty comparable.
tammer 14y ago
Wow, based on the title I assumed the issue was resolved easily. Almost two weeks with no number, then being forced to buy the number back?
bravoyankee 14y ago
Google, I don't get you. You treat free service users like kings and paying customers like serfs. What's up with that?
tga 14y ago
Besides the support issues, it's worth noting that Google Voice is also impossible to use when you are (temporarily) outside of the US due to their braindead geographical IP limitation that blocks you from even accessing the site. For my voicemail-to-email (and occasional forwarding, etc.) I am currently using Sonetel (http://www.sonetel.com http://www.sonetel.com). $1/month for a US number and you can contact real humans when things go wrong. (no affiliation, I'm just a happy customer)
- furyg3 14y ago
  This is just not true. I'm from the US, living abroad. I registered for my google Apps account and GV number while in the US (before I moved). I can log into GV just fine while abroad (no VPN). My wife also has a google account (non-apps), with a GV number that works just fine while abroad. Since I don't have a 'real' US phone number, my GV account is a software phone only, ringing in Gmail (computer) or Talkatone (iphone). I have also rigged up a Twilio # which forwards to my non-US cell phone so that I can use GV when my 3G connection is not so great. This is the only stupid part of using GV when you are abroad, I'd happily give my money directly to google but instead I have to give it to Twilio for a hacked solution.
  - tga 14y ago
    Thank you for the fact check, I am happy to be wrong on this. It looks like things have changed since I last gave Google Voice a try. It used to be that they would just ignore you while physically outside the US, now it looks like they behave reasonably. Great news!
tlrobinson 14y ago
TL;DR "Google didn't help at all. I got lucky and was able to re-register with my number before someone else did."
wtallis 14y ago
When Google Voice was new, I signed up and got a number, but my account never got properly activated to send or receive calls. After more than a week of trying to get support, I payed the fee to get a different number. Unsurprisingly, that number didn't work either, but the financial transaction did at least get me a line of communication through which I could dispute the charge on my credit card and force Google to react. Two or three days later, my account was fixed and the number switch and fee were reverted. Bringing a financial transaction into the mix is always the most reliable way to get in touch. Google may play hard-to-get with their users, but they can't do that to a bank.
- tedivm 14y ago
  This person paid to port their number into google, from my understanding. So there was a financial transaction- google's complete lack of anything resembling customer support is the issue here.
  - jjkmk 14y ago
    Thats right, I did pay to port the number in. And then I paid to buy the number back (google must have seen this, so they sent me a refund today).
ChuckMcM 14y ago
It is true that Google has no support for free (or mostly free) services but they do generally for paid services. When I have issues with my google hosted (and paid for) domain a real person answers the email and follows up. At some point I expect them to just flip the bit and bring up a customer support service for 'real'. I suppose they could buy zendesk or something like that but here is an interesting question, how much would you pay for your Google stuff? A gmail account, a hosted domain, docs, etc? $10/month? $100/month? At NetApp I got a chance to sit in on some meetings where support costs were being evaluated and there is a pretty clear calculus that can be done. (I recommend all engineers at an enterprise products company experience it since the 'cost' of s bug (and thus the value of testing) is pretty clear) So I wonder if Google decided to add revenue from all of their products in this way (clearly they do that right now for Google Apps) would folks sign up? I know a number of Youtube 'publishers' who would if only to have someone to call up when they get a robo-takedown.
brindle 14y ago
Google does provide customer support but the end user is not the customer. The customer is the consumer of the data that is gathered on the usage data that is collected from the end user. I lost an gmail email account, and I had no recourse. In all fairness I was not actively using it. I had registered and received the account so I could have my name. When I decided to start using it, the password no longer worked. I also had an issue with Skype and I was paid customer. No tech support. I discontinued that account I have a Google voice account and I use it as my primary phone number. It would hurt to lose or have issues with this account.
stretchwithme 14y ago
I'm surprised the article didn't end with explaining how he got his phone number out of Google Voice.

