61–70 of 288 posts
The EU has some institutions showing muscle too.
Big states like California can also do similar.
But don't forget Delaware, their agencies may not get a lot of attention but they have leverage due to the commonality of companies incorporating there.
Same for Cayman Islands.
Many people (including me) raised this issue internally at Google more than a decade ago now during the Google+ era. Vic Gundotra decided that not using your "real name" was a bannable offense despite the many legitimate concerns people brought up [1]. This was of course an automatic process and there were (completely predictably) false positives. This would kill your entire Google account, Gmail included. I was one…
Or just don’t use gmail. Email is way too important to me (and most people) to risk losing because an automated system thought I broke the TOS of an unrelated Google product. Even if you keep separate accounts, there’s nothing to stop them correlating those accounts and banning you anyway. Don’t use gmail as your primary email provider.
I’d recommend taking a few steps before doing a chargeback in cases like this: 1. Search around for back channel support. Google things like “executive customer support”. Often times these emails get published by bloggers, forums, etc. You can also look up support VP /Director’s names and then guess their email (e.g. first.last@example.com) and tell them your story. 2. Send a signature-required letter detailing out t…
Then I skimmed TFA, and they said that a CSR for the company told them to.
Maybe HN escalation will work, this time. But we should really figure out how the critical unique huge consumer tech companies can solve their due process problems, and be more consistent with US principles of society.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I ordered a Chromecast on the Google store a couple years back and the item never came. Google wouldn’t refund or reship and I was so close to doing a chargeback, but 20 wasn’t worth the trouble. I’m so glad I didn’t. Now I know to buy Google products from elsewhere and slowly migrate away from Gmail.
This feels like a huge gap in consumer protections. Retaliatory account bans seem like they should not be legal when a retailer fails to deliver. Of course this is all exacerbated by how large the entities in question are and how the same account may govern access to multiple services.
A more-measured approach would be to just disable your ability to purchase/engage with purchased services/products. Of course, Google is actively motivated to make forcing them to face consequences for mishandling product disputes punishable by complete ostracization from their "ecosystem". On the one hand, this feels like a Surprised Pikachu moment: Of course a chargeback, the final legal method through which you ha…
To me, the issue with Google's products and services is that they're not willing to provide any human customer service to resolve the real issues. Now, of course, I understand that even Google can't reasonably be expected to provide free 24/7 customer support for the entire Internet. If they had a normal phone number available where anybody could reach a human at any time, every confused person would call them with i…
Microsoft did this back in the 1990's. It provided a strong financial incentive to reduce the number of support calls generated per Windows installation, which is what they ended up doing.