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The only way to get hold of a human at Google

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Re: The only way to get hold of a human at Google

#61

Post by JumpCrisscross »

capo wrote: post #30

You have my sympathies and all but this is getting annoying, every once in awhile the HN front page gets cluttered with these sorts of posts, wait the day out it’s not that unreasonable. Complaining when not even half way through the designated time period comes across as whining. And for the record you could have gotten human support if you were a paying Apps costumer, for the free stuff you have to deal with automa…

I don't mind paying for a premium account with support. But as an individual with a small data footprint I really don't have a need for Google Apps (the OP pays for extra storage which isn't evidently magic enough). If they gave me the option I'd gladly pay for the service (in fact, on some level I'd feel more comfortable).

Re: The only way to get hold of a human at Google

#62

Post by laconian »

OzzyB wrote: post #33
cletus wrote: post #15

I'm sorry for the trouble you're having. I have on idea of what's happened and why but thought it timely to point out for the benefit of those reading this thread: I highly suggest you use two-factor authentication with GMail: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/advanced-sign-in-secu... Or Jeff Atwood's post on this: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/04/make-your-email-hac... Your email is too valuable to be l…

Really? It is now a suggested policy to use additional authorization flows in order to use this email service? Are we talking about the same email service? You know, the one that's supposed to be so awesome that you'll quickly forget about getting your email the "old fashioned way" by having to mess with those pesky things like setting up a POP/IMAP account on your host provider? Talk about things coming full circle.…

I take it you've never had your email account hacked, then?

Re: The only way to get hold of a human at Google

#63

Post by eli »

ajross wrote: post #29
andybak wrote: post #5

And this time I'd like the outcome of this thread not to be just "A Google insider wandered past and fixed this guys problem" but "Here's how we're going to make sure it doesn't happen again. Because next time it might be me and by then Hacker News might have grown weary of these kind of posts and I won't be able to get the necessary attention. Nothing. I repeat - nothing - is pushing me to move away from dependence…

So, just for the sake of argument, let's assume that the poster's account was compromised and being used to send spam. Would that change your analysis? Why or why not? My suspicion is that your immediate response will be to change the subject, most likely along the lines of "The problem isn't the temporary freeze on the account, it's the lack of communication." So I'd like to preemptively point out that you didn't ma…

I can only speak for myself here, but let me state unequivocally that the lack of communication and path for recourse is the problem.

PR-wise it might be a tough sell, but I think a perfectly acceptable answer is a pay-per-incident support line that connects to someone who can actually fix my problem.

Re: The only way to get hold of a human at Google

#64

Post by [deleted] »

ajross wrote: post #29
andybak wrote: post #5

And this time I'd like the outcome of this thread not to be just "A Google insider wandered past and fixed this guys problem" but "Here's how we're going to make sure it doesn't happen again. Because next time it might be me and by then Hacker News might have grown weary of these kind of posts and I won't be able to get the necessary attention. Nothing. I repeat - nothing - is pushing me to move away from dependence…

So, just for the sake of argument, let's assume that the poster's account was compromised and being used to send spam. Would that change your analysis? Why or why not? My suspicion is that your immediate response will be to change the subject, most likely along the lines of "The problem isn't the temporary freeze on the account, it's the lack of communication." So I'd like to preemptively point out that you didn't ma…

[deleted]

Re: The only way to get hold of a human at Google

#65

Post by eli »

debacle wrote: post #16

Here's a serious question - how much would you pay per annum to be able to talk to someone when you have an email problem?

I don't know, but I'd be willing to pay a fair bit per incident. I suspect it would be well in excess of what it would cost to provide such support.

Re: The only way to get hold of a human at Google

#67

Post by DrJokepu »

snowwrestler wrote: post #51
dsl wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

gmailaccountrecovery.blogspot.com appears to be unrelated/unaffilated with Google. The bottom of the page says "(c) 2012 Brett K. Carver". Also, blogspot?

Google owns Blogger and hosts all their official blogs there. Example: http://analytics.blogspot.com/ That does not prove gmailaccountrecovery.blogspot.com is an official blog though. Edit: for clarity

The site you've linked doesn't have any Google branding. Moreover, none of the real Google blogs have adverts on them. In addition, the visual design of the page looks rather unprofessional.

It's very unlikely that this site is affiliated with Google.

Re: The only way to get hold of a human at Google

#68

Post by nilsjuenemann »

Do you using Chrome with these two extensions?

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mihcahmgecmbnbcchb... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ejidjjhkpiempkbhmp...

For me these combination made a request loop (response from gmail was 404 and 501) for some circumstances. As a result my account was temporary disabled ...

Re: The only way to get hold of a human at Google

#69

Post by rbanffy »

gergles wrote: post #22
anigbrowl wrote: post #11

On a more general note, on what planet is "you don't get any email for a day and have no recourse, and we won't tell you why, or let you do anything to fix that" an acceptable action? ON a planet where you get high-performance email services for free, apparently. I feel for you, but the lack of personal response (IME) doesn't mean that your communications are being ignored, just your need for a response. This is stil…

I do pay for GMail storage, so the predictable parade of "WHAT DID YOU EXPECT FOR FREE?????" (answer: exactly what was advertised, a working email service) is tiresome -- and besides that, there isn't even a contact form for this issue. There is no way to communicate with anyone or to even raise an alert of "hey, I have a problem". The only way that it is going to get fixed is for someone to manually intervene, and t…

> exactly what was advertised, a working email service

Claiming Gmail (even the free one) doesn't work when, in fact, it experiences seemingly random and very infrequent outages, is disingenuous. It's incredibly hard to make a complex application like Gmail work perfectly all the time for all its users and I'm completely sure they are well within their ToS. Much like we are willing to live with software that has some bugs, we must be willing to live with services that aren't always there.

Buses stop, rails need maintenance and your plumbing sometimes fails. Life continues.

Re: The only way to get hold of a human at Google

#70

Post by abraham »

krschultz wrote: post #57
ajross wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, just for the sake of argument, let's assume that the poster's account was compromised and being used to send spam. Would that change your analysis? Why or why not? My suspicion is that your immediate response will be to change the subject, most likely along the lines of "The problem isn't the temporary freeze on the account, it's the lack of communication." So I'd like to preemptively point out that you didn't ma…

Let's say for the sake of argument that his account was compromised. Why lock him out? Wouldn't it make the most sense to let him get in and change his password? If your answer is 'because the spammer/bot might change his password', realize it would be impossible to detect a spammer/bot before they start spamming, so once the bot has your password, it can login and change your password before it starts spamming. But…

One problem with leaving read enabled is an attacker could reset passwords on any site where the email was used to register.
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