201 points by jjkmk 14y ago

So the amount of money google needs to pay dedicated support staff to field customer complaints will not be covered by their Google voice revenue. Or they simply don't care and a few numbers falling through the cracks won't hurt their revenue.

raverbashing 14y ago

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine was shut out of Google Apps (yes, the paying one) for "abuse" Just like that, leaving them locked out of their (company) emails. There is a support line but it's helpless, it said "Your account may be unlocked in 72h" Yes, may be unlocked. This is not a proper answer to a paying customer Google. So I lost my confidence in Google Apps, if I need a similar service better contract from somebody else. (It's been a while but I still haven't heard the rest of the story)

amalag 14y ago
What good alternatives are there to Google apps? I may hate them for not having support, but because it's such a good product i may be forced to use it.
- ams6110 14y ago
  Word? Excel?
- jeffclark 14y ago
  Back before Google Apps, I was using 1and1 for hosted Exchange.
- ditojim 14y ago
  You get support if you pay for Google Apps for Business.
  - amalag 14y ago
    This person claims he was locked out of his paid google apps for business account. I think one solution is to purchase through a google apps provider. You pay the same costs but they get some cut of the money for providing service. I think this is the model Google wants to implement, have another company handle simple support and they can handle real issues when contacted by the company, not the end users. I think this actually happened for us, but it is invisible. We had an issue with Mac mail and google apps when we started. It wasn't behaving properly. We contacted our provider who I think contacted google and an engineer actually looked at the logs and explained it as a bug in Mac mail which after a timeout was initiating more connections and flooding the server. Anyway I think google apps providers probably can provide sufficient support, maybe google voice just needs to get there.
    - raverbashing 14y ago
      Exactly. It was a payed account. Providers may be a good idea, although I'm skeptical about the ability of Google Apps providers of having direct channels to Google support. Your story is certainly interesting and favorable in that aspect.
      - amalag 14y ago
        The provider claimed he had his chat list filled with google engineers because he would go out to googleplex and met them. Dunno if it's true, but my idea was that I am going to pay the same amount for google apps and these people will be more responsive if i do have issues. I think it worked out.
    - ChuckMcM 14y ago
      "This person claims he was locked out of his paid google apps for business account." Yes he did. And he didn't include what his service representative told him. You see on my paid account under the tools "Manage this account" there is a support tab, and that tab lets you send email to a real person with your account id and generally they respond reasonably quickly. So what what did they say? Now the poster says "locked out of his account" what did that mean? Can't login? Or can't send email? Can't use Drive? Can't use Calendar? Was it just him or everyone who uses the account? When you're paying for a service, if your service provider denies you that service you can sue them more easily. Now I have been emailed when my logging application tried to send a bunch of emails, I was notified that it had been 'spamming' and disabled until the spam stopped. I sent back a nice explanation of what our systems were doing, and a whitelist of addresses that could send that sort of email, and they set it up. No more issue. The bottom line is that there are missing bits in this anecdote that would help give context to the 'abuse' comment. But they are missing.
- meaty 14y ago
  Seriously just use office with a hosted exchange account somewhere. It just works and doesn't suffer from this sort of pain. If your exchange hosting company goes down or dumps you, you have a copy of your mailbox, calendar etc already in a PST file on your disk.
- shoota 14y ago
  Office 365?
- adrr 14y ago
  Google apps has support if your big enough.
- antidoh 14y ago
  Anything else, if you run your business on it. Seriously. Edit: Or your schoolwork, or anything important.
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  I really like the collaborative editing environment, but my concern over the potential danger of a loss of data that I have no control over means I'd give that up without thinking twice. My solution is Dropbox and native apps.
- rhplus 14y ago
  Office 365? Free versions of the Word and Excel webapps can be tried via SkyDrive[1] and you can try the native app integration using the Office 2013 preview [2]. Other strong alternatives could be Zoho[3] or Zimbra[4], depending on your exact requirements. [1] https://skydrive.live.com/ https://skydrive.live.com/ [2] http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/ http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/ [3] http://www.zoho.com/productivity-apps.html http://www.zoho.com/productivity-apps.html [4] http://www.zimbra.com/products/ http://www.zimbra.com/products/

option_greek 14y ago

Something has to be done about these kind of goof-ups when dealing with Google customer service. It's ridiculous that their primary contact point for servicing paid customers is a online forum manned by volunteers.

