
Internet giants, you’re no longer startups, get some customer service - zerostar07
http://glassbalcony.tumblr.com/post/50566035697/hey-internet-giants-youre-no-longer-startups-get
======
deanclatworthy
I couldn't agree more with this article. I was banned from adsense yesterday
for embedding advertisements on a mobile application or within a third-party
toolbar (neither of which I have ever done, and have analytics to prove it).
In the email they sent to inform me that I was banned, they including a link
to an appeal form. This sounded reasonable, until after submitting my appeal I
received an automatic reject ion within a minute of submission. No human could
have possibly read, let alone reviewed the evidence I submitted.

There's simply no avenue for me to appeal now, and furthermore I cannot use
the platform ever again.

~~~
return0
Had a similar experience. In fact, due to large enough ad traffic, we were
assigned to an actual contact in the past, who had repeatedly ensured us that
our setup was valid. Then a few months ago all of a sudden our account was
banned. After two appeals asking for what could possibly be causing "invalid
activity" (if there was, it was certainly not coming from us), we were told
not to contact them again.

~~~
deanclatworthy
This is sadly something that can be done by your competitors. Blackhats have
tools to bomb you with ad clicks that follow obvious patterns. I've seen
multiple cases of people complaining about this whilst research ways to appeal
my ban last night.

------
yangez
> One possible opportunity is to get the legal system and governments involved
> in this so as to require an adequate level of merchant support.

I wince every time someone proclaims the government should step in to regulate
something that is obviously none of their business. That's the easy way out,
and it hurts everyone in the long run.

~~~
LockeWatts
This seems self contradictory. One of the government's jobs is consumer
protection and regulation. If support is deemed to be a required thing, why
shouldn't it fall under that scope?

This just seems like the normal knee jerk reaction from the right half of the
political spectrum that says all regulation is bad.

~~~
6d0debc071
If you start asking for customer support as part of regulation, you massively
raise the entrance costs for other companies.

~~~
smacktoward
This is an easy problem to avoid: just have the regulation only kick in when
you bring in a certain amount of revenue.

PayPal did $1.5 billion in revenues in Q1 2013. So you could draw a line at
$1bn/year, say, which would be more than high enough to leave out any
reasonable definition of a "startup" while still covering established market
leaders.

~~~
6d0debc071
It's an easy problem to talk about avoiding, sure. We can see an obvious
failure mode, so we just won't do that. But it won't be you doing it in the
first place, you won't have that sort of authority. You've got to think what
sort of person's going to be giving you what you ask for, what sort of terms
they're likely to impose.

The person doing it won't always have an incentive to avoid the same things
that you or I might think of as undesirable. The last thing you want to do is
to ask for something, be one of a selection of competing viewpoints on it, and
then get the Cthulhu version imposed on you.

Can you get rules that make sense out of a system? Sure. But the tendency is
that you won't - at least not without a threat that forces a uniformity of
interest upon the system.

~~~
smacktoward
You're assuming that "the system" is something that has no inputs to affect
the behavior of "the person doing it". Which is wrong. There are plenty of
points in the rulemaking process (see
[https://www.federalregister.gov/uploads/2011/01/the_rulemaki...](https://www.federalregister.gov/uploads/2011/01/the_rulemaking_process.pdf))
where those in the startup community could ask for a more targeted rule, if
such a rule were being considered. And given how no politician wants to be
tagged as being against job creation at the moment, I have to think it'd be an
easy sell to convince them that a more narrowly targeted rule would be in
everybody's best interest.

"The system" doesn't need to have "uniformity of interest" in order to make
sensible things come out of it; you just need to be willing to make your voice
heard within it, and to accept that you may have to compromise a bit from your
ideal outcome in order to get other interests to come along.

------
_pmf_
> Internet giants, you’re no longer startups, get some customer service

That's like demanding that a slaughterhouse provides customer service for
cows. You're not the customer, you are a peasant. Google's business is not
providing infrastructure, it's aggregating and selling information, no matter
what outwards appearance they like to give themselves.

~~~
a1a
Not really.

