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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 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
You get what you pay for. It would be much less frustrating if this were the case, actually. Empirically, $15,000 is not enough for them to routinely return email within a week. In many businesses, that would be "Yes sir, right away sir, can I get you a cup of tea while you wait sir" territory. Plus, from what I've heard, it doesn't get any better for the next two orders of magnitude, either.
- staunch 17y ago
  $15,000 over the course of how long? To them that's a very small fry. Many of their AdWords customers spend tens/hundreds of thousands per month. Those people are getting support.
  - netcan 17y ago
    I have had Google give horrendus CS on accounts on that scale. 100k is still small fry to Google. But that shouldn't matter. No one is trying to get Eric Schmidt on the phone. $150k, $15k or even $150 is plenty relative to returning a phone call, which is what it costs them & what your relative fry-ness should be measured against.
- netcan 17y ago
  I have had Google reps disappear (say 'I will call you back in 20m,' then not answer emails, phone calls etc. for days) on accounts many time bigger then that.
- Poiesis 17y ago
  Personally, my rule of thumb is not that you get what you pay for, but that you don't get what you don't pay for.
crad 17y ago
I use Google Apps for Domains Enterprise at my place of employment and have always found their support to be very quick and responsive. My gripe is they always have Apps for Domains features after everything else. For example, I can't upgrade users beyond 25GB of storage even though this is available for normal google users now.
- richardw 17y ago
  I'm also waiting for GApps to grow their size, but it's possible that the paying customers are last because Google treats them most carefully. Roll stuff out to your paying customers last, when you know it's solid. This mostly applies to features, not size limits, but it could be behind their thinking in general.
greyman 17y ago
Yes, but I still think they should have some courtesy and answer an email, when they broke your feed URL...
- aliebschner 17y ago
  To be honest, the feed URL is still up and running and working great -- however it's not bound to any of the two google accounts that are supposed to be bound with it. So: feed is working but I cannot change settings, setup a redirect, et cetera.
robk 17y ago
With Apps Premier edition ($50/user/year) you get a special PIN number. I've always gotten pretty rapid responses from their team on most support requests using this feature.
- aliebschner 17y ago
  The 150 hours reply came after a request using that PIN number.
  - pyre 17y ago
    Where do you mention that you used the PIN number to get a reply in your blog post? Where do you mention in your blog post if you are or aren't paying Google for support? You really need to be clear about what you're talking about here. You mention that you had trouble getting support for FeedBurner -- a free Google product -- yet you are complaining about a 150 hour response time from 'Google Enterprise Services?' Huh? So you're saying that, as a paying customer for Google Apps for Domains (I'm assuming since you don't mention any of these details in your post), you couldn't get the same level of support on another Google product that you're not paying for? When you pay for support with Google Product 1, it doesn't entitle you to support for Google Product 2. It might be good business for Google to give you extra support on Google Product 2 to keep you as a happy, paying customer of Google Product 1, but don't suffer from any delusions that just because you pay Google money at all that you deserve support for everything that they offer you. I'm not saying that this is a good way for Google to run their business, but I'm having a hard time seeing the huge issue that you're making this out to be. It really comes across as you getting upset at Google and hoping that you'll get everyone else pissed at Google too (or you're just trying to drive site-traffic).
    - aliebschner 17y ago
      > So you're saying that, as a paying customer for Google Apps for Domains (I'm assuming since you don't mention any of these details in your post), you couldn't get the same level of support on another Google product that you're not paying for? I'm just saying I am unhappy with their customer support, being it for Google Apps Premier Edition or any of the free services.
ellyagg 17y ago
Or you complain and embarrass them by adding your voice to the chorus of bad customer service stories extent, and they gradually develop a negative image that tarnishes their "do no evil" mantra a bit and weakens their credibility for when a larger PR blunder occurs. They are free to do business this way if they like and their customers are also free to pass it on by word of mouth. That's how the market works. Also, you're being blithe. Google (as most businesses) tries to make it as easy as possible for customers to convert onto their products. They don't put "Oh, by the way, we are able to offer these great services partly because we don't offer support" on their call-to-action pages, and people don't typically expect that it's virtually impossible to obtain customer support, so that's not something they're likely to research up front. By the time they realize their data is tied up in Google, and Google doesn't provide reasonable support, it's too late. It's not like you need support all the time, but when you need it, you REALLY need it.
- aliebschner 17y ago
  Thank you for writing it in plain english -- I really wish I could upvote you more than once because it's one of the best replies in this discussion (for that, and for bringing up "blithe", that I didn't know of).
mlapeter 17y ago
The problem with this is that in a lot of areas Google enters then wipes out the competition by offering the service for free. It's extremely hard for competitors to gain a foothold in a market when a huge competitor is giving the product away for free. Except it's not free; they earn a profit by having you use their services or else they wouldn't do it. They push competitors out of the market, then either start charging or make money off filling the service with ads (have you taken a look at google search results lately? about 1/3 of it is now ads). It's the equivalent of selling a physical product at a loss until you run competitors out of business (or discourage them from ever entering the market in the first place). What happens when there are no viable alternatives to "go elsewhere"? As others have said, network effects have already turned a lot of internet companies into monopolies. If I don't like using Adwords, do I really have an alternative at this point?

