5 ms·

Gone Google? Do yourself a favor: don’t.

66 points by aliebschner 17y ago

aliebschner 17y ago
If you want a short version of the story, here it is: it took 5 days (approximatively 150 hours) to get the first reply from the so called “Google Enterprise Support”. And that’s the good news. The bad news is that most of the Google products don’t come with any kind of support whatsoever, unless you are internet famous.
- dasil003 17y ago
  Yeah, Google apparently uses Digg as its CRM system.
- conover 17y ago
  For some reason I can't get to the article. Anyway as another anecdotal data point: We have a few Google Search Appliances where I work. When one of them broke (rather catastrophically) Google Support was on top of it and the problem was fixed relatively quickly. Edit: I suppose this is a case of "you get what you pay for". Google Search Appliances are non-trivially expensive. I guess they wouldn't be able to get away with bad support for those.
  - aliebschner 17y ago
    I threw money (RAM) at the problem and the server is back up, at least it is now ;-)
- jrockway 17y ago
  If you want some details on the story, here it is: this wasn't for any service he actually paid money for. If I give you something for free and it breaks, you are entitled to keep both pieces. Expecting anything else is ... confusing.
  - aliebschner 17y ago
    Nah. Here are the details: I think I would be able to reproduce the issue but I have no way to contact them other than an abandoned "official" google group. I call this a crappy way to run a "free" service.
    - pyre 17y ago
      How does that reply have anything to do with what you're replying to? Post: "you are not entitled to support" Reply: "i can reproduce this problem, but i can't get support"
      - aliebschner 17y ago
        In the world of free stuff most of the time support is not granted. "You are free to e-mail us, and we are free to ignore you" -- that's fine. In the world of google free stuff it's "we made a business decision not to give our customers the opportunity to contact us", to my biased opinion this decision is bad because not only I'm not able to ask for support but I can't even fill in a bug report.
        pyre 17y ago
        How do you even know that the problem is reproducible? You've only managed to trigger it once.
        jrockway 17y ago
        He was going to Google Search to see if anyone else had the problem, but he swore to never use Google again. Oh, the ... irony?
    - wmeredith 17y ago
      Then use something else. You're not locked in, there is no contract, you aren't invested (no money has changed hands); why not just move on?
- trapper 17y ago
  For me it's been six months with two emails. I replied within minutes to both. They overcharged me 250$ or so. And even though I should be peeved, I love their services and would never change :)
sunchild 17y ago
You get what you pay for. Google Apps for Enterprise is $50/yr. Not sure what you pay for feedburner, but the bottom line is that Google doesn't sell support. You email them and you wait. If it doesn't work for you, go elsewhere. It's obviously a business decision they've made by weighing the loss of customers like you against the cost of carrying a huge hands-on support organization.
- qeorge 17y ago
  I disagree. If I pay a company, they owe me support when their product breaks. If that's going to be limited to email support, not to mention non-responsive email support, they need to disclose that upfront.
  - access_denied 17y ago
    I disagree. There is a contract. What is written in it? That counts. (I am not saying bad customer service is smart business.)
    - coderdude 17y ago
      So you're saying you disagree that they should be upfront with their own limitations as a customer service provider, even though they are soliciting you to buy customer service from them?
    - qeorge 17y ago
      Playing "here's the catch" with customers isn't right. When the product you are selling fails, you must be available to help.
    - Keyframe 17y ago
      It really depends if there is something like "Sale of Goods and Supply of Services Act" in your country (that one particular is from Ireland). So, in a nutshell, contract doesn't trump law, ever.
- patio11 17y ago
va_coder 17y ago
I think Rackspace is hitting a sweet spot with hosted email and calendaring and 24x7 service. I think there are many niches, yet untapped in hosted services, where the cost may be a little more than google, but the service may be a lot better (another example Heroku).
- megamark16 17y ago
  Cost less and give more, that's all it takes to steal customers from a competitor. Of course "Cost" doesn't just refer to the price, as someone who has "spent" their time trying to get support from Google can tell you. And "More" doesn't just refer to features or services, it's about the value to the customer.
  - freetard 17y ago
    I think you mean TCO.
    - megamark16 17y ago
      I knew it had a name! :-) Thanks.
mstevens 17y ago
Is this loading for other people? For me there's no response.
- aliebschner 17y ago
  hackernews killed the server and it's really FUBAR (can't even ssh to it and try to fix it) sorry about that [edit: back up now]
petercooper 17y ago
If you run a site with thousands of subscribers that depends on FeedBurner for serving feeds, it's a little worrying. There are things you can do to reduce the pain but it's still a sticky point.
- pyre 17y ago
  Are you saying that it's worrying that Google gives no support for FeedBurner or that it's worrying that a large site is dependent on FeedBurner?
  - petercooper 17y ago
    The former. I can see why my message is ambiguous now, but I'm worried about sites being at Google's mercy, rather than criticizing them for using a service that, at one point, was run by a well staffed and very competent team. As far as Google acquisitions go, FeedBurner was by far the worst IMHO in terms of really sucking the heart and soul out of a product.
coreyrecvlohe 17y ago
You want Enterprise support for Feedburner? LOL. As far as I know they don't offer that, and I wouldn't have expected it. You're talking about Google giving support for one of their products which isn't actually covered by their Enterprise policy, even though you might have had a product that was covered, the issue you were having was for a product that wasn't. Their Enterprise Policy explicitly states which are services covered and which are not.
NathanKP 17y ago
The blog only has four posts on it? Why is he even worried about feeds at this point? I think this is blown way out of proportion. A new blog like that with only four posts probably only gets a few visitors a day. He's getting more traffic over this "controversy" post than he would ever get from a feed. He should thank Feedburner for messing up his feed because it gave him something to write about that would bring in traffic. At any rate the loss of the feed is nothing terrible when you consider how new the blog is. I tried a hack to find out how many subscribers he has but he has feed "awareness" disabled. https://feedburner.google.com/api/awareness/1.0/GetFeedData?uri=indieloper https://feedburner.google.com/api/awareness/1.0/GetFeedData?... At any rate, I doubt he even has more than a few subscribers. No wonder Google didn't consider his "issue" to be high priority.
pavs 17y ago
This is one of the stupidest thing I have read in a long time. Sorry, but someone had to tell you the way it is. Having hissy fit over a trivial issue such as feed burner? Create a new feed to the account you wanted to transfer. make a post about the update. Readers from all feed will still get your post, because the changes are not instant. Wait 24 hours. Problem solved. Assuming you are not the one who made a mistake and deleted your feed. I have been using feedburner for a long time and transferred my old feeds to google feeds with no problem.