One might say that you cannot demand "free services" to provide customer
service, but I would not consider Google's services as "free". This is because
you are paying with your personal information, it's just another currency.

There are a lot of Google services where customer service is indeed relevant,
for example Gmail, Google+, Google docs, etc.

For the record, this is not just Google. Facebook, twitter and others need to
step up as well.

~~~
kbenson
Whether the service is free or not has nothing to do with the amount of
support they provide. If they charged $0.01 per year, would that then change
any argument in any way? What about $0.01 for life?

Google is monetizing the interaction in some way, either directly or
indirectly (possibly even as a loss leader), otherwise they would not offer
it. That is all that matters.

Once we can all get past the "free" concept, it turns into a rather mundane
comparisons of price vs features, but price may not entirely consist of
currency.

~~~
a1a
I agree.

The point of my above statement was that one might argue that it's not
reasonable to for example call Linus Torvalds and demand customer service for
free.

------
gscott
My experiences only:

Google Adwords technical support isn't so bad now that they have a call
center. They can't actually resolve anything but do write a message on your
behalf to the 2nd tier support. Having used it about 4-5 times now it takes
about between 3 to 7 days to solve a problem... longer if they are confused.

Before having used Google's email support for years it is all outsourced to
India who just send out faq responses to your intial emails. The email support
does seem to have some power to fix problems but first you have to learn how
to describe your problem in as few words as possible. Never be verbose. Emails
get responded to during India daylight hours.

Google Adwords work so well that if Google Ad-bot goes crazy and nukes your
campaign/adgroup etc other companies have bought your url as an ad so your
customers end up in the wrong place, people can't tell the difference between
the ads/organic so they often never make it down to the organic links, etc.
You can loose thousands and have higher technical support while Adwords is
getting around to looking into what happened this time with the ad.

~~~
jader201
Of course it makes sense they would offer support for Adwords -- a product
with which they draw in revenue. This article, however, talks about their
Adsense product, with which they pay customers.

And obviously, they have to have ad sellers to have ad buyers, but I still
find it curious that they offer support for one and not the other.

~~~
damoncali
_but I still find it curious that they offer support for one and not the
other_

It's pretty simple. Without AdWords, Google would not exist. They could drop
AdSense and nobody would really notice. I'm exaggerating, but AdWords really
_is_ Google, and AdSense isn't necessary.

------
rickdale
Back when google first listed my families business they had mined the data and
logged the business address as my moms address. The problem with this was that
the family business was a ghetto auto parts junk yard. Not only have we had
murders there, but they place has also been robbed, attempted to be put on
fire etc.

When I went to change the address of the business it took google over 2 weeks
to process. On top of that trying to reach them to get them on the phone to
explain the situation and why it was dangerous was a whole other hassle. They
really had a lack of understanding in this situation and it was frustrating.
Overall, the issue did get fixed, but nobody felt comfortable about it then
and it still ticks us off now.

~~~
freehunter
In getting to my grandparents house, Google Maps for years listed as part of
the directions a two-track that doesn't actually go through all the way (it
ends in the middle at a junk yard). My grandma runs a business from her house,
and customers were being routed down this two track road. Not great for
business.

As we couldn't contact Google about it, she had to print new business cards
that told people when to stop following Google's directions and which road to
take instead. MapQuest didn't have this problem.

------
hispanic
I'm pretty sure that alternatives exist for every "necessary" service/product
Google and PayPal provide. If you are absolutely _so_ fed up with a service,
prove it. Switch to an alternative. The sense of entitlement exhibited by
people when they feel they've been slighted by a service/company (such as
Google or PayPal) in the fashion alluded to by the author boggles me. Doubly
so when those same people don't do anything to change their reliance on or
stop using said services/companies.

These are public companies with shareholders that demand that they maximize
revenue and earnings. As a user (and maybe even as a customer), they _will_
disappoint you. Act accordingly.

"As more and more businesses rely on google’s commercial services..." As a
business, you should be very careful/skeptical of on whom the success of your
livelihood relies.

------
ChrisLTD
This is an opportunity for foundering companies like Microsoft and Yahoo to
differentiate themselves in a positive way and raise the bar for everyone.

Apple already did this with their stores and Genius Bars. Buying an Apple
device comes with the extra peace-of-mind of knowing that you can call someone
or take your device to a nearby store if you're having trouble.

Another similar story is the domain registrar Hover. They specifically set
themselves up as the anti-GoDaddy and it seems to be a winning strategy.

------
chesh
When I had a Google Adsense account blocked it took a call to a Google VP that
I know. But even then the first call was not enough and he had to escalate
internally a second time.

This definitely sounds like something for the EU consumer champion Neelie
Kroes to take on.

