I think if I got my account disabled I'd go to their offices and demand an explanation.
It's a closed campus. Best of luck with that. In fact, why don't you do a trial run and let us know how it goes?
The only way to get hold of a human at Google
111–120 of 189 posts
Re: The only way to get hold of a human at Google
#112And 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…
How is it a flame? The guy asked how things were going to change to prevent this from happening. That's a legitimate question that EVERY user should be demanding an answer to.
Re: The only way to get hold of a human at Google
#113Re: The only way to get hold of a human at Google
#114It amazes me that people rely upon a free Email service for critical personal infrastructure.
Re: The only way to get hold of a human at Google
#115This is a general problem with Google and their customer-no-service attitude. It's just deplorable. It really is. You have to wonder: What is it going to take for them to give a shit and actually do something about it? Very soon the word gets out that HN is where you can get your Google bullshit problems fixed and we'll be treated to pages-upon-pages of people with Google problems. The general issue is that of accoun…
Giving away an awesome mail service for free to the world is not evil. Being too busy to support every Tom, Dick and Harry that has problems with it is also not evil. An analogy: "Hey Tom, I'm not using this rake any more. Would you like to have it? I'll give it to you." "Sure Dick. Thanks, this is a very nice rake indeed." The rake breaks. "Hey Dick. The rake doesn't work any more. Come over here and fix it." "Sorry…
It's also come up multiple times that this approach is not unique to Google's free services. Quite often their paying customers -- especially for the ad-related services, which are Google's bread and butter -- are also unable to get in touch with anything other than an algorithm. In other words, this is not Google just saying "well, free users don't get support", it's a symptom of a very broad systemic issue.
And while it may not be "evil" to provide no support for a free service, it does raise question marks for anyone who looks at a free service to get some idea of who they'd be interacting with on upgrading to paying.
Re: The only way to get hold of a human at Google
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
You make it sound like Google prices Gmail for free out of the kindness of their heart. They're a business. I use gmail for free because I feel it's in my best interests to do so, and they provide it to me for free because they feel it's in their best interests to do so. The moment that agreement becomes invalid is the moment a person has the right to become frustrated.
Frustrated, sure. The remedy for frustration is to take your business elsewhere. Frustration doesn't entitle you to get support on a free service.
As he already pointed out: IT'S NOT FREE.
Google (read their terms) reserves the right to mine your communications for information that they then sell to advertisers. You're doing THEM at least as much a service.
Re: The only way to get hold of a human at Google
#117I'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…
Google's got enough of my info. If they want to come up with a two-factor auth, I'm happy to provide the public half of a PKI keypair. Of my choosing. Not my phone number, thanks. My real email is too valuable to be left to GMail.
I know it is not a perfect solution but there is an Authenticator app that you can use on Android. I believe that iOS might have one too but I am not sure.
This solution does not require you to give them your phone number :).
Re: The only way to get hold of a human at Google
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So if your address is jsmith@gmail.com, you can send email to (or login with) j.smith@gmail.com or jsmit.h@gmail.com.... at least until someone registers jsmit.h@gmail.com! Uh, if this is true it's a security abomination. I'm pretty sure Gmail doesn't allow registration with a login that would be considered the same as an already registered one (but I'm too lazy to check a few to confirm, just because I refuse to b…
I just tried logging in with a random '.' in my username and got in.
That doesn't actually contradict what the guy I responded to said though; you'd want to try signing up for gmail with a few variations of your own login that have a few random extra '.'s. My assumption is that these would all be rejected due to the fact that the canonicalized version (all lowercase and with all periods removed) matches the canonicalized version of a currently registered login, but this guy was saying that's not the case.
But anyway, paul responded so it's a moot point.
Re: The only way to get hold of a human at Google
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Giving away an awesome mail service for free to the world is not evil. Being too busy to support every Tom, Dick and Harry that has problems with it is also not evil. An analogy: "Hey Tom, I'm not using this rake any more. Would you like to have it? I'll give it to you." "Sure Dick. Thanks, this is a very nice rake indeed." The rake breaks. "Hey Dick. The rake doesn't work any more. Come over here and fix it." "Sorry…
It's also come up multiple times that this approach is not unique to Google's free services. Quite often their paying customers -- especially for the ad-related services, which are Google's bread and butter -- are also unable to get in touch with anything other than an algorithm. In other words, this is not Google just saying "well, free users don't get support", it's a symptom of a very broad systemic issue. And whi…
I was specifically referring to gmail, and mostly to make the point that I honestly feel those that respond through unofficial channels (like HN) are doing Goog a disservice by skewing customer expectations. You of course have a very valid point for their paid services, though as they've obviously done very well for themselves despite limited support offerings, it isn't that big a deal.
As usual, if you don't like the service, vote with your dollars. If the service is so indispensable that you need them despite their failing you in some way (like not having support) then well, that's the discriminator. You can 'pay' for support by going elsewhere to a service that won't perform as well, which may cost you money.
Also, for what it's worth, I agree that they probably could provide support, and that Google in general is bad at it. It is easily their weakest area in my opinion. I only responded as sternly as I did to combat the 'evil' allegation, which seems to be bandied about any time Google does even the slightest of negative things.
Re: The only way to get hold of a human at Google
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if you want support, you pay for it. That's no excuse to provide a shitty service. For 99% of people GMail is not shitty and is infact quite awesome. That doesn't change the fact that with the amount of people Google has, not having even a queue for people to get minor issues fixed (Freaking MICROSOFT can get this right, for crying out loud!!) is ridiculous.
I disagree. The amount of people they'd have to hire to support that 1% of their users could make the service untenable as free to the rest of us. In my opinion, the thing done wrong was offering support through unofficial channels. It sets the wrong expectations and perpetuates the notion that if you know the right people, you'll get the support that others can't, and honestly don't deserve. If I give rakes out to 1…
Your rake analogy is not sound. Ok so Google gives Gmail for free - as in you don't need to pay for it.
But is it really "free"? No.
They parse your emails so they know what you are buying/selling, who you are talking to, what sites you have a membership on, etc. They also use Gmail to display ads (based off of the things they learned from your emails) to make money off of you. They probably do other things i'm not even thinking of right now. So is it really free? Not at all. Is it a great source of information about you (to then be used by them to target ads at you)? Absolutely.
They should be providing support for it. I don't know what that support should look like (be it a call center, forums, etc), but I definitely think that if I give Google permission to snoop through my personal email so they can build better ads for me (which is how they make the majority of their money) I expect some damn support.