11 ms·

Google Fails the Turing Test

385 points by d2vid 14y ago

driverdan 14y ago
I ordered an item from Amazon with free 2 day shipping (prime). The tracking never said anything more than that the label had been created. I waited about a week and contacted Amazon. They immediately sent me a free replacement. Eventually the lost package came as well. This is how customer support should handle this type of situation.
- pytrin 14y ago
  Amazon are amazing and have figured out how to scale customer service and satisfaction. Most large companies can take a note of out their notebook for handling customers
badgar 14y ago
Story is probably 100% true. Won't argue with any of the substance, which will likely be discussed in other threads. But this writing reeks of Microsoft astroturfing. Especially the "I got #googleplayed" dig which sounds just like their "Don't get scroogled" campaign and failed #droidrage stunt. It's not like Mark Penn would have any trouble bringing back their famous astroturfing policies to earn his keep at MS.
- d2vid 14y ago
  Haha, I am most assuredly a real person, not a paid actor. My girlfriend got tired of me venting about it and actually being angry, so I turned my anger into humorous flourish. My goal in this is to get some kind of human being at Google to respond. #googleplayed - what do you think? Could it catch on?
  - eclipticplane 14y ago
    How do we know you're not a robot? We're going to need you to complete this series of captchas...
    - d2vid 14y ago
      I think we need a "not a microsoft employee" captcha. Uh, how about, "Bing sucks"?
      - TylerE 14y ago
        I suspect that at just about any company, even the good ones, at least 20% of the workforce would swear their product sucks ;)
      - DigitalJack 14y ago
        I see. Tell me more about "Bing Sucks"?
      - Matt_Cutts 14y ago
        Hey, I don't have anything to do with the Play Store or the Nexus 4, but I just wanted to say that I'm sorry that you had such a bad experience. My hope is that Google learns from feedback like your experience so that we don't make these kinds of mistakes in the future. But I'm sorry that trying to get the Nexus 4 was so frustrating. :(
        shiftpgdn 14y ago
        Is "Bing Sucks" a bat symbol for Google employees? ;)
        d2vid 14y ago
        Thanks Matt, I appreciate it. What's so frustrating for me is that I want Google to be the good guys. I want to be able to recommend any and all Google products to friends and family. I hold Google in high esteem, which made this interaction that much worse because it was so far from what I think Google is capable of.
- gtaylor 14y ago
  I have a family member that experienced something very similar. She too was pretty upset. Sometimes this kind of ranting is the best way to lighten a very upsetting situation. As someone who carries an Android, Google really screwed this up, and deserves all of the hammering they can get in this. They will be forgiven if the next launch goes much better than this, though.
  - palebluedot 14y ago
    I am a big Google proponent, and Android user. But the problem is deeper than just a smooth launch, and the number of issues at launch. It is a systemic customer support issue that, while perhaps understandable for a free product, is horrendous for a merchant or paid product. I don't think people would care nearly so much about launch hiccups, even major, if there was customer support to help resolve the issue. But as it is, whenever you order something it can feel a bit like Russian Roulette with Google. I hope this changes soon, because otherwise they are doing awesome stuff.
- noonehome 14y ago
  d2vid just emailed me about his little google rant. d2vid is in the SF startup scene and has been helping my team at Rally.org and a few other start-ups with product and dev work. Definitely, not MSFT astro-turfing :)
- Permit 14y ago
  >But this writing reeks of Microsoft astroturfing. Wow. Google really can do no wrong.
  - cooldeal 14y ago
    And Microsoft can only do wrong.
Afforess 14y ago
Google customer support is notoriously bad. Support for their flagship products, gmail, google docs, etc is non-existent. For example, gmail filtering + email forwarding have been broken for over a year, with no fix in sight. So I'm not surprised to see that support isn't good in other area's either. It's really a shame because Google is a great company, with great products and a great vision, and it hurts to see sloppy execution.
- d2vid 14y ago
  I agree, I'm rooting for Google and would just like them to fix their customer support. I get that they can't profitably provide any kind of support for, say, Google Groups. As we like to say around here, if you don't pay them, then you're the product and you can't expect good service. But once they start moving into markets where you pay them money, the bar is higher. In this case, I'm the customer and their support is by far the worst customer experience of my life. Worse than the time a US Airways stewardess took my carry-on bag off the plane before take-off without telling me.
- cooldeal 14y ago
  >Support for their flagship products, gmail, google docs, etc is non-existent How are they flagship products? Their flagship profit maker is ads and I hear their support for advertizers is top notch. I doubt Gmail makes enough off its ads to justify its costs, I think its value is more in getting people to sign in to Google so that if you search for something at work, ads related to it are shown at home etc.
- quasque 14y ago
  "gmail filtering + email forwarding have been broken for over a year" Could you elaborate on this please?
  - knite 14y ago
    Seconded! This is the first I've heard of problems with Gmail's filtering/forwarding.
TillE 14y ago
Copy and pasting the same snippet of generic polite text is excusable, but what can possibly explain the lack of context? Surely you'd only need to glance at the past activity on the ticket (ie, your own emails that you just sent a couple days ago) to avoid giving the same stupid, useless response. It's either a poorly-programmed robot, or a human acting very much like one.
jordanbaucke 14y ago
What is UPS's response? Seems you should talk to the carrier if it's stated that it's "on truck for delivery" and ask for their explanation?
- eclipticplane 14y ago
  You cannot get very detailed information about a package (tracking number) unless you are the shipper. Google would have to inquire with UPS about the tracking number. UPS support will generally only parrot the same information you can get through tracking it on their website.
  - d2vid 14y ago
