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Google banned me from Google Voice

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Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#131

Post by Aachen »

HeatrayEnjoyer wrote: post #122
nobody9999 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I implied elsewhere, how does anyone manage to keep their house? I mean what if you forget to pay your mortgage? How does anyone keep their job? What if you forget to go to/do your work? How does anyone keep the electricity flowing/put food in the refrigerator/keep gas in the gas tank of their vehicle/maintain their internet access/etc./etc./etc. If something is important to someone, they'll take whatever steps ar…

Those examples have tangible real world effects before they become permanently irreversible.

Just like domain expiration grace periods. The person you're responding to isn't wrong in that the bank will also absolutely come for your house if multiple attempts don't reach you. It may be exaggerated but registrars are happy to sell you more stuff and always (in my experience with various providers anyway) send announcements, reminders, and notices even if, granted, they won't do as much effort as a bank

People also don't seem to have trouble holding onto other things in life with recurring fees

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#132

Post by tzs »

nobody9999 wrote: post #127
tzs wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed the word “before” in their comment. Miss a mortgage payment and the mortgage holder will try to contact you through many channels. If that fails and you keep missing payments and they decide to evict you, that process takes a while and will include even more attempts to contact you including printed notices left at your house. Miss renewing your domain and you will probably get email from the regis…

>I think you missed the word “before” in their comment. Nope. Didn't miss that at all. What is it that the kids call it these days? "Adulting?" It really ain't that hard. Then again, perhaps I'm some sort of superman, or maybe paying my bills on time is my super power. Somehow I've managed to pay all my bills, keep up my house and renew multiple domains for decades. And it wasn't even hard to do. I have a whole bunch…

I'm impressed that you are able to keep track of so many things over an extended period, considering that apparently 3.5 hours are long enough for you to forget a question that you asked.

Let's recap.

You:> A calendar isn't a bad idea, but I assume GP has ways of making sure they do all those other things. What's different about a domain registration?

where "all those other things" are paying a mortgage, going to work, paying utility bills, getting food, putting gas in your vehicle, etc.

2.5 hours later, HeatrayEnjoyer responded:

> Those examples have tangible real world effects before they become permanently irreversible.

An hour later you then said:

You:> And losing access to your email/other domain assets doesn't have "tangible, real world effects"?

At this time, a mere 3.5 hours after your question you seem to have forgotten that you asked it. If you had remembered that they were answering your question, which to remind you (in case you've forgotten it again over the course of reading this comment) was how do people make sure they do those other things yet forget to handle domain renewal.

You would then have realized he's not saying that losing a domain doesn't have tangible, real world effects. He's explaining that the difference is the timing of those effects.

In fact many people do sometimes forget to do those other things. But those other things are all easy to correct with little or no negative consequences when they forget so the penalty is small for not developing an ironclad system to never forget them.

For example if they forget to pick up groceries on the way home from work and then the next morning find that they don't have food for breakfast the consequences might be something like they have to skip breakfast that day if they don't have time to go out for food before they have to be at work.

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#133

Post by Aachen »

mafuy wrote: post #129
causal wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right that this is wise, but it's too much to ask the average user to do. At least in the US, most people lack the technical literacy to do anything but depend on big tech. What we really need is legislation to regulate big tech services as the utilities they really are.

That we can just rely on some basic, useful properties is, in my mind, one of the key differences to "third world countries". I don't need to check if my tap water has lead in it because I know that I won't, so I can use this time more effectively to "increase the GDP". I've lived in Vietnam for a year and learned there how impactful these guarantees can be. It is absolutely possible to deal with the problems, but es…

> I should be able to rely on clean water coming out of the tap all the time, with minimal effort (paying fair bills) on my part. [...] If it is more expensive, then that's the true cost that just has to be paid.

Thankfully all these tech products are services you can pay for to be reliable!