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

You get what you pay for. It would be much less frustrating if this were the case, actually. Empirically, $15,000 is not enough for them to routinely return email within a week. In many businesses, that would be "Yes sir, right away sir, can I get you a cup of tea while you wait sir" territory. Plus, from what I've heard, it doesn't get any better for the next two orders of magnitude, either.

staunch 17y ago
$15,000 over the course of how long? To them that's a very small fry. Many of their AdWords customers spend tens/hundreds of thousands per month. Those people are getting support.
- netcan 17y ago
  I have had Google give horrendus CS on accounts on that scale. 100k is still small fry to Google. But that shouldn't matter. No one is trying to get Eric Schmidt on the phone. $150k, $15k or even $150 is plenty relative to returning a phone call, which is what it costs them & what your relative fry-ness should be measured against.
netcan 17y ago
I have had Google reps disappear (say 'I will call you back in 20m,' then not answer emails, phone calls etc. for days) on accounts many time bigger then that.
Poiesis 17y ago
Personally, my rule of thumb is not that you get what you pay for, but that you don't get what you don't pay for.

crad 17y ago

I use Google Apps for Domains Enterprise at my place of employment and have always found their support to be very quick and responsive. My gripe is they always have Apps for Domains features after everything else. For example, I can't upgrade users beyond 25GB of storage even though this is available for normal google users now.

richardw 17y ago
I'm also waiting for GApps to grow their size, but it's possible that the paying customers are last because Google treats them most carefully. Roll stuff out to your paying customers last, when you know it's solid. This mostly applies to features, not size limits, but it could be behind their thinking in general.

greyman 17y ago

Yes, but I still think they should have some courtesy and answer an email, when they broke your feed URL...

aliebschner 17y ago
To be honest, the feed URL is still up and running and working great -- however it's not bound to any of the two google accounts that are supposed to be bound with it. So: feed is working but I cannot change settings, setup a redirect, et cetera.

robk 17y ago

With Apps Premier edition ($50/user/year) you get a special PIN number. I've always gotten pretty rapid responses from their team on most support requests using this feature.

aliebschner 17y ago
The 150 hours reply came after a request using that PIN number.
- pyre 17y ago
  Where do you mention that you used the PIN number to get a reply in your blog post? Where do you mention in your blog post if you are or aren't paying Google for support? You really need to be clear about what you're talking about here. You mention that you had trouble getting support for FeedBurner -- a free Google product -- yet you are complaining about a 150 hour response time from 'Google Enterprise Services?' Huh? So you're saying that, as a paying customer for Google Apps for Domains (I'm assuming since you don't mention any of these details in your post), you couldn't get the same level of support on another Google product that you're not paying for? When you pay for support with Google Product 1, it doesn't entitle you to support for Google Product 2. It might be good business for Google to give you extra support on Google Product 2 to keep you as a happy, paying customer of Google Product 1, but don't suffer from any delusions that just because you pay Google money at all that you deserve support for everything that they offer you. I'm not saying that this is a good way for Google to run their business, but I'm having a hard time seeing the huge issue that you're making this out to be. It really comes across as you getting upset at Google and hoping that you'll get everyone else pissed at Google too (or you're just trying to drive site-traffic).
  - aliebschner 17y ago
    > So you're saying that, as a paying customer for Google Apps for Domains (I'm assuming since you don't mention any of these details in your post), you couldn't get the same level of support on another Google product that you're not paying for? I'm just saying I am unhappy with their customer support, being it for Google Apps Premier Edition or any of the free services.

ellyagg 17y ago

Or you complain and embarrass them by adding your voice to the chorus of bad customer service stories extent, and they gradually develop a negative image that tarnishes their "do no evil" mantra a bit and weakens their credibility for when a larger PR blunder occurs. They are free to do business this way if they like and their customers are also free to pass it on by word of mouth. That's how the market works. Also, you're being blithe. Google (as most businesses) tries to make it as easy as possible for customers to convert onto their products. They don't put "Oh, by the way, we are able to offer these great services partly because we don't offer support" on their call-to-action pages, and people don't typically expect that it's virtually impossible to obtain customer support, so that's not something they're likely to research up front. By the time they realize their data is tied up in Google, and Google doesn't provide reasonable support, it's too late. It's not like you need support all the time, but when you need it, you REALLY need it.

aliebschner 17y ago
Thank you for writing it in plain english -- I really wish I could upvote you more than once because it's one of the best replies in this discussion (for that, and for bringing up "blithe", that I didn't know of).

mlapeter 17y ago

The problem with this is that in a lot of areas Google enters then wipes out the competition by offering the service for free. It's extremely hard for competitors to gain a foothold in a market when a huge competitor is giving the product away for free. Except it's not free; they earn a profit by having you use their services or else they wouldn't do it. They push competitors out of the market, then either start charging or make money off filling the service with ads (have you taken a look at google search results lately? about 1/3 of it is now ads). It's the equivalent of selling a physical product at a loss until you run competitors out of business (or discourage them from ever entering the market in the first place). What happens when there are no viable alternatives to "go elsewhere"? As others have said, network effects have already turned a lot of internet companies into monopolies. If I don't like using Adwords, do I really have an alternative at this point?