The only way to get hold of a human at Google • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by pyre » Wed, May 23, 2012, 5:35 PM UTC

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…

Gmail isn't free. We are paying for it with our eyeballs. Gmail would only be 'free' in the way that you imply if Google was getting nothing in return. Just because money isn't changing hands doesn't mean it's free.

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

#72

Post by debacle » Wed, May 23, 2012, 5:35 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #65

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.

I think that model creates a moral hazard considering that in this instance the account was locked down by Google.

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

#73

Post by packetslave » Wed, May 23, 2012, 5:35 PM UTC

joezydeco wrote: post #40

OzzyB wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

gmail is a large high-visibility target. I, for one, appreciate the fact that 2FA is available with the service. Everyone should have it turned on for any high-value mail account they own, Google or no-Google.

Take a look at, for example, "Abuse at Scale" from the Gmail folks at April's RIPE conference for an idea of the threat.

https://ripe64.ripe.net/presentations/48-AbuseAtScale.pdf

1 million+ bogus authentication attempts per day, 60-100k auths per second (legit and not), etc.

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

#74

Post by gergles » Wed, May 23, 2012, 5:35 PM UTC

nilsjuenemann wrote: post #68

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 ...

I do use Chrome, but no GMail related extensions (and specifically not either of those.)

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

#75

Post by antihero » Wed, May 23, 2012, 5:35 PM UTC

bobbydavid wrote: post #46

The vitriol regarding Google's services is unjustified. Gmail is a free service. Google allows you to use it for free, in exchange for being shown ads. You have access to the same infrastructure that paying clients use, and the same uptime, but without paying. You can download all of your data easily, and at any time. Nothing about that is predatory on the free users. What would you say is the appropriate market "pri…

Nope. Completely untrue. They benefit from us using their services. We are doing them a favour by choosing them over others - their business is built upon people using their services.

If everyone just their our money back (£0) and stopped using Google's services, they wouldn't have a business any more.

By using a service such as Gmail, we've trusted them and invested our on-line lives in them in order that they can monetise that usage and grow their business.

It is completely unacceptable when that trust is betrayed and they cut you off without recourse.

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

#76

Post by mikelward » Wed, May 23, 2012, 5:36 PM UTC

lopatin wrote: post #49

paulhauggis wrote: post #32

I've noticed this trend with many big companies lately (Amazon, Paypal, and Google). Everything is automated and they give you almost 0 chance of defending yourself. They also don't care because they are de-facto monopolies. Amazon suspended my account 4 months ago. I'm just getting the $5K they owe me in money now. To this day, I still don't know why they suspended me (100% feedback and virtually no problems). They…

PayPal is actually very reasonable when it comes to getting in contact with human operators. I've never had a problem with that. Receiving decent support from them however is a whole other issue.

I tried to change my legal name. Faxed them copies of official documentation twice. Never received a response.

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

#77

Post by eli » Wed, May 23, 2012, 5:36 PM UTC

alaskamiller wrote: post #19

There's actually a big support team for Gmail. For enterprise customers. Here are instructions: http://gmailaccountrecovery.blogspot.com/

Am I missing something? Where in that link does it explain how to contact enterprise support?

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

#78

Post by packetslave » Wed, May 23, 2012, 5:39 PM UTC

there should be more details of what they think triggered the algorithm

One problem with this approach is that it also provides information to the bad guy, e.g. "here's what you did to get caught, so don't do that next time"

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

#79

Post by pyre » Wed, May 23, 2012, 5:40 PM UTC

paulhauggis wrote: post #32

I've noticed this trend with many big companies lately (Amazon, Paypal, and Google). Everything is automated and they give you almost 0 chance of defending yourself. They also don't care because they are de-facto monopolies. Amazon suspended my account 4 months ago. I'm just getting the $5K they owe me in money now. To this day, I still don't know why they suspended me (100% feedback and virtually no problems). They…

I noticed this recently with CraigsList too. They have a 'contact form' that just sends you an automated email suggesting that you read their FAQ page. Why bother to have a contact form then?

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

#80

Post by Duff » Wed, May 23, 2012, 5:43 PM UTC

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…

I think that the root of this issue is the stupid Google policy of not distinguishing any variation of your address if a '.' character is in there -- until someone registers it. People get confused and try to login.

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!

I was an early beta GMail user have a reasonably common first initial last name GMail address. I probably get 3-5 password reset attempts per month. I also routinely received a variety of interesting misdirected emails. Everything from someone's VPN credentials, a US military EEOC complaint, invitations to a stag party in Ireland, a video of a paratransit bus flipping over (intended to be sent to an investigator), to girls modelling underwear for boyfriends.