
Improving our account management policies to better support customers - aberoham
https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2018/07/improving-our-account-management-policies-to-better-support-customers.html
======
hguhghuff
Google fails even here to reassure the market because this is all carefully
worded corporate speak about “account management”.

What they are really trying to say is “Google Cloud is now less likely to
delete your entire business computing systems over some minor credit card
issues.” For this reason, this press release will not get the attention that
google wants it to.

Note however that google has included human reviewers in the process and
googles humsn reviewers are notorious for being ruthless.

It’s googles _attitude_ to customers that is the ingrained and deep problem.
Google has built into its DNA from the beginning that it does not want to be
in contact with you, that you cannot get emergency attention, and that you are
probably wrong.

~~~
TheIronYuppie
To be clear: we're fixing the algorithms, adding extra humans, and showing
customers how to take action on their own. We never want to let what happened
here happen again, and we are definitely listening to any and all suggestions.

Tl;Dr We screwed up. We're sorry.

Disclosure: I work at Google on Google Cloud.

~~~
notatoad
>We never want to let what happened here happen again

This is basically the problem. You could say "this will never happen again",
but instead it's "we don't want this to happen" as if it's somehow out of
GCP's control.

As long as you will still delete accounts that you suspect of fraud, based on
some opaque definition of suspecting fraud, "we don't want this to happen" is
the best you can do, and that's not very reassuring.

~~~
kajecounterhack
> As long as you will still delete accounts that you suspect of fraud, based
> on some opaque definition of suspecting fraud, "we don't want this to
> happen" is the best you can do, and that's not very reassuring.

Having worked in fraud detection, this is true for every provider you use. The
adversarial nature of fraud detection means making _your definition of fraud_
public is not an option because people will use it as a loss function for
their fraud.

I would just make sure I don't rely on a single provider and minimize single
points of failure.

~~~
tomjen3
It is a violation of the gdpr to not the user why he was suspended, sharing
any data about why with the user, not allowing him to correct the data if they
are wrong or not allowing decisions made by algorithms to be appealed for
human review. Missing any of those and you might be subject to fines, although
this only applies to human customers.

~~~
comex
Unlikely:

[https://academic.oup.com/idpl/article/7/2/76/3860948](https://academic.oup.com/idpl/article/7/2/76/3860948)

------
dkoston
Kudos to Google for taking feedback and working internally to make things
better. Too often do people expect every process at a company to work
perfectly so it's great to see that the community has done a good job of
providing feedback here and Google using it to improve.

I tend to stick with vendors who are open to improvement rather than expecting
perfection up front. There's always something that can be improved.

~~~
bjpbakker
This wasn’t some minor process inprovement though.

I tend to take my business away from vendors who pull this kind of crap.

~~~
dkoston
Exactly, it was a major process overhaul. They thought an automated system
could handle this and then realized that was overzealous.

------
oneplane
One of the big problems is companies with "too many" customers not having
enough humans to deal with them interactively. It's probably possible, but it
always seems like a side-job or afterthought, often shipped to low-wage
countries, and hidden behind a wall of 'support documents' that hardly cover
the many cases you might need to get in touch with a vendor.

Google being Google (and this probably goes for many tech leaders) probably
thought that using an algorithm and some documentation would be enough, even
if it means about 1% of customers slips through the cracks and loses all of
their Google-stuff. The problem is that in the real world this generates
enough backlash that people don't want or trust your services anymore.

While a cloud and even a more classical MSP is supposed to take what they are
good at and make it available at a reasonable price (so you can focus on what
you are good at instead of everything you might ever need to know to function)
at this point you need a second service to backup your first service just to
be sure you don't lose everything over some stupid automation you cannot
influence. It's like an older HN post (week or 2 ago) about someone being
transferred between systems during a company merger and the system deciding
that he is fired. No human could influence it, everything was revoked and
removed automatically and security just acted on what the computer was saying,
and escorted him out. They had to wait until the automated process was done
before he could re-enroll in the system and continue to work. That, and GC
(and to an extent others like PayPal, Amazon, Apple, MS) are examples of
trying to put nuances in human interactions into algorithms and failing, have
bad real-world effects.