    This is exactly what happened - UPS said "We strongly suggest that you contact your shipper to initiate a package investigation. Shippers are encouraged to report lost packages because receivers may not have all the shipment information needed to perform a thorough investigation." I conveyed that information to Google, and Google strung me along giving me the impression that they were doing something about it, albeit slowly.
  - jordanbaucke 14y ago
    Oh my bad...sadly all this seems very "typical" of Google support ... something didn't go right? Visit a forum. Ok ... 2nd idea ... charge-back the order on your credit card with the already. Claim fraud whatever...at least you'll have your money.
    - d2vid 14y ago
      You're totally right, I thought about ordering a second set of phones and then initiating a chargeback if the first set didn't arrive/weren't resent. If there had been absolutely no support from Google, that's what I would have done. But they claimed to be making progress in helping me. Fool me 32 times, shame on me.
    - xentronium 14y ago
      > Ok ... 2nd idea ... charge-back the order on your credit card with the already. Claim fraud whatever...at least you'll have your money. I don't know about you, but perspective of losing all my gmail over chargeback is very scary to me. And I'm not sure I am safe from google just pulling a switch from my email.
deleted 14y ago
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josh2600 14y ago
This sucks. Google is an engineering company, but one has to believe that they wouldn't purposefully engineer a robot to be this foolish. I have to believe it's actually people you're dealing with, people who have been programmed to behave like computers (YOU MUST PASTE THIS AT THE BEGINNING OF EACH EMAIL). It's frankly too banal and too non-sensical to be a robot programmed by Google; but in a way, a programmed customer service employee in a call center is a bit of a robot. We should consider the impact repeated nonsense has on a persons ability to deal with situations in a fashion beyond rote memorization. We should consider the impact of dehumanizing folks in call centers. Google should try to understand how unique human interactions can make a contact center/email experience that much easier, instead of dehumanizing these moments for the sake of expediency.
- acc00 14y ago
  Indeed, dehumanization appears to be an important issue. The most unusual occurence I had was with VFS Global (visa handling company) employees. Every one of them had a paper sticker with a number on their tie; and all refused to tell me their name (asked out of courtesy), insisting I refer to them by their number if I have the need. Is that a common thing in the US/UK? All this looked distinctly dystopian, and mildly surreal, to me.
  - Natsu 14y ago
    That is incredibly strange. I have to wonder what possible reason they could have for that?
  - pnathan 14y ago
    > Is that a common thing in the US/UK? All this looked distinctly dystopian, and mildly surreal, to me. never ever seen that in the US. ever.
- d2vid 14y ago
  You could go the Zappos route of actually empower customer service reps. But at the very least, I would expect Google to build better in house CRM tools to feed helpful content to the support reps rather than making them repeat themselves. From what I've heard from friends at Google, internal tools like this have a notoriously hard time getting engineering resources. I wish they could turn it into a sexy machine learning project and actually get some resources on fixing this issue.
obilgic 14y ago
Problem loading Google+ There was a problem loading the Google+ CSS. Please double check your network connection and try reloading in a few minutes.
- d2vid 14y ago
  You should probably contact their customer support.
mullingitover 14y ago
I've worked in customer service, and the reps use 'canned text' all the time for common issues. I assumed this was common knowledge. Not doing so would be a recipe for RSI within a couple weeks. The problem with canned text is when it's reused on the same person, which leads to anger on the part of the recepient (or suspicions that they're being serviced by a robot).
- bcoates 14y ago
  I think it leads people to assume they have been forgotten about entirely and are starting over from zero each time they call.
- dylan-m 14y ago
  I've never seen the software on the other side of a tech support email, but I have trouble imagining that in practice. When I am trying to interact with a customer service rep that only communicates through canned responses, it will inevitably take me three times as long, with maybe five times more writing (both from me and from them) than was necessary. I can't be the only one who has this experience.
  - mullingitover 14y ago
    It really depends on the problem. The canned text exists because certain issues are so common that they can be resolved with a pre-written response. That's typically the first thing the staff lean on when they see a contact from a customer. The bigger problem is that customer service is a McJob, and pays like one, and the staff only deliver service on par with the salary they're given. Generally the people serving you could be getting paid multiples of their current salary if they could find a pizza delivery gig (no joke, pizza delivery can pay up to $30 an hour counting tips).
  - SoftwareMaven 14y ago
    That's because they are having five conversations at once. Click canned response one Switch to conv 2 Click canned response 5 Switch to conv 3 Click canned response 1 See there is a response from conv 1 Switch to conv 1 Ad infinitum The systems (especially for tier one support) have complete conversation templates. The people supporting the products at tier one often have no clue beyond trying to search for keywords in the knowledge base. Turn over is high enough that training is too expensive (of course, turn over is high due to lack of training). In short, it's a complete joke.
patejam 14y ago
Cheap products, great products, and good support. Pick two.
- Dylan16807 14y ago
  They're not cheap.
  - notatoad 14y ago
    In what universe does a $299 nexus 4 not count as cheap?
    - jmillikin 14y ago
      A new iPhone costs $200 from any major US carrier. Most other Android phones are between $100 and $200. At $300 or $350, the Nexus 4 is priced as a premium device.
      - deleted 14y ago
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      - biot 14y ago
        > A new iPhone costs $200 from any major US carrier. $200 is the down payment.
        jmillikin 14y ago
        $200 is the cost to buy the phone. In Europe, that's a down payment on a standard financing deal, and after the phone has been paid off, your monthly bill goes down. In America, that's the price to straight-up purchase the phone. Your monthly bill will be the same regardless of whether you bought your phone from the carrier, or brought your own.