mgkimsal 14y ago
quit using them. perhaps people dropping service with them MIGHT send a message? Companies that have has waiting lists for people to use their free service don't usually seem to give a hoot about customer service.
- option_greek 14y ago
  IMHO, it should be stronger than that. When they charge people money for products, they are responsible for supporting them whether they accept it or not. Aren't there any legal protections for customers in scenarios like this ?
  - mgkimsal 14y ago
    Yes, if they're charging money, I agree. I also think the revenue those money-paying customers bring is such a small slice of the pie that they simply don't care. But yes, there possibly are some consumer protection laws in place. Good luck finding anyone willing to try to sue Google over this though.
  - dangrossman 14y ago
    > Aren't there any legal protections for customers in scenarios like this ? Sure, but to avail yourself of these legal protections, you need to go through the legal system -- filing a suit in court. The law might guarantee you'll get what you paid for, but it can't force Google to offer phone support.
    - damncabbage 14y ago
      What about Small Claims court?

mgkimsal 14y ago

"I own a Samsung Galaxy 3, a Nexus 7, run over 10 paid Google Biz Apps accounts, and will continue to use and recommend Google services to my clients and friends." Why? Vote with your dollars. Oh, wait - you're already paying them and realized you have no reliable support. Look, I use gmail too, and google search, and adwords. The gmail going away might be somewhat problematic, but I also run my own mail servers for other addresses, and shifting to those as my primary for everything wouldn't be too hard - a small PITA, but not devastating. I expect a better level of service for something I'm paying cash for. To continue to support them just means its harder for other companies that might be providing good service to get traction. I've recommended twilio and tropo to various people, and the first reaction is "oh it's like google voice?" the second reaction is "WTF? I have to PAY?! Google Voice is free!" This seems suspiciously like MS 15 years ago using profits their dominance (monopoly) in one market to get in to another market.

jdboyd 14y ago
When I look at the web pages for Twilio and Tropo, it isn't clear that they are actually replacements for Google Voice.
- mgkimsal 14y ago
  You're right - they're essentially a step removed, although I'm working on webvbx.com which would be an easier on-ramp to using twilio as a hosted service.
- taf2 14y ago
  I think this is an appropriate time for me to mention the service calltrackingmetrics.com. We offer a service, that allows you to manage the call flow as well as track many other features of a call - but in this case I believe the major selling point is we have people who answer the phone and work really hard to make sure your phone numbers port over to our system without issue. The Twilio team also helps make sure this process is exceptional.
- kevinburke 14y ago
  The target audiences are a little different, but you can replicate the functionality of a Google Voice number pretty easily. You can forward voice calls with a little bit of XML - https://www.twilio.com/labs/twimlets/forward https://www.twilio.com/labs/twimlets/forward for example - or use something like SendHub to view/reply to incoming SMS messages.

Tmmrn 14y ago

What about just calling the general google phone number and asking them to connect you to someone who can help with google voice? http://www.google.com/intl/en/contact/ http://www.google.com/intl/en/contact/

silverbax88 14y ago
I am not trying to be snide, but you must not have ever tried that. Finding someone to answer a question at Google will require some serious legwork.
- michaelhoffman 14y ago
  Have you ever tried that?
- Tmmrn 14y ago
  Indeed I have not tried it. It was just a question because I would have expected him at least to try it.

silverbax88 14y ago

This week I had an epiphany when dealing with both Google and Microsoft on support issues. The issues are this: when you need an answer to a question about something from your bank, such as, say, a fee that suddenly appears on your statement, you can pick up the phone and find someone at the company who will at least give you slow service to answer your question. But with Google and Microsoft, there is no support department. You need to know how a specific service is charged? Good luck. You need to know why a needed parameter is missing on their API documentation? Forget it. Basically companies like Google and Microsoft want to toss their products out into the wild and then go back behind closed doors to noodle on something else. It baffles me as to why enterprise businesses are able to do this.

