Comment by saagarjha
3 years ago
> They’ve all basically hit the brick wall of Google suggesting that at their scale, nothing can be done about such “edge” cases.
The thing is that at scale your “edge” cases are still millions of people. Companies love the benefits that come from scale, like having a billion people use their service, but they never seem to be capable of handling the other parts that come with it :(
What I don't understand is why there isn't some kind of paid escalation option. I fully understand why they don't provide free human support for a billion unpaid users, but couldn't there be a $50 "OK, we will actually take a look at your issue" option? Surely that wouldn't be a money loser. Hell, you could outsource it.
It seems instead that they just don't even want to touch it.
If that actually becomes a paid service, it must legally bind Google to provide some formal results out of it, or people that paid can now sue Google for something like negligence. Then Google can't conveniently hide all the details about of why accounts got banned when people demand in court. It's a whole can of worm for Google for morsel amount of revenue.
This exists… if you know a googler. I got locked out of my 14ish year old account due to the AI deciding I was no longer the rightful owner even with TOTP codes, SMS, and printed backup codes. I asked a friend who works at Google, and there’s an internal form they can fill out to recover an account. I received a non-template response less than 30 minutes later with a link to reset my password.
Because it would look like "Google is holding my account hostage unless I pay them".
I can't believe I'm writing this, but this is where a middleman could help. Companies can pay a fixed subscription to become "Google Gold Partners" and get privileged access to tech support resources. Users with issues don't pay Google directly, they pay those companies to solve their issues with Google products. In this way Google is still incentivized to solve problems as quickly as possible.
Interestingly, many people already pay for Gmail (or rather Google one) for extra capacity. Yet, I'm pretty sure they get the same support experience. I think it's just not worth for them to change, given that everyone seems ok with the current approach (that lady and a few others obviously aren't, but I don't think they really even make a dent in Google's reputation)
If you pay there is some identity attached to the account so it might actually possibly to recover the account, as opposed to ‘I don’t have the password nor devices previously used or any other recovery mechanism’
100% this. It seems so obvious. If edge case escalation is uneconomical, price it so it's not.
I once lost a Google account because of their "the password is not enough, we'll randomly decide what is" policy. It's very unpleasant to get to that "make another account" page, and realise it's all gone.
I'd have happily paid money to go through identity verification and so on to get it back. Its sad they're just leaving this money on the table, hurting both themselves and their customers.
Because that can be seen as a money making opportunity by one of their executives in future and the number of accounts that would need support could rise.
Because there's probably lots of accounts worth $50 to get into.
Yes, it would need to be some incredibly high number to keep fraud rates low, like $50000 per account.
Seems like that would invite more bad PR than it's worth...
The trick is regulation. A huge difference between the wildly profitable tech companies and most other large companies is that everyone else has to have customer service departments... large departments providing hundreds or thousands of jobs and salaries helping users with the product.
Very simply, Google and the like should be required by law to have customer service adequate to support user needs in every language they operate. Problem solved.
In the case of a free GMail account, the user who doesn't get the support they need can get a full refund.
In all seriousness, how does it even make sense to regulate expensive customer support for a free product?
If you do, you may not have any free products anymore. But perhaps we'd be better off having decent customer support with no free products.
As for paid products, it does make some sense to have some minimum customer support, but I'll be surprised if there's a proper way to word the legislation to achieve what we want it to achieve.
I don't pay anything for my bank account, but there will absolutely always be a human at the bank I can talk to about problems. It's also not as if users aren't paying for Gmail, business users are paying for it with currency, regular users with data.
Such legislation isn't theoretical or difficult, India already has their new IT law rules:
>The IT rules 2021 provide for creating avenues for grievance redressal apart from Courts and ensure that the Constitutional rights of Indian citizens are not contravened by any Big-tech Platform by ensuring new accountability standards for SSMIs.
>During the extensive public consultations on the ITRules, the Minister of State for Electronics & Information Technology and Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, Shri Rajeev Chandrasekhar had articulated the stand of the Government that - safety and trust of every Digital Nagrik, and robust grievance redressal system to ensure accountability of all Internet platforms offering a service or product, was an unambiguous goal and that all grievances must be 100% addressed.
>The Grievance Appellate Committee (GAC) is a critical piece of overall policy and legal framework to ensure that Internet in India is Open, Safe & Trusted and Accountable. The need for GAC was created due to large numbers of grievances being left unaddressed or unsatisfactorily addressed by Internet Intermediaries. GAC is expected to create a culture of responsiveness amongst all Internet Platforms and Intermediaries towards their consumers.
https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1894258
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Google isn't doing it for free, they're doing it because you're the product.
We actually do need to demand customer service for free services.
They're exploiting our information, and using the fact that they're exploiting us "for free" to give nothing back.
> In all seriousness, how does it even make sense to regulate expensive customer support for a free product?
It makes sense because email addresses have become the defacto gateway to our entire digital lives. Losing access to an email causes significant financial and emotional stress. It should be treated like an essential utility. There needs to be a minimum level of service even if the product is free.
> you may not have any free products anymore
Problem solved then. Companies giving away things "for free" is the original dark pattern.
Everyone pays for Google, just not necessarily via their credit card.
And to be blunt: Considering the vital nature of email to modern communications and livelihood, if free email cannot include a method to regain access, free email should not exist. The amount of damage Google just not caring about people's problems causes is immense.
Gmail is not free. You may not be paying for it with cash money, but you are paying for it with your privacy, and you’d better believe they profit from having your data.
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They aren’t “people”, they are “consumers”, “punters”, “suckers” or “revenue units”. I’ve heard them called less polite things, too.
And that’s why this happens.
When Google was first starting, savvy techies were aware of aggressive sociopath companies (e.g., Microsoft), and also that Google would probably be very powerful.
Maybe Google had some of that savvy and that's why they instituted "Don't Be Evil".
With all the supposedly smart people and resources that Google has, you'd think they could somehow figure out how not to be the cause of marginalizing people while dismissing them as "edge cases".
Google seemed to change around the time they bought DoubleClick. That was around the time they stopped making anything new which was good, because they stopped making products which the people who worked there personally wanted to use and started making products which they needed to sell ads.
I’m sure that you don’t see people looking out for users for the simple reason that the money guys won and the way you get rewarded is by viewing your customers as cattle.
"Don't be evil" was /killedbygoogle too :)
In a somewhat underhand way, they removed the motto from the company and moved it onto their employees. Something like "Googlers shouldn't do evil". I'm sure HR and the legal teams preferred this shift from corporate mission to employee guideline. This might or might not be completely unconnected with subsequent high profile stories of Google employees being sacked on ethical, labor organisation and culture war grounds.
Its possible there's more of a business reason. Was it in response to censorship in repressive countries, or a response to concern about tracking, data etc.
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"don't be evil" was killed by "evil"
It’s still in their code of conduct. Check out the last line:
https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/