        jlgreco 14y ago
        If you get a feature phone, then cancel after a month, how much are you charged? How much are you charged if you got an iphone instead?
SparrowOS 14y ago
God says http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_there http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_there
pja 14y ago
I was recently asked to fill in a 'customer experience report' for my Nexus 4 purchase by Google. Lets just say, that whilst the service I got wasn't quite the clown car special that this guy was given, it wasn't great either. Not that I expect them to take a blind bit of notice of my carefully worded response. At this point, I wouldn't advise any of my friends or family to buy physical hardware from Google Play: the customer service is just atrocious & if anything went wrong I'd feel responsible.
calinet6 14y ago
Why is it that Google gets a free pass on customer support? We somehow implicitly trust that they're doing good in all other areas, but there is absolutely no circumstance in the entire company where a customer can reach a person and receive true support. Why do they get to do this, and no other company can?
- cowsaysoink 14y ago
  Probably because google doesn't make it's money directly from the majority of people using it's services. And those that do pay do get support http://support.google.com/adwords/answer/1385067?hl=en http://support.google.com/adwords/answer/1385067?hl=en And I believe there is some support for apps for business.
- Kylekramer 14y ago
  Google gets a free pass on customer support? You can't go a day on HN and many other places without people bitching about Google customer support. Unless you want some sort of legally mandated level of support, I don't see what you would like to happen. If customer service is important to you (and Google is clearly betting it isn't that important), then don't use Google services.
  - corresation 14y ago
    I apologize for posting "This.", but I must: Customer support is by far the most commonly criticized facet of Google. It is very widely known to be a debacle, and the truth is that many of us refuse to recommend that less tolerant people do anything with Google that demands customer service (I have never recommended anyone buy devices from the Google Play store after my own debacles with their system).
- ceejayoz 14y ago
  It's hardly just Google. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter all get away with the same sort of thing. Try and find a phone number to call them.
  - 14y ago
alanctgardner2 14y ago
This man has far more faith in Google than I do... I ordered on day one, and gave up after about 6 weeks. While the Note II isn't perfect, I could buy one in a store right away. On the robot CSRs: it honestly seemed like they had been given about 4 hours of training, which consisted of madlibs-style repetition of whatever you said. I got a bit hyperbolic in a later support call, and one of them honestly said: "I understand it can be a bit frustrating when, uhh, companies play with your emotions and lie about when your Nexus 4 device (tm) will arrive." This wasn't a text chat. This was someone acting like a 80's AI over the phone. After they parroted my complaint, they would immediately escalate me to a specialist. Once I talked to a manager, who escalated me 'differently'. I have no idea if any specialist ever replied; I got a few follow up emails which basically said 'Thanks for calling! Keep on keeping on'. Cancelling was actually the best, easiest thing I did with Google. Ordering was painful, waiting was aggravating, but telling them "I don't want the damn thing" went over surprisingly well.
rryan 14y ago
I know using a phone is so 20th century but Google Play actually has a dedicated call center for providing support. When I ordered a Nexus 7 back in July I was wondering when it would arrive so I called. Within 2 minutes of waiting I was talking to a friendly human.
- luke_s 14y ago
  Really? When my nexus 7 had a broken screen I tried to phone them up but the only number was in the United States. That may be wonderful if you live in the United States, but it seems the rest of the world will just have to do without ...
  - usaphp 14y ago
    Get a Skype mate. Its just 89 cents per month to call to USA. http://www.skype.com/en/rates/ http://www.skype.com/en/rates/
    - Dylan16807 14y ago
      Can you screenshot that or something? The only price for US calls I have ever heard is $3.
recoiledsnake 14y ago
A lot of responses here seem to say that support for cheap/free phones is not profitable. That's not a good excuse. Amazon doesn't really make much money on the Kindle hardware, but the support is amazing. That raises the question, why didn't Google just let the factories ship to Amazon and let Amazon handle sales and customer service(related to shipping, not technical)? I guess the Play Store was an attempt at branding similar to Apple store, but the customer experience seems to be damaging the brand.
- wmf 14y ago
  Amazon has to mark up products over wholesale to cover the cost of things like... the customer support that they actually provide. In the Play store Google can sell the Nexus at wholesale to make it look cheaper.
  - bencxr 14y ago
    The question is, if Google sold the Nexus (say, $329 from $299) with a slight markup to raise their support, would you still buy it?
- deleted 14y ago
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3327 14y ago
This post is scary. I have been operating under a new set of rules. I refuse to by goods/services from customer service deficient firms. It has been working great and dealing with small teams and companies that provide fantastic service makes your life easy and efficient. Not to mention building great relationships. I make sure to buy a service from a startup, e.g cloud storage rather than for instance Amazon.
deleted 14y ago
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webwanderings 14y ago
Not making a whole lot of sense. You gamed the system by having three different browsers place an order (imagine how it must have been like?) and then you complain? Where is ethics of placing an order online? Wouldn't you have been better off following what your single browser screen said the first time?
baby 14y ago
