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Send money with Gmail

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Re: Send money with Gmail

#231

Post by Stwerp »

JoeKM wrote: post #113
joosters wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That didn't stop them from rolling out Google Checkout with any (human) customer service, as I painfully discovered :( Google seem allergic to phone or email contact with users.

How true is this still? Google Checkout was rolled out ages ago (in tech years). The Google today is quite different. I have been reading about "poor Google customer service" for years, almost like it's a running joke of anecdotes. Years ago it may have made sense, but today Google has Android/Fiber/plethora of web services. I can't imagine they haven't clued in on customer service yet with all their paid services.

I used checkout a year ago and had the same issues. No human, only pre-fab answers based on checkboxes. I haven't used it since.

Recently, I had trouble with gmail on my iPhone (due to the whole EAS shutdown) and was looking for help or info on account upgrades. Only userland help forums for me.

I would say: Google's tech support is terrific until you actually have a problem and need to talk to someone.

Re: Send money with Gmail

#232

Post by [deleted] »

jholman wrote: post #207
adsenseclient wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what you would say when you personally experience a $15,000/mo sudden AdSense account shutdown in a bootstrapped startup, with confiscation of $30,0000 earnings already on the account. The email will be just a template to accuse you of "fraudulent activity", and there will be no human at all that you can call. Speaking with the first hand knowledge of the matter.

I, of course, know nothing about your case. And if I did, I wouldn't be able to discuss it in public, because it'd get me fired. It must be nice taking shots in public where you know no-one can shoot back. But since I'm completely ignorant of your case, I'm gonna shoot my mouth off a bit, and hope I don't get in trouble for it. Google spends insane amounts of effort tracking these cases. I've met lots of six-figure-s…

[deleted]

Re: Send money with Gmail

#234

Post by saraid216 »

agravier wrote: post #218
saraid216 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused about how this is a "real issue". Businesses operate in certain places. I don't expect the restaurant across the street from my place to cater to the other side of the world. Why is Google required to?

It's not required, it's what Google ultimately would like to achieve, so it's a real issue for them. Being available to only a fraction of the total potential users is a real issue because if they dont manage to expand, competitors will eventually snatch the potential users.

If they're doing it wrong, let them fail.

Re: Send money with Gmail

#235

Post by Ziomislaw »

jfoster wrote: post #125
Cowen wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will this ever allow for international transfers? If so, is there an ETA?

It's odd that it's US only because Google Wallet for Digital Goods has been international for quite some time.

but they will have to support it now.

Re: Send money with Gmail

#236

Post by TrevorJ »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #183
pg wrote: post #90

I think this is going to be really big. But it might require actual customer service; that must have made them think twice.

Many years ago, Google made statements like "we only do things that scale, and customer support doesn't scale". It was a strong guiding philosophy for many of the engineers, but that philosophy has eroded. If we look at some of Google's biggest successes, it has been things that don't scale: - The Ground Truth team in India, manually drawing the world's maps. - Manual spam detection in search results - Customer Suppo…

As Google's product offerings evolve, the cost/benefit of providing customer service scales too. Providing personal support to customers who use search isn't scalable because Google makes fractions of a penny per interaction from these customers. Customer support for things like Google Fiber, Google Wallet, and Adwords is a whole different ballgame in terms of the amount of money Google makes on the average user so it is likely that there's enough margin there to actual scale customer support along with the growth of the userbase.

Re: Send money with Gmail

#237

Post by msbarnett »

lingben wrote: post #193
msbarnett wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada has had Interac email money transfers for around a decade, without any lock-in to a particular "wallet service" or email host. This is so late to the market as to be irrelevant.

interac is not free, this is

I'll bet you a shiny nickel that Canadians will still stick with Interac rather than a credit-card based Google Virtual Wallet based solution.

Credit-card based solutions have monumentally failed to gain traction vs interac for ages.

Re: Send money with Gmail

#239

Post by hellotoruser »

jholman wrote: post #207
adsenseclient wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what you would say when you personally experience a $15,000/mo sudden AdSense account shutdown in a bootstrapped startup, with confiscation of $30,0000 earnings already on the account. The email will be just a template to accuse you of "fraudulent activity", and there will be no human at all that you can call. Speaking with the first hand knowledge of the matter.

I, of course, know nothing about your case. And if I did, I wouldn't be able to discuss it in public, because it'd get me fired. It must be nice taking shots in public where you know no-one can shoot back. But since I'm completely ignorant of your case, I'm gonna shoot my mouth off a bit, and hope I don't get in trouble for it. Google spends insane amounts of effort tracking these cases. I've met lots of six-figure-s…

I am posting this from Tor, since we are still dependent on Google in many ways. We had a similar situation, where a growing startup that many people here may know about (getting 15000+ signups per day at the time, now more) was getting threats from AdSense that some of our pages violated some vague and amorphous content policies that are actually written to be violated (and 99% of AdSense publishers that do not 100% control their content violate them- think of Myspace.com for example- but they were too big to violate AdSense policies). Our account bringing over $10,000/mo was shut down.

We have documented everything and we are now in a much stronger position, thanks to our users. We have access to Techcrunch/Techdirt, and we have considered publishing a comprehensive documented story of our experience with AdSense, but decided to put it on hold, since we do not want to associate our name with any controversy. When our start-up successfully exits or if it fails, the situation may change.

I just want to add a couple of things to jholman:

You start from the presumption of guilt. An old adage is that your customer is always right, but your starting point is the opposite. This is probably driven by hubris, that's embedded in Google's DNA: you KNOW BEFORE your customer that your customer wants to commit fraud, BEFORE they have actually committed it.

My point is simple: when you threaten to turn off a $5,000+/mo client, provide knowledgeable PHONE SUPPORT. Have your specialist CALL the victim business. These amounts are not a small change to many people, they will lead to bad PR, like was linked in this thread earlier https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3803568.

And do not worry, you will not get fired for defending Google!

Re: Send money with Gmail

#240

Post by jrockway »

tzz wrote: post #80

jrockway, You said to ask you any questions, so far you only answered one single question for the last hour. Why would you say ask me anything and don't respond to the questions?

I'm not sure what you're talking about. I've answered all the questions that have an answer. The rest just seem to be rants.
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