Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned

old.reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 288 posts

Re: Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned

#241

Post by tlogan »

creeble wrote: post #36

TIL never to buy physical products directly from Google! Or for that matter to never use Google Pay, even if the c/c charge isn't run by them. You could go from "credit card buyer protection" to Google Doomsday with a single disputed charge. I wonder how they handle "bank reversals", where a report of a stolen card (but not specifically a customer-generated chargeback) results in a reversal of the charge by the bank…

I would rather suggest the following: do not buy anything worth more than $99 from companies which do not offer human support.

And if you decide to do chargeback assume that that is a "nuclear option": that you will never be able to use that company again.

Re: Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned

#242

Post by tlogan »

creeble wrote: post #179
creeble wrote: post #36

TIL never to buy physical products directly from Google! Or for that matter to never use Google Pay, even if the c/c charge isn't run by them. You could go from "credit card buyer protection" to Google Doomsday with a single disputed charge. I wonder how they handle "bank reversals", where a report of a stolen card (but not specifically a customer-generated chargeback) results in a reversal of the charge by the bank…

To further my question: I have a c/c I use for Google. Said card # is stolen, and used to buy Google services (under a different ID). I call the bank, they cancel the card and refund the amounts charged to Google for the unknown services. What is the chance of Google cancelling my other account, since it was on the same card?

> What is the chance of Google cancelling my other account,

> since it was on the same card?

Quite high. Majority of companies have this automated.

Re: Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned

#243

Post by Thaxll »

martyvis wrote: post #143
r3trohack3r wrote: post #107

Honestly, the top comment is more concerning: https://old.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/zndbku/tifu_by_accide... Account stolen. Obvious fraudulent charges. EA refuses to make it right. Customer rightfully disputes the charges. EA closes their account locking them out of an entire catalogue of content THEY HAD PAID for. This whole “you don’t really own digital content” ruse needs to be popped. A company shouldn’t be abl…

EA got hammered by the Aussie government consumer organisation in 2015 https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/electronic-arts-undert...

Origin has now the best refund policy that I know of. It has been the case since 2014.

https://www.ea.com/legal/great-game-guarantee-terms

Re: Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned

#244

Post by Retric »

foobazgt wrote: post #237
Retric wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s at 98 cents per minute, I suspect at google’s scale they would have massive cost savings.

Savings from scale usually comes from automation, and people are generally looking to talk to humans, not bots. This is the exact reason Google avoids human support in the first place - there are no massive cost savings, because it does not scale well.

There’s a lot to automate when doing phone support. The vast difference between the sub 20 cents per minute you need to pay people to answer phones and the 98 cents per minute each call costs are largely things that could be automated.

And that’s ignoring trying to minimize call length or even the need for any calls in the first place.

Re: Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned

#245

Post by michaelmrose »

josefresco wrote: post #105
logicalmonster wrote: post #56

To me, the issue with Google's products and services is that they're not willing to provide any human customer service to resolve the real issues. Now, of course, I understand that even Google can't reasonably be expected to provide free 24/7 customer support for the entire Internet. If they had a normal phone number available where anybody could reach a human at any time, every confused person would call them with i…

> o me, the issue with Google's products and services is that they're not willing to provide any human customer service to resolve the real issues. I don't get this, I engage human Google support for paid Google products at least a few times a month. It's not great, but definitely on par with other tech giants. Are you expecting human support for ... free services ?

He paid them money for a phone they themselves lost and then charged him for. He should reasonably expect support for that transaction and any situations that stem directly from that transaction. Furthermore when you do something that deleteriously effects people like take away access to more than a decade of email/files/photos/contacts not to mention apps and other purchases for which google was indeed paid you should expect that action to reasonably generate a support request and actually provide it in case as in this situation it is unreasonable and unjust.

But its free isn't an automatic get out of jail free card for the expectation for a company to behave like reasonable human beings.

Re: Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned

#246

Post by michaelmrose »

10729287 wrote: post #96
CogitoCogito wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah there is no excuse for Google not to make an exception to the policy when Google told the poster to do the chargeback.

I think the chargeback here was a personal "go f yourself" move from the supervisor to a "troublesome" client, not Google.

Every action by myself acting in my official capacity is an action by my company and they cannot disentangle themselves from that obligation by blaming an employee.

Re: Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned

#247

Post by coffee33go »

theturtletalks wrote: post #234
dang wrote: post #218

This title is breaking the HN guideline about titles: " Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. " - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html In fact it is doing all three things we ask people not to do: it's editorialized, it's linkbait (sensational/indignant), and it's arguably misleading because it's making a general claim while the linked article is the narra…

The original title is a TIFU post and I don't think those are allowed on HN. The title is not misleading since most companies will ban you if you do a chargeback. The thing to note here is that a chargeback was done against the Google Store and the Gmail account was banned. My goal wasn't to editorialize, I just wanted to let people know that their Gmail account was at risk if they did a chargeback against any of Goo…

Perhaps you could have 's/will/may'

Re: Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned

#248

Post by Dylan16807 »

kube-system wrote: post #160
Dylan16807 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're both problems. Smaller companies shouldn't be able to retaliate against a valid chargeback either.

Should they be able to retaliate against an invalid chargeback? Chargeback fraud is a thing.

Sure!

But only if they have reasonable system for telling the difference.

Re: Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned

#249

Post by hunter2_ »

theturtletalks wrote: post #234
dang wrote: post #218

This title is breaking the HN guideline about titles: " Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. " - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html In fact it is doing all three things we ask people not to do: it's editorialized, it's linkbait (sensational/indignant), and it's arguably misleading because it's making a general claim while the linked article is the narra…

The original title is a TIFU post and I don't think those are allowed on HN. The title is not misleading since most companies will ban you if you do a chargeback. The thing to note here is that a chargeback was done against the Google Store and the Gmail account was banned. My goal wasn't to editorialize, I just wanted to let people know that their Gmail account was at risk if they did a chargeback against any of Goo…

I think if you wanted to "Tell HN" about Google's terms of service (which might very well include that a chargeback gets your entire account banned), that's fine, you could do that by leaving the URL field empty or setting it to a better source than a single anecdote. You could even link to the anecdote from the text field. But as it stands, there's a mismatch between the title and TFA.

Re: Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned

#250

Post by michaelmrose »

ssharp wrote: post #27

I’d recommend taking a few steps before doing a chargeback in cases like this: 1. Search around for back channel support. Google things like “executive customer support”. Often times these emails get published by bloggers, forums, etc. You can also look up support VP /Director’s names and then guess their email (e.g. first.last@example.com) and tell them your story. 2. Send a signature-required letter detailing out t…

It would make more sense to first back up all your stuff switch all accounts to the new email address, set up email forwarding for a month, and then issue the chargeback. From what you are saying this is actually an easier process and unlike your suggestion will surely succeed 100% of the time. Then you aren't anyone's hostage.
Post reply on HN