That's the problem with Google. There is NO customer support. I had a website back in the days that was bringing me good money. A spam alerts from google tells me that I have to delete some spam pages of my website (which is generated by user content) in the 3 next work days otherwise they'll ban my account. I look through the pages and CAN'T find anything spammy, I decide to mail them something along those lines "I'm sorry but I can see no reference of what you want me to erase, can you please provide more informations?". No answers and 3 days later I was banned from Google Ads. Twist : My website was in multiple language and the page they sent me was in a different language, I had not think of that.
mmuro 14y ago
It's a cop-out to call Google an engineering company like they are still the small company that is just a search engine. If they want to be a consumer electronics company, they should probably start acting like one and have actual humans deal with these problems.
swalsh 14y ago
Can you imagine how much we would accept google into our lives if they had an equal amount of engineering, but awesome customer service?
cardine 14y ago
I've had my own horror stories with Adwords. Google has by far the worst support of any company I've ever had to deal with in my entire life.
triplesec 14y ago
Google sucks on this support. This makes me shy away from their phones and buy Samsung's. Which is practically the same hardware anyway, but with a vaguely human company behind it.
acqq 14y ago
Daavid, I really enjoyed your writing! Near the end I laughed out loud. Although, thinking about your experience... I could see how frustrating that could be :) I agree, with such an experience, Google cars don't seem like a good idea at all.
sergiotapia 14y ago
> 10 weeks of waiting Absolutely unacceptable. I would have issued a chargeback immediately after three weeks of tardiness. At that point what Google has done is fraud, especially if you couldn't reach an actual person on the phone.
- markdown 14y ago
  It was a pre-order. Google were out of stock, but their massive load broke their system. The OP knew this within 2 or 3 days and could have had his money immediately refunded if he wanted to, but most of us were willing to wait. I for one was on the 8-9 week schedule, and got my phone in week 7, so I was very happy with my purchase.
matthuggins 14y ago
Upvote because Google CS sucks, plain and simple. I've experienced similar troubles with AdSense.
pilooch 14y ago
The last two paragraphs are hilarious, thanks for taking the time and writing this! Like anyone else I had my share of ridiculous shipment problems, but this guy remains playful (and cheerful!), wow :)
pserwylo 14y ago
I wonder how this fits into Australian Consumer Law (ACL) [0]. We have a relatively robust set of rules that govern how a business selling a product/service interacts with their customers. For example, if you purchase something and it is not as described, or it is faulty, or certain other conditions then the business must be able to remedy the situation. I fail to see how you could satisfactorily comply with the ACL if you're only form of customer service is AI bots. [0] http://www.consumerlaw.gov.au/ http://www.consumerlaw.gov.au/ (overview at http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/963190 http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/963190)
qohen 14y ago
One point I haven't seen anyone discuss yet in the comments below: the author mentions that, after seeing that the phone was sold out, he kept refreshing the browser till he got a copy of the webpage that allowed him to buy the phone. I'm wondering if perhaps that copy of the webpage was an out-of-date cached page from a server that hadn't been updated recently enough (or that the page was created based on a copy of data in a cache that hadn't been updated recently enough) and that buying from such a page somehow led to a phantom purchase being created -- since there were no actual phones left to buy -- which got pushed through the system to the point of creating a UPS record for a non-existent phone. Obviously, one would hope an ecommerce system would catch issues like that so spurious purchases would not be allowed through in the end, but -- in any case -- should the buyer perhaps have realized (in retrospect, at least, if not at the time) that there might be a problem if all his previous attempts to load the webpage were telling him the phone was sold out?
- theevocater 14y ago
  Why should a user "know" they got a cached page and not that more phones came up for sale? How could you possibly spin this as somehow being the users fault for not "knowing"?
  - qohen 14y ago
    Perhaps because I've had my own odd experiences with online and offline commerce, as well as having read about others' on FatWallet.com, I may tend to see red flags where others don't. For example, in my experience, online inventory doesn't typically get updated very quickly. So, seeing inventory suddenly show up for a sold-out item as I was rapidly refreshing, I think, might trigger my spidey-sense but perhaps other people might not think this way. In any case, my comments aren't meant to excuse any poor customer service, or any other issues, on the vendor's end and I hope the author's case is resolved to his satisfaction.
- markdown 14y ago
  Yes, he isn't the only one. There were thousands like him, and we were (within a day or two) told that our orders were actually pre-orders, and we were given specific delivery timeframes (2-4 weeks, 3-4 weeks... 8-9 weeks) At any time after this point, one could simply cancel their orders. Many did so. Once it was realised that orders weren't being shipping in order of placement, many placed new orders (canceling the second once one was delivered). Folks here are making this out to be par for the course, but this was a very specific messup, and shouldn't be taken as the usual Google Play purchase experience. Google and/or LG severely underestimated how popular the phone would be, and that was their biggest mistake.
dendory 14y ago
Google sucks at customer support, news at 11. Honestly reading this, nothing surprised me. We all know Google is incapable of decent customer support, and even if we do pay money for something like a phone, the very corporate nature that reigns in this company still sees us as products of free services. Here's a thought, instead of hiring outsourced help for their Nexus sales crew, why not use their AdWords support staff? Those people are obviously the only ones trained to deal with humans.
damian2000 14y ago
If you're parting with hard earned cash to buy something, there's no reason you can't expect good customer service from the seller, even if some of their service is automated. They really need to take some lessons from Amazon.
YZF 14y ago
UPS has just delivered my Nexus 4 today here in BC, Canada. I shouldn't have rewarded Google with my business but there is really no competition for this product. If there was I would have taken my business there.