It's an interesting perspective to compare the different economies, but the pain point isn't so much classic products you pay for but the ones you rely on without having any say about your access because you're the product being sold. Being the product means Google etc. need to make it work for 98% of the people, the default cases, because otherwise they lose a lot of people that could have made them money (from app developers' transaction cuts, advertisers paying for impressions, etc.) as well as to prevent that a competitor can easily do better, but it doesn't mean they lose sleep over losing your custom specifically. It's not tied to any tangible amount

An individual's value is very variable, especially when they try to avoid a dependency on these tech products and essentially only cost money because they make minimal use of it. People like me are the easiest to cut off, and that's where a society's dependency hurts: I am not here by choice, I actually need this (e.g. a transport app from an app store to buy tickets or unlock vehicles or request rides: I need at least one of these to reasonably get around in a city and there is no alternative)

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#134

Post by nobody9999 »

tzs wrote: post #132
nobody9999 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think you missed the word “before” in their comment. Nope. Didn't miss that at all. What is it that the kids call it these days? "Adulting?" It really ain't that hard. Then again, perhaps I'm some sort of superman, or maybe paying my bills on time is my super power. Somehow I've managed to pay all my bills, keep up my house and renew multiple domains for decades. And it wasn't even hard to do. I have a whole bunch…

I'm impressed that you are able to keep track of so many things over an extended period, considering that apparently 3.5 hours are long enough for you to forget a question that you asked. Let's recap. You:> A calendar isn't a bad idea, but I assume GP has ways of making sure they do all those other things. What's different about a domain registration? where "all those other things" are paying a mortgage, going to wor…

>I'm impressed that you are able to keep track of so many things over an extended period, considering that apparently 3.5 hours are long enough for you to forget a question that you asked.

>Let's recap.

Let's not.

>In fact many people do sometimes forget to do those other things. But those other things are all easy to correct with little or no negative consequences when they forget so the penalty is small for not developing an ironclad system to never forget them.

Sucks to be them, then I guess.

Perhaps you've forgotten to do something important while you were making unsupported statements about what I know/don't know/remember/don't remember and blathering on about something or other?

I'll keep using my (apparent) super powers to be a responsible adult. Perhaps others should try it instead of whinging about forgetting important things.

Or not. It's no skin off my nose either way.

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#135

Post by Aachen »

pixl97 wrote: post #47
sbuttgereit wrote: post #9

Not to address the author of the article specifically, but only all readers generally.... I would suggest that the moment you chose to have a critical dependency on someone else's services, it becomes incumbent on you to have a disaster recovery plan should that service suddenly become unavailable to you. How formal or intense such a plan is may depend on if you're an individual or a small/mid-sized business that's t…

Yet this is a somewhat backwards way to think if you want society to work. You don't put in 6 hours a day in your own garden to ensure backup food exists, right? Instead we set up systems of regulation and production to ensure we can Instead focus on our own specialization.

There's more than one store, and more than one payment method. If all else fails, it's easy to borrow/share, and succesful purchases can last a little while. There's redundancies and async operations throughout

If you need to receive a call to a particular number, it having a(n indefinite) disruption can mean you're going to have a bad day. Tech products aren't as mature as e.g. money and food

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#136

Post by tzs »

nobody9999 wrote: post #134
tzs wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm impressed that you are able to keep track of so many things over an extended period, considering that apparently 3.5 hours are long enough for you to forget a question that you asked. Let's recap. You:> A calendar isn't a bad idea, but I assume GP has ways of making sure they do all those other things. What's different about a domain registration? where "all those other things" are paying a mortgage, going to wor…

>I'm impressed that you are able to keep track of so many things over an extended period, considering that apparently 3.5 hours are long enough for you to forget a question that you asked. >Let's recap. Let's not. >In fact many people do sometimes forget to do those other things. But those other things are all easy to correct with little or no negative consequences when they forget so the penalty is small for not dev…

Well then, if your failure to understand HeatrayEnjoyer's comment is not due to overlooking the word "before" and not due to forgetting they were answering a question you asked, what is the explanation?

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#137

Post by Aachen »

dansimau wrote: post #46

Yet another Google account/service-banning horror story. For this reason, I proactively migrated off Gmail earlier this year to Fastmail. Very happy that I did. The only important thing I have left on Google now is 15 years of Location History. I'm still figuring out where to move that to.

