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Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned

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Re: Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned

#91
post #74

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…

> 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 issues that are completely unrelated to Google's actual products and even Google would be overwhelmed. That would be the fair consequence of wanti…

I said that because of my life experience. I run some small businesses in some quasi-technical fields.

We've gotten phone calls asking for help with fixing peoples' Yahoo mail accounts, asking for returns to stores that were completely different than ours, trying to get refunds on products we don't even sell, and many other nonsensical and time-wasting calls from confused people.

If we, at our extremely small scale, were often annoyed by dealing with irrelevant phone calls, I have no doubt that Google would be drowned out by every person who had an issue installing Windows, trying to setup their printer, asking for help getting their money back from a shoe store, running out of gas on the highway, their apartment not turning on the heat high enough, and a host of unrelated things that most of us would never dream of calling Google about.

I'm not asking for perfection from Google: I'm just asking for Google to help desperate people that are completely screwed and giving them some option, even if it requires some payment, to fix major life-changing issues.

Re: Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned

#92
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really the problem. The problem is that *customer support* suggested to do so.

Yeah there is no excuse for Google not to make an exception to the policy when Google told the poster to do the chargeback.

This is the inevitable result of automation. There is no negotiating with a piece of code.

Re: Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned

#93
post #17

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…

> Never tie your Google account to any other Google product. Google pretty much forces you to do so.

Yeah, either you'd get your gmail account banned because of something happened in google ads, or they ban you for having multiple accounts and trying to "circumvent their anti-abuse policy" or something.

The only way to win this game is to not play it.

Re: Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned

#94

What's the best email alternative to gmail?

There are a lot of 3rd party ones: Protonmail, Hey, even Gandi has a service. Getting "free" email is, I think, a thing of the past. You want to be a customer, not a product.

I run my own email, but getting delivery can be a pain, so I also use Mailgun as an SMTP relay. It's worth paying them for this service.

Re: Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned

#95

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…

Google One is only a few bucks a month and gives human support. It certainly helped me in getting someone from Google confirm to me with written info that an issue I was having was caused by the phone manufacturer and not Google.

Re: Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned

#96
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really the problem. The problem is that *customer support* suggested to do so.

Yeah there is no excuse for Google not to make an exception to the policy when Google told the poster to do the chargeback.

I think the chargeback here was a personal "go f yourself" move from the supervisor to a "troublesome" client, not Google.

Re: Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is google a monopoly? I get by just fine without it.

Do you have an Android phone? It's getting harder to use them without a Google account. In my university, professors and old T.A. have a mix of gmail, hotmail and yahoo, let's say 1/3, 1/3 and 1/3. But students have almost 100% emails from gmail. I't not a monopoly, but it's getting very close.

No I don’t use Android on any device.

Re: Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned

#98
post #72

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…

> 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 issues that are completely unrelated to Google's actual products and even Google would be overwhelmed. No it is entirely reasonable. Even with a d…

[deleted]

Re: Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned

#99

Every service does this. If you chargeback usually you will get banned. You should always get a refund by talking to support. Chargebacks cost the company extra fees and can lead to problems if they get too many.

> You should always get a refund by talking to support

In the original post, the author had multiple conversations with support, and the support agent told them to do a chargeback. And another support agent later acknowledged that the support agent was not supposed to say that, but that the ban remains in place regardless.

Re: Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned

#100
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably not permanently.

Of course permanently. But what’s unacceptable here is canceling the email account too.

> Of course permanently.

Not if your motivation is avoiding the fraud the user just told you about. You'd investigate more.

Definitely not "of course".

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