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Google not paying developers in Europe, support nonexistent

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Re: Google not paying developers in Europe, support nonexistent

#31

Post by AndrewDucker »

nthitz wrote: post #23

jiazou a developer has commented: Hi all, I'm really sorry to see there are so many problems with the checkout merchant center. Unfortunately the checkout merchant center team is going through a major transition. Many of the past owners of the code base have left, which leaves many of you without proper support :( I'm part of a three person team that's getting transitioned to take ownership of the code base, in fact…

Oh Dear Lord. The fact that all of the previous people left at once, leaving them without decent support looks like bad planning/management from Google.

Re: Google not paying developers in Europe, support nonexistent

#32

Post by dpcan »

nthitz wrote: post #23

jiazou a developer has commented: Hi all, I'm really sorry to see there are so many problems with the checkout merchant center. Unfortunately the checkout merchant center team is going through a major transition. Many of the past owners of the code base have left, which leaves many of you without proper support :( I'm part of a three person team that's getting transitioned to take ownership of the code base, in fact…

Holy God this is messed up and I hope it isn't real.

If it is real...

Dear Google - An unknown employee communicating through a random forum is NOT the right way to tell developers why they are not getting PAID!!!!

EDIT:

To the op of this post: It appears you personally feel an obligation to communicate with the people who want to be communicated with the most. I truly hope that you do not get in trouble for this and that your desire to communicate with us is applauded and replicated over and over and over again as the old team vanishes and your new team takes over.

Re: Google not paying developers in Europe, support nonexistent

#33

Post by alvarosm »

stuartmemo wrote: post #21

From the Payment FAQ quoted in one of the comments: Note that in the event of a technical issue, your payout may be delayed and is expected to be initiated by the 15th of the month. Maybe wait until after the 15th to start worrying about it?

Some people need the money because it's their only source of income or because they need the cash flow for their business, or whatever. Tell them to start worrying 15 days later. About the payments, on Google's side they show up as having been initiated on the 2nd and Google has been deaf and mute about the issue.

Re: Google not paying developers in Europe, support nonexistent

#34

Post by jchung »

nthitz wrote: post #23

jiazou a developer has commented: Hi all, I'm really sorry to see there are so many problems with the checkout merchant center. Unfortunately the checkout merchant center team is going through a major transition. Many of the past owners of the code base have left, which leaves many of you without proper support :( I'm part of a three person team that's getting transitioned to take ownership of the code base, in fact…

This appears to be real. There is a Jia Zou working at google who has been there for 8 months. Source: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jia-zou/5/301/9b9

Re: Google not paying developers in Europe, support nonexistent

#35

Post by crunch »

jrockway wrote: post #26
alvarosm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people have tried contacting them through multiple support forms about this march payment issue and they're not managing to get any humans to answer them.

Attention has been gotten. (Notice that the one Google employee who has replied in the thread is being derided for not doing enough quickly enough. It was 9 AM in California when he replied. This is why nobody speaks up until the issue is resolved.)

The problem is not the time of the reply, it's the date.

Re: Google not paying developers in Europe, support nonexistent

#37

Post by JackC »

Google's lack of support can be really scary. I've had situations in at least three different areas where something went wrong with their automated tools and I lost access to a service[1], and every time it was completely impossible to get a person to look at the problem. I still use their stuff for small projects because a lot of the tools are hard to replace for free. But that icicle feeling when you realize that something you're relying on is broken, you can't easily switch away and people want to know what's wrong and the answer is there's nothing you can do to fix it ... it's stuck with me.

[1] Google Group disappeared entirely for a couple of days; AdSense upgrade failed partway through; attempt to switch primary and secondary domains on Google Apps resulted in a month of downtime ...

Re: Google not paying developers in Europe, support nonexistent

#38

Post by andrewem »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #31
nthitz wrote: post #23

jiazou a developer has commented: Hi all, I'm really sorry to see there are so many problems with the checkout merchant center. Unfortunately the checkout merchant center team is going through a major transition. Many of the past owners of the code base have left, which leaves many of you without proper support :( I'm part of a three person team that's getting transitioned to take ownership of the code base, in fact…

Oh Dear Lord. The fact that all of the previous people left at once, leaving them without decent support looks like bad planning/management from Google.

I was once the tech lead of a 4-person team of programmers. One person quit to go be a middle school math teacher, a second to move to another city, a third to move back to his home state, and then I quit to move into a different area of work (and ended up moving out of state a few months later).

When I gave my notice our manager was baffled, and genuinely wanted to know if it was something he'd done that had driven us all away. There wasn't.

I don't have any idea what happened in this case. Perhaps all those people moved to other groups at Google or got recruited to startups. Or perhaps that group's manager was a jerk and everyone left to get away from them.

Re: Google not paying developers in Europe, support nonexistent

#39

Post by jsaxton86 »

alvarosm wrote: post #30
chernevik wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If accurate, I really hope this guy doesn't get hammered for stepping outside corporate comms protocol.

I hope so too, because it's pretty obvious to me that's what he's doing (stepping out), out of sheer common sense, and I'm grateful for that.

At the same time, it is also common sense that you don't need to explain how poorly mismanaged your employer is when communicating with external customers.

With that said, had Google said something earlier, Jia wouldn't have had to say anything and this would be a non-issue.

Re: Google not paying developers in Europe, support nonexistent

#40

Post by baconner »

Forget fragmentation, lower app spend per user, etc complaints about Google play and android this is the big one.

This is the only issue that has seriously given me pause about selling apps on Google Play. If something goes wrong you're stuck in forums, unhelpful issue submission forms, and you can be left out in the cold for weeks.

The lack of support for end user market issues compounds the problem. There's no easy help from google so customers contact the app developers who can't do anything to help but direct them back to the Google support labyrinth.

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