385 points by d2vid 14y ago

I ordered an item from Amazon with free 2 day shipping (prime). The tracking never said anything more than that the label had been created. I waited about a week and contacted Amazon. They immediately sent me a free replacement. Eventually the lost package came as well. This is how customer support should handle this type of situation.

pytrin 14y ago
Amazon are amazing and have figured out how to scale customer service and satisfaction. Most large companies can take a note of out their notebook for handling customers

badgar 14y ago

Story is probably 100% true. Won't argue with any of the substance, which will likely be discussed in other threads. But this writing reeks of Microsoft astroturfing. Especially the "I got #googleplayed" dig which sounds just like their "Don't get scroogled" campaign and failed #droidrage stunt. It's not like Mark Penn would have any trouble bringing back their famous astroturfing policies to earn his keep at MS.

d2vid 14y ago
Haha, I am most assuredly a real person, not a paid actor. My girlfriend got tired of me venting about it and actually being angry, so I turned my anger into humorous flourish. My goal in this is to get some kind of human being at Google to respond. #googleplayed - what do you think? Could it catch on?
- eclipticplane 14y ago
  How do we know you're not a robot? We're going to need you to complete this series of captchas...
  - d2vid 14y ago
    I think we need a "not a microsoft employee" captcha. Uh, how about, "Bing sucks"?
    - TylerE 14y ago
      I suspect that at just about any company, even the good ones, at least 20% of the workforce would swear their product sucks ;)
    - DigitalJack 14y ago
      I see. Tell me more about "Bing Sucks"?
    - Matt_Cutts 14y ago
      Hey, I don't have anything to do with the Play Store or the Nexus 4, but I just wanted to say that I'm sorry that you had such a bad experience. My hope is that Google learns from feedback like your experience so that we don't make these kinds of mistakes in the future. But I'm sorry that trying to get the Nexus 4 was so frustrating. :(
      - shiftpgdn 14y ago
        Is "Bing Sucks" a bat symbol for Google employees? ;)
      - d2vid 14y ago
        Thanks Matt, I appreciate it. What's so frustrating for me is that I want Google to be the good guys. I want to be able to recommend any and all Google products to friends and family. I hold Google in high esteem, which made this interaction that much worse because it was so far from what I think Google is capable of.
gtaylor 14y ago
I have a family member that experienced something very similar. She too was pretty upset. Sometimes this kind of ranting is the best way to lighten a very upsetting situation. As someone who carries an Android, Google really screwed this up, and deserves all of the hammering they can get in this. They will be forgiven if the next launch goes much better than this, though.
- palebluedot 14y ago
  I am a big Google proponent, and Android user. But the problem is deeper than just a smooth launch, and the number of issues at launch. It is a systemic customer support issue that, while perhaps understandable for a free product, is horrendous for a merchant or paid product. I don't think people would care nearly so much about launch hiccups, even major, if there was customer support to help resolve the issue. But as it is, whenever you order something it can feel a bit like Russian Roulette with Google. I hope this changes soon, because otherwise they are doing awesome stuff.
noonehome 14y ago
d2vid just emailed me about his little google rant. d2vid is in the SF startup scene and has been helping my team at Rally.org and a few other start-ups with product and dev work. Definitely, not MSFT astro-turfing :)
Permit 14y ago
>But this writing reeks of Microsoft astroturfing. Wow. Google really can do no wrong.
- cooldeal 14y ago
  And Microsoft can only do wrong.

Afforess 14y ago

Google customer support is notoriously bad. Support for their flagship products, gmail, google docs, etc is non-existent. For example, gmail filtering + email forwarding have been broken for over a year, with no fix in sight. So I'm not surprised to see that support isn't good in other area's either. It's really a shame because Google is a great company, with great products and a great vision, and it hurts to see sloppy execution.

d2vid 14y ago
I agree, I'm rooting for Google and would just like them to fix their customer support. I get that they can't profitably provide any kind of support for, say, Google Groups. As we like to say around here, if you don't pay them, then you're the product and you can't expect good service. But once they start moving into markets where you pay them money, the bar is higher. In this case, I'm the customer and their support is by far the worst customer experience of my life. Worse than the time a US Airways stewardess took my carry-on bag off the plane before take-off without telling me.
cooldeal 14y ago
>Support for their flagship products, gmail, google docs, etc is non-existent How are they flagship products? Their flagship profit maker is ads and I hear their support for advertizers is top notch. I doubt Gmail makes enough off its ads to justify its costs, I think its value is more in getting people to sign in to Google so that if you search for something at work, ads related to it are shown at home etc.
quasque 14y ago
"gmail filtering + email forwarding have been broken for over a year" Could you elaborate on this please?
- knite 14y ago
  Seconded! This is the first I've heard of problems with Gmail's filtering/forwarding.

