
WTF Google, you stole my $5 - jtwaleson
http://programmerstrouble.blogspot.com/2012/12/wtf-google.html
======
homosaur
Google, for a company that reputes to perform services, is probably the single
most consumer-unfriendly company on the planet. Their customer care dept.
consists of one crazy cat lady in a cabin in the hills of California. They've
sold enterprise services for years (or pretend enterprise services, at least),
sold multiple phones and devices, have the largest ad network on the Internet
and they STILL don't have anyone you can call if things go wrong. Unless
you're Kevin Rose and Google will get bad pub, they absolutely do not care
about your problem. Shut up slave, or go back to Hotmail.

Your experience is not even irregular. I'd say this is the typical experience
for people dealing with Google when everything doesn't go 100% correct.

~~~
ljd
You can't have both free (or extremely cheap) services and have highly
available tech support. I'm not sure if you've ever been part of a company
building a call center for tech support in the US but it is a nightmare. It
can easily be one of the most expensive elements of having a service-oriented
business.

~~~
kenjackson
IOW, you get what you pay for. That said, Google could do much better in
customer service -- they indirectly make money on the backs of these
customers. It seems deceitful to let people invest heavily in your ecosystem,
knowing you won't help them when stuck (and they're so entrenched they just
can't leave).

~~~
csense
> indirectly make money

Indirectly? Read the blog post. $5 moved from the customer's credit card to
Google's bank account. Clearly, Google is _directly_ making money from this
person.

~~~
sirclueless
It's a nominal amount. There aren't too many people who are developers, and
the amount is likely dwarfed by several orders of magnitude by the 30% revenue
on purchased apps. The $5 is purely an anti-spam mechanism. If it were free,
spammers could flood the app store with cruddy apps.

Not that this excuses their behavior. App developers are a source of revenue,
and treating them as such would be less evil.

------
polshaw
Sorry in advance for the rant but i think it is fucking stupid to charge
developers at all. Yes, it is nothing, but the principal itself leaves a sour
taste. I am improving your platform, you are going to take 30% of anything
made, and you want me to pay you for that privilege.

I know this applies to others too (worse at times) and that there is some
rationale behind this (reduce hoards of crap), but it just stinks, to me, in
principle, and i'm sure there would be better ways of going about it.

~~~
jtwaleson
With the Chrome extensions you can't actually charge any money yet, so I'm
just doing it pro bono to help the users of the crappy website.

~~~
polshaw
My flippant response would be to provide it to mozilla users where you are
surely not charged. You didn't mention the site, so i don't know if you could
just publish it there (surely that can be done with chrome extensions?) or
just as a bookmarklet?

~~~
jtwaleson
I could try that, thanks for the suggestions. The website is of the Dutch
public transportation system, the part where you can view which trips you've
made with your electronic travel card. It was designed completely from the
viewpoint of the system, not that of the user. I.e.: Instead of seeing how
much each trip costs, you see what got subtracted (a sort of deposit) when you
checked in, and what you got back when you checked out. etc etc. Once I can
publish the extension I'll write another post with the details...

------
Kilimanjaro
I've been a google supporter for years, until they do something ugly to you,
and now that love is gone. Fuck you google, if you don't listen to your users
you're doomed to extinction.

You stole my hard earned money in adsense for over a couple of years. All of a
sudden you decided to close my account for activity fraud. I swear to god I
never clicked a damn ad. My stats show no abnormal visits (analytics from
google) just a steady flow of a hundred visitors a day, just ten cents a day
in adsense.

But you stole it without any explanation, just that you can't give any info to
protect your algorithms and your sponsors.

Well fuck you, then who protects the user?

You stole just $100 from me, but I hope you lose it all. I'll do all I can to
see you on your knees.

Fuck you google.

~~~
Evbn
If that is stealing at all, it is on behalf of advertisers. Google doesn't get
paid when you don't.

~~~
mrslx
Not true - inventory availability and user data are gathered. Google receives
value from a publisher using Ad Sense tags, if they chose to use that value by
returning ad (getting paid by an advertiser) then Google makes money. At the
end of the day an unused impression opportunity by Google may cost a tiny bit
of computing resources, but its an unused opportunity for revenue by the
publisher.

------
josephagoss
If the $5 is to keep out spam, doesn't the fact that he has already confirmed
that he is not a spammer by paying the $25 from before for the android thing?
Why keep asking for money and bounce him around like this? This is what you
expect from a crappy company with outsourced customer support , not google.