~~~
deanclatworthy
Sorry to hear about your experience. I'm currently going through exactly the
same. Would you mind sharing any tips about how to escalate the issue?

~~~
blahedo
Other than "be friends with a VP at Google"?

------
JaakkoP
While I understand the point the author is trying to make - the larger
companies have the resources to provide quality service - I disagree with the
notion that poor customer service is excusable for startups.

In fact, the article doesn't even compare startups and "Internet giants", but
I suppose the heading of "Paypal doesn't have good customer service" (no
surprises there) would be less interesting.

------
gerbil
You are mostly correct.

The real question is, when there are hundreds of horror-stories out there
about Facebook and Google et al terminating access without notice or review
and the devastating effects upon people's digital lives, why do the media and
Gov do NOTHING despite thousands of complaints?

~~~
sk00byd00
What should the media and government do? It is a civil issue and you have
agreed to the companies terms of service, so in essence, you have given them
consent to terminate your account if they see fit and then when it happens you
kick and scream for the government to fix it?

The fix is if you don't agree with the terms of service, you don't use the
service just like if you don't agree with a contract, you don't sign a
contract.

~~~
kperusko
IANAL but I don't think that any company can enforce a ToS that's against the
law. OP stated that there should be some kind of law to regulate this and I
agree. There are many laws (at least in the EU) that regulate some ridiculous
things (e.g. shape of the fruit) so why not regulate this area if the end user
will benefit from that?

~~~
sentenza
Please stop using the shape of fruit anti-EU attack. The shape of fruit is
regulated in the EU because it was demanded by the producers of said fruit and
the manufacturers of the machinery they use.

~~~
kperusko
You probably misunderstood me - this wasn't an anti-EU attack. The fruit law
was just an example that a law can be made when it's necessary.

------
hkmurakami
Unfortunately the reality is that customer support will only be justified if
the increase in cost is accompanied by a greater increase in revenue (thereby
increasing profits). Alternately it can be justified by "the other side of the
coin", which is to stave off a decline in revenues (say, because you are so
pissed off at the lack of support & service that you're willing to go to a
competitor: ex United Airlines)

~~~
tixocloud
There are many costs that simply do not get reflected on the balance sheet.
It's important to consider costs from every avenue in order to accurately
reflect what a company is paying. Technical debt, corporate politics, etc all
slip by the accounting radar.

------
fmavituna
Ironically In my experience startups got better customer service 90% of the
time.

Yeah also let's EU to dictate everything, since they have been doing such as a
good job(!). While we were in there they can also pass couple of more stupid
cookie laws.

------
markatto
I have never tried to deal with google customer support, but I have had
terrible experiences with both yahoo and paypal support.

Around 5 years ago, I made a typo on a balance transfer from my bank to
paypal. I did not have enough money to cover the balance transfer in my
account, or in any other account (I was a starving college student at the
time.) When I called paypal, they informed me that there was nothing at all
that they could do for me. I called multiple times and asked for supervisors,
but they refused to do anything. Paypal attempted the transfer twice a day for
the better part of a week, racking up massive overdraft fees on my account.

I finally got my bank to block all paypal transactions and they were kind
enough to waive the fees, but I will never again deal with paypal.

Similarly frustrating was my experience with yahoo mail support. Last year, a
yahoo mail account that I created around 2002 and forgot about had been
hacked. It was sending rather embarrasing spam email to all my contacts, and I
was unable to reset the password for the account because I had not provided
real answers to the security questions.

