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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

#171

Post by idiotsecant »

deweller wrote: post #138
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 se…

this seems like an awfully complicated alternative to just letting you download a file.

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

#172

Post by eternityforest »

This is really scary. I've always been a big fan of Google's products despite their issues, and losing an account would probably be 100x worse than losing all important documents at once.

Unfortunately there's no real alternative to Google with full parity, aside from other proprietary platforms that have major downsides like Apple's high cost and incompatibility.

There are open source voice assistants, but not every service supports them. And the things the do support might not have whatever crazy optimization Google does to make Keep load instantly from the widget.

There are other email providers, but few free ones I would trust more than Google, small companies disappear all the time, and Google has a relatively good record of avoiding data breaches.

Nobody except Google provides the APIs Android apps use, probably 60% of the usefulness of my phone would go away without their services, I would guess.

Chrome could be taken over by the FOSS community if need be, although they have a habit of ripping out features so you might as well just use FF.

There's alternatives for finding lost phones and recording location history... but what's the battery life like, and do they have the ability to remote lock a phone?

I'm not sure how anyone would get away from Google without losing a lot. It doesn't seem like anyone but Apple has anywhere near that kind of integration platform.

And the FOSS community seems to have little interest in duplicating the things that make Google what it is.

Google provides dozens of minor conveniences that would be questionably worth it if you had to set them up individually, and definitely not worth it if they were even slightly worse implemented.

It's extra concerning since a Pixel is high on my list for my next phone.

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

#173

Post by toddreedy »

kenjackson wrote: post #159
TechBro8615 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It might be a relative perspective they had. I've heard that AWS and Azure provide much better support. I can't say firsthand, but I've heard that fairly consistently.

The joke we had was AWS has better support, Google had better products, and MS had better sales.

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

#174

Post by kube-system »

adastra22 wrote: post #170
kube-system wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people wrote letters in 1980. That ain’t a defense of Ma Bell.

There are multiple email providers. There are multiple phone providers. You want to argue this is a duopoly? Ok. But it is demonstrably not a monopoly.

Chrome‘s market share is on par with 90s windows. Google search is above that. G-apps on android is on par with ma bell.

Monopolists of the past are jealous of how many monopolies google is getting away with.

Google abuses these positions to decide what web technologies the web uses, which businesses get found on the web and which don’t, and how android device manufacturers build their phones.

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

#175

Post by thrashh »

deweller wrote: post #138
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 se…

IPFS is an open network. Putting it on there would be like putting it on a public FTP server, which would be way simpler

Your solution is equivalent to letting customers download their game installer after logging in and giving them a license key to unlock with, something we already can do, except your idea includes 10,000 more steps

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

#176

Post by MerelyMortal »

nickphx wrote: post #14

A chargeback can be initiated for any number of reasons.. It's good business practice to disable the account of someone claiming fraud, to prevent more fraud.. :D

You're right, a company cannot commit fraud if they have no one to commit fraud against.

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

#177

Post by BoiledCabbage »

deweller wrote: post #138
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 se…

So time to play the same old game: does block chain provide any value here that a separate centralized DB doesn't?

Let's see, can't you solve the exact same problem by simply having a centralized organization have a database of digital content ownership? Essentially a title record DB? Seems like it.

And how does your blockchain solution solve the problem of someone is hacking the game and needs to be banned? Can the EA ban them or do hackers get to stay for good because it's on the blockchain? And if EA can ban them at their discretion then how did the block chain solve anything here?

And so yet again someone appears to have thrown out "blockchain" when it provides zero value at all towards a solution.

Please anytime anyone proposes blockchain, please explain how it is in any way better than a separate centralized DB in your proposed use case.

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

#178

Post by jackweirdy »

ssharp wrote: post #27

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…

Another depending on your jurisdiction is the court process in your area.

In the U.K. we have the Money claim online service, to start proceedings against a company or person who owe money. There is a nominal fee starting at £30 and if companies don’t respond the court will de facto rule in your favour.

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

#179

Post by creeble »

creeble wrote: post #36

TIL never to buy physical products directly from Google! Or for that matter to never use Google Pay, even if the c/c charge isn't run by them. You could go from "credit card buyer protection" to Google Doomsday with a single disputed charge. I wonder how they handle "bank reversals", where a report of a stolen card (but not specifically a customer-generated chargeback) results in a reversal of the charge by the bank…

To further my question:

I have a c/c I use for Google. Said card # is stolen, and used to buy Google services (under a different ID). I call the bank, they cancel the card and refund the amounts charged to Google for the unknown services.

What is the chance of Google cancelling my other account, since it was on the same card?

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

#180

Post by trollied »

mcronce wrote: post #110
neilv wrote: post #66

When I saw the headline, my first reaction was "You did a chargeback against a huge company from which you can't afford to be auto-unpersonned?! You crazy!" 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…

A good start, at least with Google, might be for them to give anything resembling a fuck about their non-advertising customers. My experience is that they seem to have this mindset that if you aren't paying them for advertising specifically, you're not a customer , you're a user - the product - which is true if you aren't paying them at all, but isn't even remotely the case when you're giving them money in exchange f…

Don’t worry, you can traffic billions of ads a month & they still won’t care. Madness. Everything is automated.
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