~~~
white_devil
> This is what you expect from a crappy companies with outsourced customer
> support , not google.

I'd expect you to expect _algorithmic_ customer support from Google.

~~~
josephagoss
True, but even Google need some real thinking people in customer support.
Algorithms are not enough for all your customer interactions, at least not for
now anyway.

~~~
white_devil
Sure, common sense suggests that they _do_ need some real people in customer
support, but haven't you read the horror stories of their algorithms banning
people?

People had their accounts closed with messages like: "Your account is now
closed permanently. We won't tell you why. Don't try contacting us, we will
not respond. Fuck You."

They have some real people working with customers, but they're meant for big,
rich customers-they-want-to-keep. _You_ get the algorithm treatment, and
you're not supposed to even reach the real people there.

~~~
josephagoss
I'm surprised Google act like this, on the one hand they want us to use Google
for everything, apps, email, cloud storage. And on the other hand all we get
is the algorithm treatment. Unless they change this I can see blog post after
blog post slowly eating away at Google's reputation.

~~~
white_devil
I bet we've only seen a small fraction of all the cases. As long as they can
keep doing it without "too many" people knowing, they're fine.

------
jggonz
I've actually had the same issue with Google for over a year. I can't use
Google Wallet to pay for anything (including Android apps on the phone)! I've
tried removing and adding my card back. It gives me the same error. I've
resorted to asking family members to use their accounts to purchase items on
my devices. This error is really frustrating!

------
StylifyYourBlog
Google is not anymore a company it used to be. They are now just in the
process of streamlining their profits - closing down products that are not
creating huge amounts of money , making free products into paid ones , over-
promoting their social network and making lives of webmasters into roll-
coaster rides by frantically updating their search algorithms .

I suppose Customer Support is the least of their concerns

But ironically enough as you have posted the problem on HN , it will surely be
solved very swiftly less in the sense of customer goodwill but more of a PR
move. This just reminds me of how are governments work - You have to know
somebody from the inside to get the work done - and this is what Google is
becoming.

~~~
driverdan
This is nothing new, Google customer support has always been terrible.

------
johne20
I had a similar terrible experience spending $10 to transfer my number on
google voice. Got the whole "Uh oh. There was a problem" error. Waiting for
support like you, and then I found some obscure google group post that
suggested my address on google wallet was wrong. After fixing that and waiting
a day or so I finally made purchase successfully.

Google checkout/wallet is less than good, combined with virtually non-existent
support is a terrible combination.

------
raverbashing
Another example of how Google does not (or is not willing to) do customer
support.

If it works: great, if there's a glitch, well, tough.

------
chimeracoder
Isn't this what your credit card company is for?

I had an issue where Paypal never refunded the $2 fee for verifying my account
and instead pocketed the cash instead. I got my bank to issue a chargeback
over the phone - it took all of five minutes.

~~~
fsckin
Then your GMail account is instantly locked for fraud activity, since you
foolishly used the same account for everything. Good luck contacting them for
support to fix it.

~~~
csense
This is why you should avoid Google when you can.

They're eating the Internet. The more you depend on them, the harder it'll be
to cut ties when they give you crap.

------
jason_slack
Well, I was a Google Apps customer and paid my money for a year of paid GMail
with my own domain. There was a technical error, my card was indeed charged
and despite countless e-mails and trying to call _anywhere_ for a resolution
nothing. E-Mails just like this article had.

I wonder how many customers Google owes money to for things like this? Maybe
we could tally this up and petition them to pay out.

~~~
mrslx
I would not be surprised if they get hit with a Class Action someday. For
their long tail products, the impact to single users is small but across the
board, i'm sure it adds up.. reminds me of that evil scheme to take .0005% of
a penny from everyone.

Their B2B services is also lacking, turn over for their employees is high y/y.

