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Tell HN: Locked Google account reopened after two years

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Re: Tell HN: Locked Google account reopened after two years

#21

Post by gonehome »

alwayslikethis wrote: post #16
swozey wrote: post #9

Two years ago I used just about everything Google and had done so since Gmail first came out. My Android phone was googlefi. Internet was google. Gmail. DNS. SSO to pretty much everything. One day out of the blue my Google Pay account was marked as fraud and locked down. I couldn't update/add/change any of my payment information. I have no idea why. I don't remember when/how I even found out it was locked down, I was…

You don't have to switch to Apple though. It's a bit like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Apple has an even stronger hold on your digital life if you decide to fully invest into its ecosystem. It's much better to stay on Android, but de-google it, and avoiding the use of your Google account

The incentives are more aligned with apple so this is less of a problem, they also have a lot more support and help available when there are problems.

Re: Tell HN: Locked Google account reopened after two years

#22

Post by callalex »

alwayslikethis wrote: post #16
swozey wrote: post #9

Two years ago I used just about everything Google and had done so since Gmail first came out. My Android phone was googlefi. Internet was google. Gmail. DNS. SSO to pretty much everything. One day out of the blue my Google Pay account was marked as fraud and locked down. I couldn't update/add/change any of my payment information. I have no idea why. I don't remember when/how I even found out it was locked down, I was…

You don't have to switch to Apple though. It's a bit like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Apple has an even stronger hold on your digital life if you decide to fully invest into its ecosystem. It's much better to stay on Android, but de-google it, and avoiding the use of your Google account

Sure, but if Apple decides to lock your account (a much more rare phenomenon if sampling Hacker News comments) you can have someone on the phone with you in minutes, or even walk to a store where they will help you.

Re: Tell HN: Locked Google account reopened after two years

#23

Post by 037 »

I recently decided to trust Apple with my emails after witnessing a friend lose access to his free account due to some mistakes on his part. After he reached out to Apple's customer service, I was genuinely impressed by the helpful and knowledgeable support team. They escalated the issue efficiently through multiple levels, involving several phone calls over a short span of one or two days. What stood out the most was their unwavering dedication to resolving his issue, despite him only utilizing a free 5Gb account. Maybe hardware investments marks you as paying customer?

Knowing that if an issue arises there'll be a team of humans eager to help is quite reassuring.

[Another feature I value is Apple's "Hide My Email" (unique to paid accounts). While other services offer similar redirect/disposable email, Apple uses its @icloud.com domain, so the services you subscribe can't just ban the domain, they have to accept it].

My only issue with iCloud these days is the excessive amount of legitimate emails ending up in the spam folder, but I've noticed this problem persistently with Gmail as well.

Full disclosure: I am not the CEO of Apple, just a (mostly) satisfied customer.

Re: Tell HN: Locked Google account reopened after two years

#24

Post by whitepoplar »

callalex wrote: post #22
alwayslikethis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to switch to Apple though. It's a bit like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Apple has an even stronger hold on your digital life if you decide to fully invest into its ecosystem. It's much better to stay on Android, but de-google it, and avoiding the use of your Google account

Sure, but if Apple decides to lock your account (a much more rare phenomenon if sampling Hacker News comments) you can have someone on the phone with you in minutes, or even walk to a store where they will help you.

Apple isn't perfect, but they're generally pretty reasonable and will work to help you, even if it takes multiple tries. My experience with Google has been the exact opposite. Everything they touch results in Kafka-esque psychological torture.

Re: Tell HN: Locked Google account reopened after two years

#25

Post by sowbug »

romanhn wrote: post #14
kjs3 wrote: post #13

Wow...how many GB of spam is in there?

I never used this address anywhere so comparatively not much. Oddly, almost none of it is in the spam folder. The other interesting bit is that someone seems to have been using this address for online purchases and lease agreements (fraudulently, most likely).

I have a very old Gmail account. For purposes of this discussion, call it sergey@gmail.com. I often get real email sent to addresses like sergey2000@gmail.com. By "real" I mean important stuff that people would miss if they didn't receive it. In the beginning, I used to follow up. I'd occasionally get a reply from the sender asking a question like "OK, thanks, could you send it to her for me?" I concluded that some people have a "horseshoes and hand grenades" attitude toward email addresses -- close but not exact is good enough. Maybe they can't remember all the digits in the address, so they put what they can remember and hit send.

Re: Tell HN: Locked Google account reopened after two years

#27

Post by romanhn »

codedokode wrote: post #26

> during the recovery process got asked for a phone number. Do you mean a phone number entered during registration, or an arbitrary phone number?

