Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #105

logicalmonster wrote: post #56

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…

> o 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. I don't get this, I engage human Google support for paid Google products at least a few times a month. It's not great, but definitely on par with other tech giants. Are you expecting human support for ... free services ?

[deleted]

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

#132

Post by TechBro8615 » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC

glogla wrote: post #90

glitchc wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> They won't though, because end-users are not the customers of Google, advertisers are. You can betcha advertisers get excellent customer service. You would think so, but no. Even advertisers get bad support from Google. Even companies using Google as replacement for Microsoft stack (Gmail and Calendar instead of Outlook, etc) get bad support from Google. Even Google Cloud customers spending millions a year get bad…

This is just not true from my experience. Google Cloud has proactive and responsive support staff.

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

#133

Post by snielson » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC

ferminaut wrote: post #85

I placed an order for a Pixel Watch on Black Friday as a gift. Spent $380 or so on the watch+band. Site said it would be delivered on Nov 29-Dec 2nd (and status was updated to 'Pending Shipment'). Well, Dec 5th rolled around, still wasnt shipped. Since the status was 'pending shipment' you cannot cancel the order. I contacted google asking them to cancel my order. Two weeks later, it's still not shipped, CS rep is ba…

Transfer your domains to cloudflare.

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

#134

Post by bilalq » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 5:36 PM UTC

I'd love to see a thorough guide on removing one's reliance on Google products/services.

I much prefer Android over iOS, but the fear of Google just being able to completely shut me off on a whim keeps me up at night and is seriously tempting me to switch. I pay Google for Fi, Pixel phones, Home/Nest devices, One Storage for Photos/Gmail/Drive, YouTube Music, and probably some other stuff. My company pays Google for Google Workspace and their 30% IAP tax.

Despite being a paying customer, I know that there's a pretty decent chance of all of that getting shut down with absolutely no recourse for no reasonable cause. It's clear the bad PR from this isn't enough to make Google care. At this point, there needs to be regulatory pressure to stop the casual cruelty.

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

#135

Post by TechBro8615 » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 5:37 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #128

logicalmonster wrote: post #56

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 can't reasonably be expected to provide free 24/7 customer support for the entire Internet IMO they should be legally required to provide an appeals process with a real human and reasonable turnaround time (e.g. 1 business day would probably be fine with me) for all forms of account banning or website banning. For payment disputes they should also be legally required to provide human assistance within a few…

Did you try opening a bug report on the public Chromium bug tracker?

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

#136

Post by afandian » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 5:37 PM UTC

ferminaut wrote: post #85

I placed an order for a Pixel Watch on Black Friday as a gift. Spent $380 or so on the watch+band. Site said it would be delivered on Nov 29-Dec 2nd (and status was updated to 'Pending Shipment'). Well, Dec 5th rolled around, still wasnt shipped. Since the status was 'pending shipment' you cannot cancel the order. I contacted google asking them to cancel my order. Two weeks later, it's still not shipped, CS rep is ba…

Fastmail is great for email. There's a million domain registrars. The best time to leave google is today!

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

#137

Post by afandian » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 5:38 PM UTC

logicalmonster wrote: post #56

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…

There's a massive cultural blind spot at Google IMHO. And it's not as black and white as "if you're not the customer you're the product".

I used to be a paying Google Workspace customer and I cancelled my account through the usual process. After my account was closed _and deleted_ they sent some unknown invoice amount to collections, sent threatening emails.

Was there a reply-to? Was there a phone number? No, "log in with your account and raise a support issue". The account that you deleted. And another threatening email with no help about how to answer. I emailed the Collections address and I got auto-generated responses.

And I spent days combing help pages. Finally sorted it out by opening a new trial account (and then the help agent was very helpful). But even then it was awkward.

I will never send a cent their way.

Oh, and I know a google employee who was kind enought to look into it. He followed the internal channels to try and help and ... it was broken. Best he could do was file a bug report.

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

#138

Post by deweller » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 5:38 PM UTC

r3trohack3r wrote: post #107

Honestly, the top comment is more concerning: https://old.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/zndbku/tifu_by_accide... Account stolen. Obvious fraudulent charges. EA refuses to make it right. Customer rightfully disputes the charges. EA closes their account locking them out of an entire catalogue of content THEY HAD PAID for. This whole “you don’t really own digital content” ruse needs to be popped. A company shouldn’t be abl…

This is a use case that public blockchains could solve for us. Having a decentralized proof of digital rights ownership on a public blockchain could separate the content provider (Amazon / Google / EA) from the actual media they provide by storing it on IPFS or some other decentralized file store.

There would need to be a lot of work done to make this happen and big companies would have to get on board. It doesn't seem likely now, but it might happen with enough pressure or the right disruptive catalyst.

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

#139

Post by Brian_K_White » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 5:38 PM UTC

CogitoCogito wrote: post #59

mbauman wrote: 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.

Google logs everything about everyone, but somehow doesn't have a record of themselves telling the user to do something.

Man it sure is a great gig being google!

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

#140

Post by snotrockets » Fri, Dec 16, 2022, 5:38 PM UTC

dhimes wrote: post #109

hedora wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, of course, I understand that even Google can't reasonably be expected to provide free 24/7 customer support for the entire Internet. 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.

And often Microsoft would not put the charge through, at least if you were working to try to solve the problem without them. I don't know what their criteria were, but I don't think I ever paid despite calling a few times.

The terms I remember (note that there are so many different Microsoft licensing agreements, so yours could’ve been totally different) were that you weren’t charged if the problem you called for was indeed a problem with Microsoft software.

And that definition was quite liberal: not just obvious software bugs, but also confusing documentation, etc.

In other words, as long as you RTFM before you called, it was free.