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Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out

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Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out

#41

Post by jtwaleson »

edoceo wrote: post #28
jtwaleson wrote: post #11

Earlier 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.

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.

Sure, documentation & automation works for the majority of cases. The problem is with the other cases where you hit a wall and have no way to talk to a customer service rep to get your issue resolved.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out

#43

Post by zozbot234 »

inetknght wrote: post #35
mattl wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that one email is the login info to their bank?

There are other avenues to deal with your bank.

Those avenues tend to involve being physically present at some bank branch (or perhaps an ATM). Something that's not really feasible in the time of Corona.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out

#44

Post by icedchai »

alfehc wrote: post #32
icedchai wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I back up all my gmail locally with "gmvault". I am not affiliated, other than a satisfied user: http://gmvault.org/

Sign in is currently disked - "this app has not yet been verified by Google in order to use Google Sin In"

You can work around it: https://github.com/gaubert/gmvault/issues/335

Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out

#46

Post by user5994461 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #23
ijidak wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In a company using Google Apps for Business, administrators can reset any user account.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out

#47

Post by cyral »

Somewhat related... At our company we once deleted a G Suite account that had a balance on its AdSense account. They let us delete the account with a click of a button without checking if all the associated accounts for other Google products should actually be deleted. So we received a letter that the account was sent to collections, but there was no way to login and pay the bill because the account didn't exist anymore. Eventually we got ahold of support and had them link the AdSense account to another Google account so it could be accessed. Theres a lot of systems at play with Google and I imagine stuff like this is overlooked quite often.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out

#48

Post by irishcoffee »

zozbot234 wrote: post #43
inetknght wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other avenues to deal with your bank.

Those avenues tend to involve being physically present at some bank branch (or perhaps an ATM). Something that's not really feasible in the time of Corona.

I mean, maybe? I call my banks to do all manner of things all the time.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out

#49

Post by speedgoose »

amelius wrote: post #42
zerr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why you are not hiring proper support staff?

Because they can get away with it.

Well, many people say Google will never catch back Amazon and Microsoft in the cloud market due to their terrible reputation.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a small business and Google locked me out

#50

Post by dang »

BlackJack wrote: post #3

Please email me (email in profile) and I will try to get you support internally.

All: it's understandable that commenters react with generic indignation about how things shouldn't work that way, but please let's not pile on a user who's trying to help another user. It stacks up into the wrong incentive. After doing this once or twice and running into a buzzsaw of protest, who would want to it again?

Also, these comments appear mechanically and interchangeably every time the topic comes up, which means they're not the greatest for intellectual curiosity (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

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