It's been 191 days since Google Drive worked for me • Hacker News Board

Re: It's been 191 days since Google Drive worked for me

#201

Post by tallanvor » Mon, Jul 10, 2017, 10:22 AM UTC

Lxr wrote: post #52

Can anyone with experience explain why companies continue to spend money on "level 1 support"? It seems to universally make the support process worse - so why do it? Is anyone honestly helped by scripted responses that would literally be more effective if handled by bots?

"Bots", although not necessarily the type that people think of today have been handling a lot of work for years. --Generally by providing a link to a possible solution.

L1 support gets anything not handled by bots, and are generally able to close around 80-90% of the cases. That's why you spend money on L1 support first.

L2 handles another 10-15% of the cases, and then depending on the company, L3/L4/developers handle the rest.

Google either has an environment where L3 support doesn't talk to customers (which would be pretty unusual), or they have a huge backlog and just don't have resources to keep up with the cases reaching them. If the latter is the issue, there's not a quick fix - even if you have funding to higher more of them (and they usually earn quite a bit more than L1/L2 support), you have to find people with the necessary skills, or be constantly trying to get people ready to move up (L1 -> L2 -> L3, etc.), which can be difficult if you're dealing with outsourcing on one or more levels, and if the tiers are located in different locations.

The other thing is that if you're one person who has reported the issue and you have an individual subscription, the truth is that it might not make sense for the company to spend as much time that is require to fix your issue - If you're spending $100/year, why should the company spend $10,000 to fix the issue? It sucks, of course, but that's a simple truth about software support.

Re: It's been 191 days since Google Drive worked for me

#202

Post by dx034 » Mon, Jul 10, 2017, 10:22 AM UTC

martinpw wrote: post #117

songzme wrote: post #33

Thanks for sharing the story. Looking back, I realize that I had noticed bugs filed months prior. I don't even know what they are about because I subconsciously avoid them. (perhaps out of fear?) Assuming that these are valid tickets (and not outdated), I subconsciously avoided tickets that are months old. Probably because: 1. Bugs that are months old are probably super complicated and will take up a good chunk of ti…

> Is it okay for an engineer to take responsibility for a client and reach out to them directly instead of through an middle man support? The problem with this is that the client now has your direct contact information. If you help them out, then you can bet the next time they have an issue they are coming straight to you rather than going through official channels. If they work at large customer your contact may get…

You can still handle it via the ticketing system so that the user writes to some generated email address, not the direct email address. Would probably have to happen anyway to ensure the conversation is logged properly.

Re: It's been 191 days since Google Drive worked for me

#203

Post by dingo_bat » Mon, Jul 10, 2017, 11:20 AM UTC

victorhooi wrote: post #59

toomuchtodo wrote: post #7

This is why Dropbox has value. It works, its reliable, and if you're a paying customer you can get support. Spend the $10/month. Don't go on for more than half a year with your storage being broken. Disclaimer: no affiliation except a satisfied pro account user EDIT: Edge cases notwithstanding.

I'm not sure what value that would add here... The customer's issue seems to be that they have a very large number of files, and are trying to sync it with a 32-bit desktop client, and are hitting memory issues. Dropbox themselves state this on their websites: https://www.dropbox.com/help/space/file-storage-limit > Note: The performance of the Dropbox application may start to decline when you store above 300,000 file…

I'd understand if you don't want to discuss details but for the life of me I cannot understand how the total number of files can affect anything. What function does a sync app do which depends on total number of files? I can just do the sync file by file. It will take 10x more time to sync 100 files than 10 files. But why the brokenness?

Re: It's been 191 days since Google Drive worked for me

#204

Post by dingo_bat » Mon, Jul 10, 2017, 11:22 AM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #188

Dylan16807 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get notification of file change, binary search the list of files, make adjustments. This can also be done on a small amount of memory, independent of file count. I'm sure it's tricky to update the existing software, but as a generic problem syncing files with O(1) or O(logn) memory is not very hard.

Where's your sync client then? (I've been very slowly designing my own, and the first thing for me was coming up with a list of awkward cases ..)

This seems like a good project. Thanks.