mgkimsal 14y ago
110% agree. With 'enterprise agreements' though, which only the large companies can afford, you can get X support tickets, or call in numbers, etc. I remember working one place that had that in place, and we hit an REALLY odd SQL Server bug (or, atleast it appeared to be a bug to us). We had top level support in place, but only had X per year, and no one would authorize us to use it just yet - "keep working on it for a bit, see if you can figure out a solution", because they didn't want to "waste" one of the calls if it turned out to be our mistake. MS is in a weirder position, because offering direct support would cut out a lot of the consultants and ecosystem which they've trained/certified. You're expected to engage those people for support (although... they didn't write the software, so how they'd 'fix' something if it went wrong...?) Google has no such ecosystem to point to. Yes, who would choose a bank for your critical banking needs (or a vehicle company for fleet management, etc) where your primary or only means of support was random forum postings that were staffed by volunteer workers who had no authority to fix things? I tend to think this state of affairs evolved out of earlier beliefs that computers were "hard" and had some sort of black magic mystique around them.
- jstclair 14y ago
  I've heard the same thing about banking the support calls for an unknown future problem, and my reaction is always the same; "We have had 2 devs working on this problem for x hours, at $y per hour. MS support calls are purchasable in packs at $z each. We passed the point for calling (really hard math here) hours ago. By the way, remind me which business school did you get your degree from?"

davidw 14y ago

I had my own Google frustrations lately: http://journal.dedasys.com/2012/10/16/the-dreaded-google-lockdown http://journal.dedasys.com/2012/10/16/the-dreaded-google-loc... Nothing as serious as a phone number that was already in use, but frustrating nonetheless. What's even more frustratingly difficult is that they do provide a tremendous amount of value with a series of fairly integrated products.... leaving would be very difficult and costly.

ed209 14y ago

I used to look for the best product on the market when I was considering a new service. I no longer do that. I now look for the product whose support will be there for me when disaster strikes. No matter what product you choose, at some point, something bad will happen.

sejje 14y ago

Has google ever commented on the "no support" policy? It's incredible to me that this is their stance. It also seems to directly violate "Do no evil" pretty frequently--effectively shutting down someone's livelihood, in this case.

emmett 14y ago
Google's policy isn't "do no evil". It's "Don't be evil". Subtle, but important.
- bravoyankee 14y ago
  Your insightful comment made my day (and freaked me out a bit too). So true.
icebraining 14y ago
effectively shutting down someone's livelihood, in this case. They just lost a phone number on their cheap service. The fact that losing that phone number endangered someone's livelihood is not their fault.

damncabbage 14y ago

Offtopic: I'm sorry, but the font you're using is horrendously unreadable; the "i"s (for example) are mostly missing: http://i.imgur.com/cwn1Q.png http://i.imgur.com/cwn1Q.png

Tomdarkness 14y ago
Looks perfectly fine to me, guess it must be some kind of problem specific to your setup.
- stan_rogers 14y ago
  Most of the page is in Verdana, and looks fine. Some parts of the page are in Vegur Light Regular, and while it works when used in headings, it's too light for body copy, even if pseudo-bolded (it's not a full pixel wide on most screens). There are only a handful of lines set in Vegur at body size in the article.
sahaskatta 14y ago
What OS and Browser version?
jebblue 14y ago
I wasn't going to complain but since someone else experienced it, they are missing for me on Google Chrome on Ubuntu 12.04.
eridius 14y ago
It appears your browser is not applying the faux-bolding to that font that the web page expected. This is what I see in Safari: http://d.pr/i/cI7f http://d.pr/i/cI7f

lazyjones 14y ago

Great article that highlights the main issues with fast-growing billion-dollar behemoths like Google: "[...] I was so dreamy eyed about Google that I didn’t take the proper precautions [...]". It's insane that they get away with providing 1st level support for critical infrastructure to paying customers using a forum manned by volunteers!

mvgoogler 14y ago
Did the OP ever say that he was a paying customer? I don't see anything concrete in the article. He says he transferred his _business_ number over, but I don't see any mention that he had a "Google Apps for Your Business" (i.e. paid) account. I'm fairly sure that Google Apps For Business does, in fact, provide telephone support. <disclaimer> I'm an engineer and not an expert on support options</disclaimer>

zdw 14y ago

Is there a comparable solution to Google Voice? I'd like voicemail, web and phone apps, text message support, and the ability to port a number in. Bonus points for fax support, which GV doesn't have. I'm sure that others are looking for a similar solution in light of this.