66 points by aliebschner 17y ago

If you want a short version of the story, here it is: it took 5 days (approximatively 150 hours) to get the first reply from the so called “Google Enterprise Support”. And that’s the good news. The bad news is that most of the Google products don’t come with any kind of support whatsoever, unless you are internet famous.

dasil003 17y ago
Yeah, Google apparently uses Digg as its CRM system.
conover 17y ago
For some reason I can't get to the article. Anyway as another anecdotal data point: We have a few Google Search Appliances where I work. When one of them broke (rather catastrophically) Google Support was on top of it and the problem was fixed relatively quickly. Edit: I suppose this is a case of "you get what you pay for". Google Search Appliances are non-trivially expensive. I guess they wouldn't be able to get away with bad support for those.
- aliebschner 17y ago
  I threw money (RAM) at the problem and the server is back up, at least it is now ;-)
jrockway 17y ago
If you want some details on the story, here it is: this wasn't for any service he actually paid money for. If I give you something for free and it breaks, you are entitled to keep both pieces. Expecting anything else is ... confusing.
- aliebschner 17y ago
  Nah. Here are the details: I think I would be able to reproduce the issue but I have no way to contact them other than an abandoned "official" google group. I call this a crappy way to run a "free" service.
  - pyre 17y ago
    How does that reply have anything to do with what you're replying to? Post: "you are not entitled to support" Reply: "i can reproduce this problem, but i can't get support"
    - aliebschner 17y ago
      In the world of free stuff most of the time support is not granted. "You are free to e-mail us, and we are free to ignore you" -- that's fine. In the world of google free stuff it's "we made a business decision not to give our customers the opportunity to contact us", to my biased opinion this decision is bad because not only I'm not able to ask for support but I can't even fill in a bug report.
      - pyre 17y ago
        How do you even know that the problem is reproducible? You've only managed to trigger it once.
        jrockway 17y ago
        He was going to Google Search to see if anyone else had the problem, but he swore to never use Google again. Oh, the ... irony?
  - wmeredith 17y ago
    Then use something else. You're not locked in, there is no contract, you aren't invested (no money has changed hands); why not just move on?
trapper 17y ago
For me it's been six months with two emails. I replied within minutes to both. They overcharged me 250$ or so. And even though I should be peeved, I love their services and would never change :)

sunchild 17y ago

You get what you pay for. Google Apps for Enterprise is $50/yr. Not sure what you pay for feedburner, but the bottom line is that Google doesn't sell support. You email them and you wait. If it doesn't work for you, go elsewhere. It's obviously a business decision they've made by weighing the loss of customers like you against the cost of carrying a huge hands-on support organization.

