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Google Has Forgotten The Customer

posted on April 23, 2010

I’m trying not to get angry. I’m trying not to rant on about how one company has gotten so big that it has forgotten how to take care of the people who use and love their products. I’m trying to remain calm. But, the truth is that with every minute I’m losing faith in Google.

Tuesday night was the last time I was able to get into anything Google. Since then I’ve been completely locked out of all services.

  • gMail is my primary e-mail account. I’ve been using it since the days when you had to nearly give a blood sample to get an account.
  • Calendar keeps me and my family in sync and allows me to keep everything organized from meetings to lacrosse games.
  • Reader is what keeps me tapped into what is going on in the world and what my friends are writing.
  • Buzz filters up the best stuff on the web and allows me an outlet to share with others.
  • Wave allows me to work on projects with people around the world and in the past few weeks has become a critical part of my life.

In a world where I advocate for the web, the cloud and everyone embracing technology, this has made me question all of it.

I guess I never thought about how the tentacles of Google had wrapped around every corner of my life. How much I depend on the services to make it through the day. Plain and simple is that Google makes my life easier.

But, the fact that an account (and I wasn’t the only one so I know something must have happened) can be completely turned off and no matter what I try to do, I can’t get a hold of a human to get it fixed is wrong. I tried the SMS verification and the codes were denied ever time. I filled out the proper support form. After 24 hours with no response I filled out another one. I’ve been polite and patient because I do know that they are a huge company and I’m just one random guy with a problem. But, I also know that to fix this is just a click of a few buttons and a password reset.

To everyone that says, “You are C.C. Chapman, don’t they know who you are?” That is NOT the point. I am no one. I am one guy out of millions who use their services. I don’t deserve any special treatment or attention. But, looking at this now I see just how bad they treat everyone. I’ve read so many posts from people who have had similar things happen to them and every time the common thread is that Google never pays attention to them.

I don’t care how big or small a business is. You must pay attention to the customers. To those who would scream about it being free, then start charging me because I’d pay for it. I already pay for extra mail server space and would pay gladly more if I knew I’d get customer support when I needed it. Plus, when a brand builds it’s billions on the back of the free platform, that no longer becomes an excuse for poor service. Google is not some garage based start-up where hiccups are expected, but one of the largest companies in the world.

I hope to use Google again sometime. Even after all this I know there is not a better option out there right now and I know I want to continue to use Google. But, in my heart I want to hate them. I want to hate them in the most vile of ways because this is piss poor business.

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Categories: Rambles

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  • KC Greene

    CC have you tried connecting to someone at Google via LinkedIn?

    • http://www.cc-chapman.com/ C.C. Chapman

      I haven't gone that route yet.

  • http://twitter.com/eradke Eli Radke

    How much does it cost yearly for all the services you use?

    • http://www.cc-chapman.com/ C.C. Chapman

      With Google? Almost nothing. I pay a minimal yearly fee for the extra storage and that is all.

      • http://twitter.com/eradke Eli Radke

        Yeah sorry about that. Had a problem with yahoo hosting and although there was a special phone number it sucked and have slowly migrated away from it. Lost a domain.

  • http://twitter.com/conniereece Connie Reece

    Has Google EVER paid attention to customers? You nailed it with this: “When a brand builds it’s billions on the back of the free platform, that no longer becomes an excuse for poor service.” Google, Facebook, Ning … are we selling our souls to stay connected?

  • robsuarez

    Following your ordeal with Google has inspired me to re-read their Terms of Service agreement. Reading through that makes it clear to me that I will *not* be using a Google solution when I launch my law firm. It may cost me a little more up front, but the agreement is so undeniably one-sided in favor of Google, with no guarantees of security or service availability, that, frankly, ANY business use of Google's services is “risky” at best. Free, personal, e-mail/calendar/social use is still fine, I guess… but I will certainly not put my firm in Google's slippery hands. Good luck C.C. hope it all works out.

    • http://www.cc-chapman.com/ C.C. Chapman

      Yes, in the past I've recommended to many companies to use Google Apps for their company and after this I'm not sure I can ever do that again.

    • Todd

      Hey Rob – I'm a lawyer in NJ – the other aspect of running a practice through a google world is there is a potential for a lot of privileged materials to leak out. I'm all for cloud computing with schedules and the like, but my docs are all kept locally. Dare I say it…I still maintain physical, pen and paper files!

      Good luck…

      (Actually, the geek in me is dying to try to set my practice up through Bento on the Mac, which may be worth checking out)

  • http://flickr.com/tracylee Tracy Lee

    You know, I have an alternate account that I only use with two people and it totally hosed for me for about two weeks. Because it wasn't my main account, I wasn't too concerned and quite honestly, I was too tapped out with other things to get into a tech support nightmare over. Things have resumed to operating normally, but had it been my main account, I would have been dead in the water.