I emailed their customer support and told them that I understood that they
could not give me access to the account without the answers to the security
questions, but I would like them to close the account as it was clearly in
violation to their TOS.

They responded asking me the answers to the security questions. I tried to
explain in several emails that I simply wanted the account _CLOSED_ , but
every response from yahoo support was "We can give you access to the account
if you please provide the answers to the security questions." I got no
indication whatsoever that they even understood what I was asking.

I understand that providing support is expensive and that you receive lots of
stupid questions, but any company that treats me like paypal and yahoo will
never recieve any business from me again.

~~~
lazyjones
> I have never tried to deal with google customer support,

See, there is an advantage in having _no support at all_!

We've tried to deal with Google support (AdWords), we can safely say that
there is none, even the sales people at Google cannot get any internally (or
so they say).

------
cynusx
Yes! especially if you sell hardware to customers and then make a mistake...

I've bought a nexus 4 with 16G and received one with 8G and google hasn't
responded to any of my emails.

~~~
tomflack
And if you take the next obvious step (chargeback on credit card, item
received was not as described) some automated system will kill off your entire
Google Play account. Effectively holding all the apps you've purchased as
hostages.

------
drivingmenuts
If you want customer support, go to a company that provides it. Don't go using
a service, knowing full well that it doesn't provide support, then go
screaming about how they don't provide you support.

You knew that going in. You just fooled yourself into thinking it would be
different this time.

------
benburton
Anecdotal, but my Neuxs 7 broke the other day and I was pleasantly surprised
with the Google Play customer support. They solved my problem very quickly.

------
smutticus
I have been a customer of the Google Search Appliance for about 5 years now
and their customer support has only improved. 5 years ago it was honestly
terrible but now I find it relatively fine.

------
FollowSteph3
We're accepting it with our wallets. If the pain wasn't worth the cost they
wouldn't be able to do this

~~~
return0
It is possible though, that by putting off and alienating good-faith customers
(due to lack of proper support), Google is actually losing money here.

------
scorcher
I only partially agree. For things like hangout gmail android and reader
giving support would cost so much they couldn't continue to roll out new
products (given that they would have to support them).

However where significant money is concerned I agree they should have real
support. Only offering support for some products could get really confusing
for users unfortunately.

~~~
return0
It's one thing to use a free service, but it's different when you make them
your business partner. Not offering support for Adsense for example is
unacceptable.

~~~
bigiain
"Not offering support for Adsense for example is unacceptable."

Evidence suggests otherwise. There are many many people and companies who
use/rely on Adwords - either out of ignorance of the lack-of-support-dangers,
or in full knowledge and accepting the risks. It is, arguably, the least-worst
alternative: who _else_ are you going to use? Bidvertiser? Chikita? Skimlinks?
Yeah… No…

~~~
return0
I think that's exactly the problem - they are a monopoly and can get away with
anything.

~~~
rayj
Unfortunately too true. Google owns search, maps, google play/android,
adwords/adsense, video sharing.

At this point they are competing with Facebook and apple the most, since they
don't have a monopoly in those industries. I find it hilarious how many of the
googlers love their retina MBPs and iPhones though. Can't wait to see that
showdown.

I'll take godaddys tech support any day over Google, hell even Comcast has a
support number.

------
plorkyeran
Google does have good customer server in a few places. I've been quite happy
with the AppEngine Premier support -- but considering that the support package
alone is $400/month it certainly better be amazing.

------
pserwylo
Why don't startups need to provide customer service? The title sounds
suspiciously like you don't need to provide customer service until you have
some cash in the bank to pay for it.

But if you can't figure out how to provide customer service for a small number
of clients, I don't think you can just throw money at the problem down the
line and magically have great customer service. May as well with good
practices start early.

------
Aloha
This guy is right on the ball.

I've spent most of my career doing customer care, and to put it bluntly, real
companies have some kind of support, even if it costs money.

------
scottshea
I think this might touch on a larger point. If a startup grows with poor
customer service then how incentivized are they to add it later on?

------
workbench
Why I'll never trust Google with my data or files