qeorge 17y ago
I disagree. If I pay a company, they owe me support when their product breaks. If that's going to be limited to email support, not to mention non-responsive email support, they need to disclose that upfront.
- access_denied 17y ago
  I disagree. There is a contract. What is written in it? That counts. (I am not saying bad customer service is smart business.)
  - coderdude 17y ago
    So you're saying you disagree that they should be upfront with their own limitations as a customer service provider, even though they are soliciting you to buy customer service from them?
  - qeorge 17y ago
    Playing "here's the catch" with customers isn't right. When the product you are selling fails, you must be available to help.
  - Keyframe 17y ago
    It really depends if there is something like "Sale of Goods and Supply of Services Act" in your country (that one particular is from Ireland). So, in a nutshell, contract doesn't trump law, ever.
patio11 17y ago

va_coder 17y ago

I think Rackspace is hitting a sweet spot with hosted email and calendaring and 24x7 service. I think there are many niches, yet untapped in hosted services, where the cost may be a little more than google, but the service may be a lot better (another example Heroku).

megamark16 17y ago
Cost less and give more, that's all it takes to steal customers from a competitor. Of course "Cost" doesn't just refer to the price, as someone who has "spent" their time trying to get support from Google can tell you. And "More" doesn't just refer to features or services, it's about the value to the customer.
- freetard 17y ago
  I think you mean TCO.
  - megamark16 17y ago
    I knew it had a name! :-) Thanks.

mstevens 17y ago

Is this loading for other people? For me there's no response.

aliebschner 17y ago
hackernews killed the server and it's really FUBAR (can't even ssh to it and try to fix it) sorry about that [edit: back up now]

petercooper 17y ago

If you run a site with thousands of subscribers that depends on FeedBurner for serving feeds, it's a little worrying. There are things you can do to reduce the pain but it's still a sticky point.

pyre 17y ago
Are you saying that it's worrying that Google gives no support for FeedBurner or that it's worrying that a large site is dependent on FeedBurner?
- petercooper 17y ago
  The former. I can see why my message is ambiguous now, but I'm worried about sites being at Google's mercy, rather than criticizing them for using a service that, at one point, was run by a well staffed and very competent team. As far as Google acquisitions go, FeedBurner was by far the worst IMHO in terms of really sucking the heart and soul out of a product.

coreyrecvlohe 17y ago

You want Enterprise support for Feedburner? LOL. As far as I know they don't offer that, and I wouldn't have expected it. You're talking about Google giving support for one of their products which isn't actually covered by their Enterprise policy, even though you might have had a product that was covered, the issue you were having was for a product that wasn't. Their Enterprise Policy explicitly states which are services covered and which are not.

NathanKP 17y ago

The blog only has four posts on it? Why is he even worried about feeds at this point? I think this is blown way out of proportion. A new blog like that with only four posts probably only gets a few visitors a day. He's getting more traffic over this "controversy" post than he would ever get from a feed. He should thank Feedburner for messing up his feed because it gave him something to write about that would bring in traffic. At any rate the loss of the feed is nothing terrible when you consider how new the blog is. I tried a hack to find out how many subscribers he has but he has feed "awareness" disabled. https://feedburner.google.com/api/awareness/1.0/GetFeedData?uri=indieloper https://feedburner.google.com/api/awareness/1.0/GetFeedData?... At any rate, I doubt he even has more than a few subscribers. No wonder Google didn't consider his "issue" to be high priority.

pavs 17y ago

This is one of the stupidest thing I have read in a long time. Sorry, but someone had to tell you the way it is. Having hissy fit over a trivial issue such as feed burner? Create a new feed to the account you wanted to transfer. make a post about the update. Readers from all feed will still get your post, because the changes are not instant. Wait 24 hours. Problem solved. Assuming you are not the one who made a mistake and deleted your feed. I have been using feedburner for a long time and transferred my old feeds to google feeds with no problem.