druiid 14y ago
For free? No. For pay, yes. There are tooons of people in this space. This is one of the first-movers I am aware of: http://www.phone.com/features/ http://www.phone.com/features/
tga 14y ago
Take a look at http://www.sonetel.com http://www.sonetel.com, they are cheaper than many other options and also available internationally.
jebblue 14y ago
CallCentric is pretty comparable.

tammer 14y ago

Wow, based on the title I assumed the issue was resolved easily. Almost two weeks with no number, then being forced to buy the number back?

bravoyankee 14y ago

Google, I don't get you. You treat free service users like kings and paying customers like serfs. What's up with that?

tga 14y ago

Besides the support issues, it's worth noting that Google Voice is also impossible to use when you are (temporarily) outside of the US due to their braindead geographical IP limitation that blocks you from even accessing the site. For my voicemail-to-email (and occasional forwarding, etc.) I am currently using Sonetel (http://www.sonetel.com http://www.sonetel.com). $1/month for a US number and you can contact real humans when things go wrong. (no affiliation, I'm just a happy customer)

furyg3 14y ago
This is just not true. I'm from the US, living abroad. I registered for my google Apps account and GV number while in the US (before I moved). I can log into GV just fine while abroad (no VPN). My wife also has a google account (non-apps), with a GV number that works just fine while abroad. Since I don't have a 'real' US phone number, my GV account is a software phone only, ringing in Gmail (computer) or Talkatone (iphone). I have also rigged up a Twilio # which forwards to my non-US cell phone so that I can use GV when my 3G connection is not so great. This is the only stupid part of using GV when you are abroad, I'd happily give my money directly to google but instead I have to give it to Twilio for a hacked solution.
- tga 14y ago
  Thank you for the fact check, I am happy to be wrong on this. It looks like things have changed since I last gave Google Voice a try. It used to be that they would just ignore you while physically outside the US, now it looks like they behave reasonably. Great news!

tlrobinson 14y ago

TL;DR "Google didn't help at all. I got lucky and was able to re-register with my number before someone else did."

wtallis 14y ago

When Google Voice was new, I signed up and got a number, but my account never got properly activated to send or receive calls. After more than a week of trying to get support, I payed the fee to get a different number. Unsurprisingly, that number didn't work either, but the financial transaction did at least get me a line of communication through which I could dispute the charge on my credit card and force Google to react. Two or three days later, my account was fixed and the number switch and fee were reverted. Bringing a financial transaction into the mix is always the most reliable way to get in touch. Google may play hard-to-get with their users, but they can't do that to a bank.

tedivm 14y ago
This person paid to port their number into google, from my understanding. So there was a financial transaction- google's complete lack of anything resembling customer support is the issue here.
- jjkmk 14y ago
  Thats right, I did pay to port the number in. And then I paid to buy the number back (google must have seen this, so they sent me a refund today).

ChuckMcM 14y ago

It is true that Google has no support for free (or mostly free) services but they do generally for paid services. When I have issues with my google hosted (and paid for) domain a real person answers the email and follows up. At some point I expect them to just flip the bit and bring up a customer support service for 'real'. I suppose they could buy zendesk or something like that but here is an interesting question, how much would you pay for your Google stuff? A gmail account, a hosted domain, docs, etc? $10/month? $100/month? At NetApp I got a chance to sit in on some meetings where support costs were being evaluated and there is a pretty clear calculus that can be done. (I recommend all engineers at an enterprise products company experience it since the 'cost' of s bug (and thus the value of testing) is pretty clear) So I wonder if Google decided to add revenue from all of their products in this way (clearly they do that right now for Google Apps) would folks sign up? I know a number of Youtube 'publishers' who would if only to have someone to call up when they get a robo-takedown.

brindle 14y ago

Google does provide customer support but the end user is not the customer. The customer is the consumer of the data that is gathered on the usage data that is collected from the end user. I lost an gmail email account, and I had no recourse. In all fairness I was not actively using it. I had registered and received the account so I could have my name. When I decided to start using it, the password no longer worked. I also had an issue with Skype and I was paid customer. No tech support. I discontinued that account I have a Google voice account and I use it as my primary phone number. It would hurt to lose or have issues with this account.

stretchwithme 14y ago

I'm surprised the article didn't end with explaining how he got his phone number out of Google Voice.