TillE 14y ago

Copy and pasting the same snippet of generic polite text is excusable, but what can possibly explain the lack of context? Surely you'd only need to glance at the past activity on the ticket (ie, your own emails that you just sent a couple days ago) to avoid giving the same stupid, useless response. It's either a poorly-programmed robot, or a human acting very much like one.

jordanbaucke 14y ago

What is UPS's response? Seems you should talk to the carrier if it's stated that it's "on truck for delivery" and ask for their explanation?

eclipticplane 14y ago
You cannot get very detailed information about a package (tracking number) unless you are the shipper. Google would have to inquire with UPS about the tracking number. UPS support will generally only parrot the same information you can get through tracking it on their website.
- d2vid 14y ago
  This is exactly what happened - UPS said "We strongly suggest that you contact your shipper to initiate a package investigation. Shippers are encouraged to report lost packages because receivers may not have all the shipment information needed to perform a thorough investigation." I conveyed that information to Google, and Google strung me along giving me the impression that they were doing something about it, albeit slowly.
- jordanbaucke 14y ago
  Oh my bad...sadly all this seems very "typical" of Google support ... something didn't go right? Visit a forum. Ok ... 2nd idea ... charge-back the order on your credit card with the already. Claim fraud whatever...at least you'll have your money.
  - d2vid 14y ago
    You're totally right, I thought about ordering a second set of phones and then initiating a chargeback if the first set didn't arrive/weren't resent. If there had been absolutely no support from Google, that's what I would have done. But they claimed to be making progress in helping me. Fool me 32 times, shame on me.
  - xentronium 14y ago
    > Ok ... 2nd idea ... charge-back the order on your credit card with the already. Claim fraud whatever...at least you'll have your money. I don't know about you, but perspective of losing all my gmail over chargeback is very scary to me. And I'm not sure I am safe from google just pulling a switch from my email.

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josh2600 14y ago

This sucks. Google is an engineering company, but one has to believe that they wouldn't purposefully engineer a robot to be this foolish. I have to believe it's actually people you're dealing with, people who have been programmed to behave like computers (YOU MUST PASTE THIS AT THE BEGINNING OF EACH EMAIL). It's frankly too banal and too non-sensical to be a robot programmed by Google; but in a way, a programmed customer service employee in a call center is a bit of a robot. We should consider the impact repeated nonsense has on a persons ability to deal with situations in a fashion beyond rote memorization. We should consider the impact of dehumanizing folks in call centers. Google should try to understand how unique human interactions can make a contact center/email experience that much easier, instead of dehumanizing these moments for the sake of expediency.

acc00 14y ago
Indeed, dehumanization appears to be an important issue. The most unusual occurence I had was with VFS Global (visa handling company) employees. Every one of them had a paper sticker with a number on their tie; and all refused to tell me their name (asked out of courtesy), insisting I refer to them by their number if I have the need. Is that a common thing in the US/UK? All this looked distinctly dystopian, and mildly surreal, to me.
- Natsu 14y ago
  That is incredibly strange. I have to wonder what possible reason they could have for that?
- pnathan 14y ago
  > Is that a common thing in the US/UK? All this looked distinctly dystopian, and mildly surreal, to me. never ever seen that in the US. ever.
d2vid 14y ago
You could go the Zappos route of actually empower customer service reps. But at the very least, I would expect Google to build better in house CRM tools to feed helpful content to the support reps rather than making them repeat themselves. From what I've heard from friends at Google, internal tools like this have a notoriously hard time getting engineering resources. I wish they could turn it into a sexy machine learning project and actually get some resources on fixing this issue.

obilgic 14y ago

Problem loading Google+ There was a problem loading the Google+ CSS. Please double check your network connection and try reloading in a few minutes.

d2vid 14y ago
You should probably contact their customer support.

mullingitover 14y ago

I've worked in customer service, and the reps use 'canned text' all the time for common issues. I assumed this was common knowledge. Not doing so would be a recipe for RSI within a couple weeks. The problem with canned text is when it's reused on the same person, which leads to anger on the part of the recepient (or suspicions that they're being serviced by a robot).

bcoates 14y ago
I think it leads people to assume they have been forgotten about entirely and are starting over from zero each time they call.
dylan-m 14y ago
I've never seen the software on the other side of a tech support email, but I have trouble imagining that in practice. When I am trying to interact with a customer service rep that only communicates through canned responses, it will inevitably take me three times as long, with maybe five times more writing (both from me and from them) than was necessary. I can't be the only one who has this experience.
- mullingitover 14y ago
  It really depends on the problem. The canned text exists because certain issues are so common that they can be resolved with a pre-written response. That's typically the first thing the staff lean on when they see a contact from a customer. The bigger problem is that customer service is a McJob, and pays like one, and the staff only deliver service on par with the salary they're given. Generally the people serving you could be getting paid multiples of their current salary if they could find a pizza delivery gig (no joke, pizza delivery can pay up to $30 an hour counting tips).
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  That's because they are having five conversations at once. Click canned response one Switch to conv 2 Click canned response 5 Switch to conv 3 Click canned response 1 See there is a response from conv 1 Switch to conv 1 Ad infinitum The systems (especially for tier one support) have complete conversation templates. The people supporting the products at tier one often have no clue beyond trying to search for keywords in the knowledge base. Turn over is high enough that training is too expensive (of course, turn over is high due to lack of training). In short, it's a complete joke.

patejam 14y ago

Cheap products, great products, and good support. Pick two.