I didn't even know Google had this feature until people complained about it tracking you by default. I've always used OsmAnd for navigation and had automatic trip recording turned on as a gimmick, on rare occasions it would be interesting to look back where I went wrong and got rerouted or where the new road runs exactly to put it on OpenStreetMap. Now, with also some ten years of history, it actually makes for an exceedingly interesting plot of where I've been (around town as well as globally). I'm surprised OsmAnd manages to render millions upon millions of line segments from all the gpx files in a single map view

Anyway, roundabout way of saying: self-"hosting" years of location history works for me directly on my phone, no first- or third-party service needed. If you don't need a big tech product that uploads everyone's location to generate traffic info, it's going to be a learning curve (it's chock full of features, so getting around the UI can be tricky) but I can recommend OsmAnd. Also hearing good stories of OrganicMaps but don't know if they do gpx tracking or displaying

Importing should be a matter of figuring out how to convert whatever format Google uses into GPX files, which are just XML files with coordinates and timestamps in them. I'm confident someone will have made a converter given how ubiquitous as well as simple gpx is, if this is the route you want to go or try

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#138

Post by reaperducer »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #68
reaperducer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

business models are defined by being scaled so high that customer service is impossible for them to offer. It's not impossible. The people at Google choose not to have customer service in order to maximize profits, rather than do the right thing. Google has enough money to provide customer service. Customer service isn't going to bankrupt Google.

> people at Google choose not to have customer service in order to maximize profits, rather than do the right thing And millions of people decided to make a company with no customer service their primary phone provider because it is free. Free comes with tradeoffs.

And millions of people decided to make a company with no customer service their primary phone provider because it is free. Free comes with tradeoffs.

It's not free. It's no cost, but it's not free.

Considering the costs involved in a project the size of Google Voice, providing customer service isn't going to change the economics enough to make it unprofitable.

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#139

Post by eszed »

runjake wrote: post #75
jtbayly wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s interesting. Very unclear to me whether it says what you think it says. The emphasis seems to be on Google Voice service, not the number itself. I would expect the FCC complaint asking for number porting to go nowhere if Google didn’t believe they were required to release the number for porting.

Yeah, like I said, I'm not a lawyer, but I zeroed in on "you have no explicit nor implied rights to the indefinite use of Google Voice telephone numbers" in particular, for intent. This is just a Reddit post and not a legal document, but the post is effectively the crowdsourced findings from a heck of a lot of Google's victims who have tried a number of different tactics.

Many many years ago I received a phone number from a conventional carrier and then ported it into Google Voice. I wonder if there is a (legal or technical) distinction between that and "a Google Voice telephone number"?

Re: Google banned me from Google Voice

#140

Post by einsteinx2 »

cromka wrote: post #123

I use Google Voice with my number after having left the US for Europe. I don’t need any of the Voice features and could rely on VoWiFi when roaming instead, except maintaining even the most basic line in the US was costly, at least the last time I checked a few years back. Any idea if this has changed in any way? Are there any plans that cost little to none that won’t be cancelled with little use?

I’m in the same boat. When I was just recently back in the US, I looked for the cheapest prepaid cell phone plan that could activate a line with an eSIM from their app for instant sign up and supported WiFi for calls and texts. My reason was to have a “real” US number for SMS verifications that block VOIP services like Google Voice which causes me headaches.

I ended up signing up for a $10/mo unlimited calls and texts plan from US Mobile with 2 gigs of data. If you use their low cost plan you can get the same for a little cheaper or you can cut down the number of calls, texts, and data per month and get it down as low as around $5/mo I think. For me the $10 was worth it and means I’ll always have data when traveling back to the US as well without buying a temporary data eSIM like I usually do so that cancels out some of the cost for me.

So far it’s worked fine for me since I got back home outside the US, though I don’t use it much and usually keep the eSIM disabled so it doesn’t burn battery looking for a network it won’t find (plan doesn’t have roaming so it’ll always search). Also I don’t get the ability to get messages on my computer like with Google Voice, so I ended up keeping my GV line instead of porting it just in case I didn’t end up liking the idea.

I’ll probably keep using my GV number as my main US number for now until I see if I want to stay with the mobile plan, but $120/yr seems reasonable to have a non-VOIP US number available to me and data when I travel home once or twice a year. There are other prepaid plans you can use as well, but it seemed like they all bottomed out around the $10/mo mark.

I think you need to physically be in the US when you buy the service on any of these prepaid carriers to connect to the network once and activate the eSIM, but after that you can use it on only wifi or even cell data from your main line anywhere.

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