Re: It's been 191 days since Google Drive worked for me

#205

Post by l0b0 » Mon, Jul 10, 2017, 12:31 PM UTC

I've had a problem with Google Drive for a few months now, where they are unable to change the currency I'm paying. Since foreign currency fees are pretty steep and Google Support says they're on it, I've had a friendly reminder that I soon won't be able to use Gmail anymore, and I received some irrelevant BS when asking for a clarification.

Re: It's been 191 days since Google Drive worked for me

#206

Post by laurentoget » Mon, Jul 10, 2017, 1:20 PM UTC

pricechild wrote: post #176

laurentoget wrote: post #129

Two things i do not get: - Why can't Google figure out what the conditions which trigger this issue are and add a caveat to the documentation? "Bad things will happen if you use more than 500,000 files on a 32 bit client." This would save both their support organization and their customers a lot of pain. - Why does this particular user not give up on Google Drive if it does not work for him, or at least try to figure…

Why don't they give up? I can't imagine that's going to help their case getting refunded? I'd be amazed if paying customers weren't given 'slightly' better service, and that'd just make things more difficult dropping back to the lower tier?

How much time are you willing to spend emailing a broken customer support organization to run after a refund?

Re: It's been 191 days since Google Drive worked for me

#207

Post by albedoa » Mon, Jul 10, 2017, 2:09 PM UTC

victorhooi wrote: post #162

inferiorhuman wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that it's not as easy to solve as a naive first pass would assume. Because Google doesn't have the resources to tackle challenging problems? lol. A difficult to solve problem on its own is one thing, but the comically awful support Google offers indicates that it's more likely a "we don't care" versus a "we don't know how" problem.

We don't have a monopoly on clever CS people =). I'm pretty sure Dropbox and Box.net have lots of smart people working for them as well. (In fact, I have friends at Dropbox) I'm not an expert in that specific bug, so I won't speculate publicly - but the memory issue is something that has seen steady commits over time from various people who are plugging away diligently at it. It's a bit of a moving target, and there…

> In terms of the customer support side of things, I don't know all the specifics of what happened, so I won't comment further. However, my details are on HN, so feel free to PM if you want me to see what I can do internally.

What possible information would you need? You are basically saying you don't trust OP's account of what happened.

Re: It's been 191 days since Google Drive worked for me

#208

Post by Walf » Mon, Jul 10, 2017, 2:11 PM UTC

wyclif wrote: post #199

zamber wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure they did. Along with some other services. In Wrocław (Poland) we have a Google office. From water cooler talk I heard that it's mostly support. From another source I heard about support calls where one side eventually figured out the accent and suggested moving from English to Polish ;). Plural for information is valid in Polish and probably other Slavic languages (s. "informacja", p. "informacje"). A…

Misplaced English plurals are also common in SE Asia.

Internet Service Providings?

Re: It's been 191 days since Google Drive worked for me

#209

Post by b123400 » Mon, Jul 10, 2017, 2:59 PM UTC

I am having issue with my google drive as well, they calculated the wrong storage usage and I simply cannot upload more files. I spent weeks to convince the support it is their bug that clearing cache is not solving the problem. They said they're going to follow up but nothing happened. I then just cancelled the plan, now gmail is complaining not enough space and will stop receiving email. I told the support my situation, and they gave me extra storage for a month while they're dealing with the problem. Though the problem is never resolved, and I now have to send an email to extend that extra storage every month.

Seems like a proper way to get support from big companies in 2017 is to post on hackernews.

Re: It's been 191 days since Google Drive worked for me

#210

Post by vel0city » Mon, Jul 10, 2017, 3:02 PM UTC

chrischen wrote: post #90

dpkonofa wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does do what it says on the box. You're not required to download any of the apps in order to use Google Drive. My contention is that the OP claims that they deserve some kind of reimbursement because "they're paying for it" but the "it" here is not the app, it's the service. They're paying for online storage. There are several ways to sync your files to that service. The Google Drive app is a free option. He's pay…

Drive is terrible then if what it says on tje box can’t deliver working sync clients. Dropbox delivers working sync clients out of the box, even though you could just use their web interface.

Save for the fact the Dropbox client wouldn't work for this user, as it maxes out at ~300k files while this user has more than double that. This user would have similar issues with the Dropbox sync client as they're having with the Drive client.