Dylan16807 14y ago
They're not cheap.
- notatoad 14y ago
  In what universe does a $299 nexus 4 not count as cheap?
  - jmillikin 14y ago
    A new iPhone costs $200 from any major US carrier. Most other Android phones are between $100 and $200. At $300 or $350, the Nexus 4 is priced as a premium device.
    - deleted 14y ago
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    - biot 14y ago
      > A new iPhone costs $200 from any major US carrier. $200 is the down payment.
      - jmillikin 14y ago
        $200 is the cost to buy the phone. In Europe, that's a down payment on a standard financing deal, and after the phone has been paid off, your monthly bill goes down. In America, that's the price to straight-up purchase the phone. Your monthly bill will be the same regardless of whether you bought your phone from the carrier, or brought your own.
        jlgreco 14y ago
        If you get a feature phone, then cancel after a month, how much are you charged? How much are you charged if you got an iphone instead?

SparrowOS 14y ago

God says http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_there http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_there

pja 14y ago

I was recently asked to fill in a 'customer experience report' for my Nexus 4 purchase by Google. Lets just say, that whilst the service I got wasn't quite the clown car special that this guy was given, it wasn't great either. Not that I expect them to take a blind bit of notice of my carefully worded response. At this point, I wouldn't advise any of my friends or family to buy physical hardware from Google Play: the customer service is just atrocious & if anything went wrong I'd feel responsible.

calinet6 14y ago

Why is it that Google gets a free pass on customer support? We somehow implicitly trust that they're doing good in all other areas, but there is absolutely no circumstance in the entire company where a customer can reach a person and receive true support. Why do they get to do this, and no other company can?

cowsaysoink 14y ago
Probably because google doesn't make it's money directly from the majority of people using it's services. And those that do pay do get support http://support.google.com/adwords/answer/1385067?hl=en http://support.google.com/adwords/answer/1385067?hl=en And I believe there is some support for apps for business.
Kylekramer 14y ago
Google gets a free pass on customer support? You can't go a day on HN and many other places without people bitching about Google customer support. Unless you want some sort of legally mandated level of support, I don't see what you would like to happen. If customer service is important to you (and Google is clearly betting it isn't that important), then don't use Google services.
- corresation 14y ago
  I apologize for posting "This.", but I must: Customer support is by far the most commonly criticized facet of Google. It is very widely known to be a debacle, and the truth is that many of us refuse to recommend that less tolerant people do anything with Google that demands customer service (I have never recommended anyone buy devices from the Google Play store after my own debacles with their system).
ceejayoz 14y ago
It's hardly just Google. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter all get away with the same sort of thing. Try and find a phone number to call them.
- 14y ago

alanctgardner2 14y ago

This man has far more faith in Google than I do... I ordered on day one, and gave up after about 6 weeks. While the Note II isn't perfect, I could buy one in a store right away. On the robot CSRs: it honestly seemed like they had been given about 4 hours of training, which consisted of madlibs-style repetition of whatever you said. I got a bit hyperbolic in a later support call, and one of them honestly said: "I understand it can be a bit frustrating when, uhh, companies play with your emotions and lie about when your Nexus 4 device (tm) will arrive." This wasn't a text chat. This was someone acting like a 80's AI over the phone. After they parroted my complaint, they would immediately escalate me to a specialist. Once I talked to a manager, who escalated me 'differently'. I have no idea if any specialist ever replied; I got a few follow up emails which basically said 'Thanks for calling! Keep on keeping on'. Cancelling was actually the best, easiest thing I did with Google. Ordering was painful, waiting was aggravating, but telling them "I don't want the damn thing" went over surprisingly well.

rryan 14y ago

I know using a phone is so 20th century but Google Play actually has a dedicated call center for providing support. When I ordered a Nexus 7 back in July I was wondering when it would arrive so I called. Within 2 minutes of waiting I was talking to a friendly human.

luke_s 14y ago
Really? When my nexus 7 had a broken screen I tried to phone them up but the only number was in the United States. That may be wonderful if you live in the United States, but it seems the rest of the world will just have to do without ...
- usaphp 14y ago
  Get a Skype mate. Its just 89 cents per month to call to USA. http://www.skype.com/en/rates/ http://www.skype.com/en/rates/
  - Dylan16807 14y ago
    Can you screenshot that or something? The only price for US calls I have ever heard is $3.

recoiledsnake 14y ago

A lot of responses here seem to say that support for cheap/free phones is not profitable. That's not a good excuse. Amazon doesn't really make much money on the Kindle hardware, but the support is amazing. That raises the question, why didn't Google just let the factories ship to Amazon and let Amazon handle sales and customer service(related to shipping, not technical)? I guess the Play Store was an attempt at branding similar to Apple store, but the customer experience seems to be damaging the brand.

wmf 14y ago
Amazon has to mark up products over wholesale to cover the cost of things like... the customer support that they actually provide. In the Play store Google can sell the Nexus at wholesale to make it look cheaper.
- bencxr 14y ago
  The question is, if Google sold the Nexus (say, $329 from $299) with a slight markup to raise their support, would you still buy it?
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3327 14y ago

This post is scary. I have been operating under a new set of rules. I refuse to by goods/services from customer service deficient firms. It has been working great and dealing with small teams and companies that provide fantastic service makes your life easy and efficient. Not to mention building great relationships. I make sure to buy a service from a startup, e.g cloud storage rather than for instance Amazon.