  • http://ajleon.me/ ajleon

    CC, you are right. The fact that the service is free is not an excuse because most of us would pay for it. The worst part about this is that most likely, they won't change. They'll continue not giving a sh*t about their customers because they can afford to, at least in the near term.

  • http://twitter.com/extraspecial Chris

    You've missed a fundamental issue here: WE are not Google's customers, the advertisers are. That's where their priorities lie.

    • http://www.cc-chapman.com/ C.C. Chapman

      Unfortunately you are completely right. But, even the tens of thousands of dollars I've spent with them as an advertiser don't matter I guess.

      • http://twitter.com/extraspecial Chris

        Nope, not when it comes to your “free” services, unfortunately. This is what scares me about Google — they stand to be a much more dangerous monopoly than Microsoft ever was. They own both the advertising clients as well as the the properties delivering the impressions (if I recall correctly, the *vast* majority of their revenue-generating impressions were on Google properties, not 3rd party sites).

        So basically, to displace Gmail, you'd have to “build a better Gmail,” presumably give it away for free, and build an ad network to pay for it. There are very few companies, if any, that could pull that off.

        This is why I'm very happy Apple is getting into the mobile ad space, to ensure Google doesn't achieve full domination there. It should be an interesting battle to watch.

      • http://www.cc-chapman.com/ C.C. Chapman

        I hear you, but e-mail is only one piece of the puzzle.

        I need the collaboration tools such as Wave and Calendar to make it through the day. I love that I can log into the web from any location and any device and get to everything. That is why the cloud excites me.

  • http://www.jeffpersch.com JPersch

    It's time to re open my hotmail account……..

  • Matt May

    I had the same thing happen to me on Yahoo several years back. I ran a Yahoo Group, tried to ban a problem user, and as revenge he reported me as a spammer or something, so they shut down my group _and_ my account completely. Apparently all it takes is one asshole with a grudge and a CSR who's too lazy to investigate, and you're done. It sucks, and at least when it happened to me, there was no recourse. I lost years' worth of email that way.

    And now that I'm saying this, and seeing what happened to you, I'm considering backing up my email archive and going back to referring people to an email address at a domain I control. It's the only way to be safe.

    • http://www.cc-chapman.com/ C.C. Chapman

      I actually have seen this happen on numerous platforms and it is just plain crazy. Happened to a friend on Facebook and I've seen it on Twitter as well.

      Backups are fine, but I still need the global collaboration options that Google provides so even though I'm pissed beyond belief right now I really hope this can get worked out.

  • http://nathanlustig.com Nathan Lustig

    Google doesn't care about the users. They never have and they never will until enough people change their behavior and switch to other solutions. I don't think Google could care any less about its customers since the vast majority don't have problems and they figure that the ones that do aren't going to affect the behavior of others.

    It's silly too, because Google could hire a customer service firm in India for what amounts to a rounding error on their balance sheet and have the problem solved. I wonder if they get away with it because they are a public company and need to provide direct ROI on on their money. Setting up customer service for a free service doesn't have a direct ROI, but has tons of indirect benefits that can't be measured.

  • http://stevenbuehler.info swbuehler

    The major problem when you have millions of users is that individuals get lost in the numbers.

  • http://ca.linkedin.com/in/kathrynlagden Kathryn Lagden

    Ugh, total pain as it disrupts every part of your day. I have an ongoing love/hate relationship with google. Can it even be a relationship since it's so one-sided? We rely on their analytics and a portion of it wasn't working for months. Even though we spend thousands as an advertiser (and that shouldn't even matter) I couldn't get a response in any of the support options provided. Suddenly the broken piece just started working again. Great products but totally frustrating experience.

  • Jkn

    Actually, you CAN pay for services like gmail and calendar. It called Google Apps for Enterprise. It's pretty much the same Google services, with one critical difference:

    You are a paying customer.

    An outage would be a violation of the SLA, and would make the news (this has happened once before). For $50 a year per user, this covers all their services except Wave, which is still in Beta. You get phone support and a 99% uptime SLA.

    • http://PodcastAnswerMan.com/ Cliff Ravenscraft

      Yep, this is what I was going to share.

      However, I still agree CC, there are so many people who DO RELY on these services. I'd say that there are Millions of people who use their free services who don't even know about the paid version with guaranteed uptime and phone support.

  • Bryan

    Whole-heartedly agree. I have had a virus in my gmail and I tried DESPERATELY to get find someone, anyone at Google to talk to about it if not to fix my own gmail then to save it from hitting the next person. Its shocking that there is NO WAY you can do that. I can't even email someone about it.

    How is a company as big as Google, with as many loyal, vocal supporters able to make it impossible to get help with their products? If there were ever a fatal flaw to the greatness that is Google, it has to be this…

  • http://PodcastAnswerMan.com/ Cliff Ravenscraft

    Yep, this is what I was going to share.

    However, I still agree CC, there are so many people who DO RELY on these services. I'd say that there are Millions of people who use their free services who don't even know about the paid version with guaranteed uptime and phone support.

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