I can only assume arbitrary as it sure wasn't aware of a tie to my number during previous recovery attempts. I assumed there was a required phone field somewhere that I needed to provide data for.

Re: Tell HN: Locked Google account reopened after two years

#28

Post by nucleardog »

callalex wrote: post #22
alwayslikethis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to switch to Apple though. It's a bit like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Apple has an even stronger hold on your digital life if you decide to fully invest into its ecosystem. It's much better to stay on Android, but de-google it, and avoiding the use of your Google account

Sure, but if Apple decides to lock your account (a much more rare phenomenon if sampling Hacker News comments) you can have someone on the phone with you in minutes, or even walk to a store where they will help you.

When I look at reviews for businesses, I don't look at the 5 star reviews. I look at the 1-2 star reviews, and I look exclusively for reviews that describe _how the business responded to the problem_.

I was looking for somewhere to leave my dog for a few weeks while I was out of country. There's a lower rated place where the negative reviews that match this are things like "One of the other dogs scratched my dog! They got her to the vet and paid the bills, but they shouldn't have let that happen!". There's another with a better overall rating where the reviews are "This staff at this place are phenomenal and really love the pets but the owner is an absolute ass. If anything happens, don't even bother asking for a refund or trying to complain."

I sent my dog to the first place.

Accidents, mistakes, and general "life doesn't go according to plan" things _will_ happen. I'm less interested in the best case scenario, and more interested in how they handle this stuff. That tells me what the worst case scenario looks like. If my worst case hotel scenario is "mildly inconvenienced", that's a damn sight better than "left out on the street at 1AM with nowhere to go".

So on that note... yeah, that's pretty much why I have an iPhone.

At some point it suddenly stopped accepting one of my credit cards and refused to let me re-add it. Apple literally has a `/contact/` page on their site where the 800 number is easily discoverable. I called and was connected almost immediately. They asked if I could use another card and I told them I could, but only if I _had_ to, I prefer to use this one for all my recurring charges. "No problem." They spent about 40 minutes on the phone with me (including calling me back immediately when my signal dropped and we got disconnected) and resolved the problem. This is support in relation to a ~$800 one time device purchase and a $0.99/mo subscription.

When I was paying Google over a million dollars a year I couldn't get answers out of them or get my issue resolved.

Even ignoring all the other anecdotes I see online... no way in hell I'm trusting Google with anything I care about.

Re: Tell HN: Locked Google account reopened after two years

#29

Post by NotAstroturfin »

callalex wrote: post #22
alwayslikethis wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to switch to Apple though. It's a bit like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Apple has an even stronger hold on your digital life if you decide to fully invest into its ecosystem. It's much better to stay on Android, but de-google it, and avoiding the use of your Google account

Sure, but if Apple decides to lock your account (a much more rare phenomenon if sampling Hacker News comments) you can have someone on the phone with you in minutes, or even walk to a store where they will help you.

the most trustworthy of evidence

Re: Tell HN: Locked Google account reopened after two years

#30

Post by dwaite »

037 wrote: post #23

I recently decided to trust Apple with my emails after witnessing a friend lose access to his free account due to some mistakes on his part. After he reached out to Apple's customer service, I was genuinely impressed by the helpful and knowledgeable support team. They escalated the issue efficiently through multiple levels, involving several phone calls over a short span of one or two days. What stood out the most wa…

I remember a boss telling me about his personal experience at Nordstroms, with a lady irate about a set of defective tires she bought. She didn't have a receipt, but the sales clerk said that he was fine with taking them as a return if she could say how much she spent on them.

It's worth noting for people who are unfamiliar with the store - while they do sell some home goods in addition to clothing and beauty/jewelry, they do not sell tires. When asked afterward, the clerk said he did not know/recognize the woman.

Some companies just recognize how vital points of contact are with people and try to empower their employees to help customers and more generally people, because they consider it a priority to maintain a positive perception.

AppleCare support has historically tended to be very open, covering phone/online technical support for all of your Apple devices and services if any of them are actively covered.

There are certainly parts of interactions with Apple that _are_ frustrating, such as certain classes of device repairs where they gate the ability to e.g. get a battery replacement based on the results from a diagnostic tool.

Employees and even managers appear to have very limited capability to override those processes, presumably because you could otherwise ask for a battery replacement for a devices with a damaged screen and back panel, and pay an order of magnitude less than a repair on the damaged display and back.

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