~~~
TheIronYuppie
To be clear, there was always a human in the loop here. We've added a second
one, just to be sure.

~~~
oneplane
That's good to hear! What is the general ratio between humans-servicing-humans
and humans-needing-service?

------
dantiberian
A note on offline billing, it seems like this is only available for people
paying $2.5k/mo and up. I tried to find out more information about it two
weeks ago and got this response:

 __*

Hello Daniel,

I'm <Sales Rep> and you have reached the Google Cloud Platform sales
development team. I understand that you're looking for an Invoice Billing.

Prior to applying for monthly invoicing, please review the following minimum
requirements to determine if you are eligible to apply. These requirements
include, but are not limited to:

1\. Being registered as a business for a minimum of one year.

2\. Spending a minimum of $2,500 a month for the last 3 months.

You can also look through the Cloud Billing Help Center which should hopefully
provide answers to your questions. You can also contact the billing team
through the Cloud Console Billing Support Request Form in the event you need
more assistance.

Thank you.

 __ _

------
p3llin0r3
Google improving their support? I'll see it when I believe it.

We used to pay for gold level support. It's hilariously bad.

I once had a production outage that ended up being a low-level GKE bug.
Support de-escalated my ticket and linked me to this blog post:
[https://cloud.google.com/solutions/scalable-and-resilient-
ap...](https://cloud.google.com/solutions/scalable-and-resilient-apps)

I ended up getting help by going into the google slack and kicking up a fuss.
Never heard back from the "official" support channels.

~~~
ntnn
Sounds just like SUSE Enterprise Support, quality wise. When in doubt "we
don't support it" or "we don't support it like that".

------
gruez
context:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17431609](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17431609)

------
zachruss92
This is encouraging that Google listens to it's customers' concerns and
candidly addresses them.

~~~
some_account
Have you heard of marketing before?

------
Johnny555
_Online customers with established payment history, operating in compliance
with our TOS, AUP and local laws, will receive advance notification_

Isn't this a meaningless promise since a customer that's been compromised is
likely to be violating their TOS or AUP?

So, for example, a customer that's had their webserver hacked and used to host
some malware can still have their entire account shut down (as opposed to just
the compromised server).

~~~
fjsolwmv
It says that they'll give a 5-day warning when they detect the abuse.

~~~
Johnny555
Unless the account is violating the TOS, AUP, or local laws, then the advance
notice doesn't seem to apply based on what I quoted.

------
jonahhorowitz
It's great that Google is taking these steps. An over-reliance on automation
can be hazardous.

------
codeisawesome
Where money is immediately on the line, second line human review is still a
requirement for reliable operation - at the world’s most commercially
successful ML powered company.

------
lovich
What event happened to make google come out with this blog post? I missed the
hub bub apparently

~~~
js2
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17431609](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17431609)

------
jey
Can someone link the original blog post and its HN thread? I'm having trouble
finding it.

~~~
mark_element
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17431609](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17431609)

------
ben_jones
What incentives exist for Google employees to fix these problems at the lowest
levels other then feeling like they work for a great company? If I'm making
300k on Monday, delete someones entire production stack to great disdain on
Tuesday, and am still making 300k on Wednesday, how incentivized am I really?
Google's macro level incentives based on contrived metrics have proven to not
be very good i.e. "let's launch a chat app" style promotions and bonuses.
Presumably there are high level metrics for "customer success" but I feel like
those are too hollow to solve this.

I'm interested in how this hole was actually dug in the first place,
presumably by intelligent and well paid individuals, and how it might be
fixed. Maybe its already on the path to being fixed and it'll be great to
recap in a couple years, maybe these attempts will also prove hollow. Time
will tell. They deserve some credit as individuals for trying.

~~~
jacques_chester
There's no law barring the having ordinary good intentions while also earning
$300k. Just as there isn't a law against being a jerk at any price.

~~~
lmeyerov
I'm more curious how Amazon _avoided_ it. Switching from low-touch/trust
consumer culture to high-touch/trust enterprise culture is tough.

