11–20 of 94 posts
> I already knew Google didnt offer email or telephone support For those who still haven't moved off of Google for important work, let this person's story serve as your final warning and get migrated to another platform with good support.
Google offers support to paying customers https://one.google.com/about/support
I attempted to get an issue fixed with backups not working. The first 5 emails were the google moron telling me how to start a backup, ignoring my clear communication that I'd run a backup and it didn't backup my data, as was clear by the space usage.
The next 5-7 emails terminated when their suggestion was to remove the password from my phone. I'm not sure why that could have helped, but regardless, I can't have my phone without a password.
They have competitors who provide support. As you said you chose them knowing this was a risk.
Are you paying them?
No. But it's not possible to do so. Given an email lockout, a $100+ incidence support cost would be reasonable. But there might be legal implications there because it's likely their fault the account was (wrongly) locked out. IANAL
It's probably not possible to start doing so after you are locked out, but Google includes support as part of paid business Workspace plans, and also as part of paid consumer Google One plans.
If you have your own domain, it's wise to use that for email (since you can switch providers). Apple has support for custom domains in iCloud email now, I get that iCloud email isn't the coolest or best or anything, but they offer native push support so you get email notifications as fast as the gmail app, but you don't need the third party app. Plus Apple has physical stores with genius bars who _might_ be able to get your account unlocked, if you don't have a TOS violation?
Beyond that, Proton and Fastmail are alternatives. There's not really any such thing as "secure email" (Proton can easily just keep the unencrypted copies of emails sent to your address) but they are both decent non-FAANG options
> I already knew Google didnt offer email or telephone support For those who still haven't moved off of Google for important work, let this person's story serve as your final warning and get migrated to another platform with good support.
Which one would you recommend?
For email and calendaring with a custom domain, I've moved over to Fastmail (after much recommending from HN) and it's been great.
I'm still trying to minimize damage and do a monthly Google Takeout of all my data.
They have competitors who provide support. As you said you chose them knowing this was a risk.
Can you list a couple? I’m interested in moving my email, document storage, and document manipulation (word and sheet stuff) to one nice solution somewhere else.