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webwanderings 14y ago

Not making a whole lot of sense. You gamed the system by having three different browsers place an order (imagine how it must have been like?) and then you complain? Where is ethics of placing an order online? Wouldn't you have been better off following what your single browser screen said the first time?

baby 14y ago

That's the problem with Google. There is NO customer support. I had a website back in the days that was bringing me good money. A spam alerts from google tells me that I have to delete some spam pages of my website (which is generated by user content) in the 3 next work days otherwise they'll ban my account. I look through the pages and CAN'T find anything spammy, I decide to mail them something along those lines "I'm sorry but I can see no reference of what you want me to erase, can you please provide more informations?". No answers and 3 days later I was banned from Google Ads. Twist : My website was in multiple language and the page they sent me was in a different language, I had not think of that.

mmuro 14y ago

It's a cop-out to call Google an engineering company like they are still the small company that is just a search engine. If they want to be a consumer electronics company, they should probably start acting like one and have actual humans deal with these problems.

swalsh 14y ago

Can you imagine how much we would accept google into our lives if they had an equal amount of engineering, but awesome customer service?

cardine 14y ago

I've had my own horror stories with Adwords. Google has by far the worst support of any company I've ever had to deal with in my entire life.

triplesec 14y ago

Google sucks on this support. This makes me shy away from their phones and buy Samsung's. Which is practically the same hardware anyway, but with a vaguely human company behind it.

acqq 14y ago

Daavid, I really enjoyed your writing! Near the end I laughed out loud. Although, thinking about your experience... I could see how frustrating that could be :) I agree, with such an experience, Google cars don't seem like a good idea at all.

sergiotapia 14y ago

> 10 weeks of waiting Absolutely unacceptable. I would have issued a chargeback immediately after three weeks of tardiness. At that point what Google has done is fraud, especially if you couldn't reach an actual person on the phone.

markdown 14y ago
It was a pre-order. Google were out of stock, but their massive load broke their system. The OP knew this within 2 or 3 days and could have had his money immediately refunded if he wanted to, but most of us were willing to wait. I for one was on the 8-9 week schedule, and got my phone in week 7, so I was very happy with my purchase.

matthuggins 14y ago

Upvote because Google CS sucks, plain and simple. I've experienced similar troubles with AdSense.

pilooch 14y ago

The last two paragraphs are hilarious, thanks for taking the time and writing this! Like anyone else I had my share of ridiculous shipment problems, but this guy remains playful (and cheerful!), wow :)

pserwylo 14y ago

I wonder how this fits into Australian Consumer Law (ACL) [0]. We have a relatively robust set of rules that govern how a business selling a product/service interacts with their customers. For example, if you purchase something and it is not as described, or it is faulty, or certain other conditions then the business must be able to remedy the situation. I fail to see how you could satisfactorily comply with the ACL if you're only form of customer service is AI bots. [0] http://www.consumerlaw.gov.au/ http://www.consumerlaw.gov.au/ (overview at http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/963190 http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/963190)

qohen 14y ago

One point I haven't seen anyone discuss yet in the comments below: the author mentions that, after seeing that the phone was sold out, he kept refreshing the browser till he got a copy of the webpage that allowed him to buy the phone. I'm wondering if perhaps that copy of the webpage was an out-of-date cached page from a server that hadn't been updated recently enough (or that the page was created based on a copy of data in a cache that hadn't been updated recently enough) and that buying from such a page somehow led to a phantom purchase being created -- since there were no actual phones left to buy -- which got pushed through the system to the point of creating a UPS record for a non-existent phone. Obviously, one would hope an ecommerce system would catch issues like that so spurious purchases would not be allowed through in the end, but -- in any case -- should the buyer perhaps have realized (in retrospect, at least, if not at the time) that there might be a problem if all his previous attempts to load the webpage were telling him the phone was sold out?

theevocater 14y ago
Why should a user "know" they got a cached page and not that more phones came up for sale? How could you possibly spin this as somehow being the users fault for not "knowing"?
- qohen 14y ago
  Perhaps because I've had my own odd experiences with online and offline commerce, as well as having read about others' on FatWallet.com, I may tend to see red flags where others don't. For example, in my experience, online inventory doesn't typically get updated very quickly. So, seeing inventory suddenly show up for a sold-out item as I was rapidly refreshing, I think, might trigger my spidey-sense but perhaps other people might not think this way. In any case, my comments aren't meant to excuse any poor customer service, or any other issues, on the vendor's end and I hope the author's case is resolved to his satisfaction.
markdown 14y ago
Yes, he isn't the only one. There were thousands like him, and we were (within a day or two) told that our orders were actually pre-orders, and we were given specific delivery timeframes (2-4 weeks, 3-4 weeks... 8-9 weeks) At any time after this point, one could simply cancel their orders. Many did so. Once it was realised that orders weren't being shipping in order of placement, many placed new orders (canceling the second once one was delivered). Folks here are making this out to be par for the course, but this was a very specific messup, and shouldn't be taken as the usual Google Play purchase experience. Google and/or LG severely underestimated how popular the phone would be, and that was their biggest mistake.

dendory 14y ago

Google sucks at customer support, news at 11. Honestly reading this, nothing surprised me. We all know Google is incapable of decent customer support, and even if we do pay money for something like a phone, the very corporate nature that reigns in this company still sees us as products of free services. Here's a thought, instead of hiring outsourced help for their Nexus sales crew, why not use their AdWords support staff? Those people are obviously the only ones trained to deal with humans.

damian2000 14y ago

If you're parting with hard earned cash to buy something, there's no reason you can't expect good customer service from the seller, even if some of their service is automated. They really need to take some lessons from Amazon.

YZF 14y ago

UPS has just delivered my Nexus 4 today here in BC, Canada. I shouldn't have rewarded Google with my business but there is really no competition for this product. If there was I would have taken my business there.