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Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out
21–30 of 91 posts
Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out
#22Please email me (email in profile) and I will try to get you support internally.
HN is the only place you can get Google support. Thanks for the effort, but you guys should seriously fix that, and not by shifting into your "let's automate this and do it smarter" mindset. It does not work.
To add some more context: for every successful person that reaches Google via social shaming, there are hundreds of cases of people that are not heard. I don't know how to fix this problem at your scale (a gigantic problem), but as I understand it, there is something wrong in your value system which rewards innovation and engineering experience much more than customer satisfaction.
Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
As respectable as your involvement in the situation is, this is exactly how it's not supposed to work. It seems that the only way for a small business to get in contact with someone at Google is to raise hell on social media (or HN) and to wait for someone to take mercy on you.
I agree, I don't understand why such wildly profitable tech companies willfully ignore live support... I mean, even a paid option. As a business, I would gladly pay $99 for a phone call if I have a high-pri issue. I remember using that when Microsoft had something like that years ago. If they did that, high-priority support can be a profit center (or at least break even) if they're really that worried about costs.
To be fair, both GSuite (business oriented) and Google One (for end users) come with paid support. Not sure to what extent this includes recovering a locked-out account, but it's a thing.
Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out
#24Please email me (email in profile) and I will try to get you support internally.
As respectable as your involvement in the situation is, this is exactly how it's not supposed to work. It seems that the only way for a small business to get in contact with someone at Google is to raise hell on social media (or HN) and to wait for someone to take mercy on you.
> It seems that the only way for a small business to get in contact with someone at Google is to raise hell on social media (or HN)
I'm intrigued by the implication that HN is not social media.
Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN is the only place you can get Google support. Thanks for the effort, but you guys should seriously fix that, and not by shifting into your "let's automate this and do it smarter" mindset. It does not work.
I don't know why they can't just hire a bunch of people to take care of stuff like this, like this is so ridiculous that I'm pretty sure someone could make a successful start-up to pay Googlers to enter internal tickets on behalf of people having issues with Google accounts/services.
It’s obvious that Google doesn’t want to incur the cost of client support staff.
Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out
#26Please email me (email in profile) and I will try to get you support internally.
Why you are not hiring proper support staff?
Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out
#27Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out
#28Please email me (email in profile) and I will try to get you support internally.
HN is the only place you can get Google support. Thanks for the effort, but you guys should seriously fix that, and not by shifting into your "let's automate this and do it smarter" mindset. It does not work.
Hold on. I'm an admin on a few paid GApps things. One got locked out, removed me, switched phone numbers, made a mess. Then owner hit me for help, I went through the channels with G and we were back on in a few hours/next day. This was only three months ago. The process was largely automated, IIRC there was one 15 minute call.
Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out
#29A few years back, I got locked out of my primary gmail account due to a 2 factor authentication SNAFU. I was never able to recover it. I tried to go through the appropriate support channels more than once. Filled out extensive forms, even identified recent emails like they asked, to no avail. It was very disappointing, considering I had spent a good amount of money purchasing apps/ games etc. with that account. What a waste.
Unless you get rescued here by a personal favor of a Googler, I would imagine that account is good as dead.
Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out
#30Doesn't Google takeout remain functional even for locked accounts ? You can download anything in that mail account even when it's blocked.