..maybe this is the new of state internet services at scale?

edit: grammar

------
evmar
I'm not excusing it, but it seems plausible to me that the Android charge is
separate from the Chrome charge because they are different projects that
probably have completely different systems. It's the same poor experience you
sometimes have with tech support phone trees with e.g. a credit card company,
where each time your call is redirected they ask you for your information
again -- poor integration between different wings.

------
zaidf
Google may actually penalize their phone support for being on the phone for
over 3 minutes.

Story: An acquaintance got on the phone with support department to
troubleshoot a problem. The support person was struggling to help. As the 3
minute mark approaches, the support person gets increasingly anxious. Finally,
he straight up confesses that he has a 3 minute call limit beyond which he may
get penalized.

And then hung up on my acquaintance seeking help.

------
ippa
I've been bitten by googles non-existent customer support too while dealing
with my adword account(s). Somehow I had two accounts, but one of them was
transferred to my friend by changing all the info + have him verify the new
bank account. Sure, I probably messed up somehow.. but it should be easy to
fix but it's impossible to get in contact with them. I mailed multiple times
over 1-2 months.. with details what I had done. Never got a single reply.
Extremely frustrating. I want to put their ads on multiple sites, but they
wont let me :).

------
meaty
Google really need to sort their support out. When evaluating Google Apps for
our organisation, we couldn't even get through to a human. This pretty much
killed the evaluation up front.

Chargeback!

~~~
PJones
The problem here is that it's not just a Chrome Developer account, it's a
Google account. There may well be an automated process to lockout users that
owe them money.

Steam has a similar flaw. If you file a chargeback on any game you purchase
then you'll be locked out of every game you ever 'bought' until you resolve
the issue.

~~~
meaty
Why the hell would you invest in something so risky then?

I refuse to pay for anything which can be taken away at the whim, process or
incompetence of another.

~~~
lmm
Because it gives me the best odds. Store-bought: can lose or break the disc,
sometimes the DRM won't let it install on my system. Pirate: might be missing
some of the data, might be invalidated by an update, always that slight fear
of viruses.

------
rauar
You get my upvote. It's long overdue that Google overhauls this.

------
michaelhoffman
Seems like an open-and-shut case for a chargeback.

~~~
josephagoss
The trouble is its only $5 and it's not even worth worrying about getting the
money back, it's not going to hurt Google doing a chargeback anywhere near as
much as this blog post will hopefully hurt them.

Unfortuanlty for Google, because they have essentially no human face, public
shaming is our only option to open up a dialog with them.

~~~
Evbn
If Google merits enough charge backs, credit card companies will notice.

------
jacquesm
That's why google is working so hard on AI, that way they don't have to staff
a proper customer service department.

Hopefully they'll get that done in time for them not to be out-competed by a
company that actually cares about their audience / customers.

------
kenko
Can't he (or couldn't he) dispute the charge with the credit card company?

~~~
jtwaleson
I could but I really can't be bothered. The fact that I can't publish my
extension does bother me.

~~~
bryanl
It could have taken less time to call your CC company than to write this blog
post.

~~~
cdh
Unless Google retaliates somehow. I’d be surprised if they didn’t immediately
ban or somehow freeze all of his Google accounts and services in response to a
chargeback.

~~~
tzs
That's what we do where I work. If someone wants money back, all they have to
so is ask, and it will be done, with no hard feelings and they will be welcome
back if they ever change their mind.

Do a chargeback, and they go on the "never do business with this person again"
list.

~~~
Evbn
You'd go on a rampage destroying customer's personal files if they call for a
charge back? That puts you on my "never do business with this person " list.

~~~
tzs
1\. Where did I say anything about destroying a customer's personal files?

2\. Customers do not call for chargebacks. When customers call, they get a
refund from us. A chargeback happens when a customer does NOT call us, but
rather goes to their credit card issuer, and claims they did not authorize the
charge on their credit card (which is generally a lie).

Wen that happens, the credit card company reverses the charge, AND accesses
the merchant (us) a fee of around $20. Even if we were able to prove to the
credit card issue that the customer is lying, and so the chargeback would be
denied, we'd still have to pay the $20 chargeback fee.

Doing a chargeback without even trying to contact the merchant when you wish
to undo a purchase is a very scummy thing to do, except in cases where it was
definitely a fraudulent charge.

