Google was never capable to set up the simplest working order and check out system for the two types of phones/tickets they ever tried to sell and they're going to compete with Amazon? That should be entertaining to watch.
Also, forget about customer service. You got billed twice or your items never arrived? Feel free to post on the forums and wait for your neighbour down the street to reply with his impressions, since he's already had the same thing happening twice so he's now a community expert.
Yeah, I would say customer service is one of the major shortcomings of Google right now. I would think with their transition to producing and selling physical products that would be something they have to improve on soon.
I had the same sort of thought. What are they thinking will happen here? I mean it would be great if this actually pushes the customer service issue into an action but that doesn't seem to be part of their "core competencies" to use some last century marketing speak.
Earlier this year I was billed twice in the Play Store. I emailed customer service, and they replied and removed the charge in about an hour. I also purchased a Nexus 4 on launch day, and none of my interactions with customer service were particularly unpleasant. Granted, others may have had different experiences, but I'm not sure why it has become so trendy to mock Google's customer service.
Ruining HN by turning every Google-related discussion into a snark-filled pile of garbage isn't going to bring Reader back. Can you guys consider moving on?
I'm not sure what comment(s) you're referring to, but at the time of this writing the top comment, although snark-filled, doesn't have anything to do with Reader.
Google sucks big time at customer service, they always have and HN is filled with horror stories of customers (real paying customers) running into walls and interacting with stupid robots when trying to sort things out.
And now they want to compete with Amazon? Amazon?!? Amazon reinvented customer service, in a way that makes it impossible to shop anywhere else once you've experienced them.
At this point, "what are they thinking?" is a very legitimate question.
I'm not bitter about Reader, I haven't been able to use it for over a year. I still find the idea of Google not sucking at customer service unlikley. They do not have any history of not sucking at customer service.
Think of it like this; if you hear a good customer service story from Google it's a huge surprise, like hearing about a part of Amazon whose corporate culture and work environment is not a toxic cesspit.
Over time, if you hear enough of these stories, they stop being surprising, but I have seen multiple people on this forum complaining about Google being unreachable when they spend tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Google's reputation for customer service is well earned.
“Ruining HN by turning every Google-related discussion into a snark-filled pile of garbage isn't going to bring Reader back.”
Well, we can try ;) Anyways, I've reached a level of discontent that I wouldn't come back to Google Reader even if Google promised to keep it running indefinitely.
I'm ditching Google entirely, I only need to cancel my Analytics accounts (I switched to http://www.haveamint.com/). DuckDuckGo works fine for search, IMAP works fine for email, http://www.feedafever.com/ works fine for RSS, Vimeo works fine for video, and Dropbox works fine for online storage.
Really? I think UPS is just fine... they know where my condo is better than Google Maps, and they walk up to the door and put it on the porch and ring the bell.
Same day shipping is not that hard to handle if you only sell what you hae in stock ready to ship. It is same day arrival that we all dream of, like we get with shops. With that shipping the same day is fine as long as it gets to the user quicker, they don't care if you shop the next day as long as it arrives the same. With that it is worth noting that shopping the same day just means it got processed and into collection and even then they could have hourly trucks and count that as dispatched.
Now as long as they provide a tracking number(AWB) or the like you can see the progress with, then that does help greatly. If you can even have GPS tracking the last part and notification when hour away or within 5 minutes, well that would be great.
So that is why I don't get too excited about same day shipping. It is the hubs inbetween and there cut-off times that divide up the day so you could ship at 11pm and miss the 10pm cutoff for the hub transit and have to wait until the next one at 10am. In that case for you it makes no difference if 11pm or 9am. Though anybody who has had tracking information will know how weird some routes can be and wonder why they sit for almost half a day at some locations. Then there are customs if different countries are involved and more fun.
For me better item tracking would win over same day dispatch. I'd take a 5 day delivery window over a 1 day one if it meant I could refine the delivery time to a hour and not AM/PM. Though that may just be me.
The objective is same-day arrival, and it works pretty reliably as long as you order by 3pm or so (in my area, at least). More importantly, you're given a clear indication when you order when you will actually get it (you can choose a delivery window, and see which ones are greyed out).
The delivery windows go as late as 9pm, so I'm sure they will try to push back the last time at which you can order and still get it delivered same-day.
Google makes money by showing ads to people who want to buy things.
If everyone goes to eBay and Amazon instead of Google to buy things, no one will buy ads from Google.
If Google can provide a compelling alternative to eBay and Amazon, they reduce the risk that people stop shopping on Google and that people stop buying ads on Google.
This looks like Google focusing on their bottom line.
To be fair, with Reader the thought probably was "we will aggregate online content created by others and will add ads to the result. Then profit!" This was replaced with "we will aggregate social content, the add lots of ads. Then profit!"
The thought with Express might go like this: "By pushing the envelope on buying things online, more people will buy thing online than offline, expanding the e-commerce universe. This would translate into higher advertising fees. Then profit."
In other words, they believe that expanding e-commerce will be more profitable than helping two dozen power users consume mostly as free content easier.
Damn. Another closed pilot program that is area limited. In the mean time, my Amazon Prime is due for a renewal. I think I'll go and fork over $80 to them for another year of free two day shipping.
I don't see Google's pilot as a competitor to Amazon at this stage. I will still buy on Amazon (mainly large things that I can wait for but I get better pricing on).
However, if Google can get a diverse enough vendor pool to compete with Amazon on enough stuff (much like they did with Android vs. the iPhone), then they have a very powerful story.
I am not sure how the logistics work with participating stores but I would really like to see them make this an easy way for small local businesses to compete with Amazon. Basically a platform for them to list their products and the logistics to collect and deliver them.
This service seems to be mostly orthogonal to Instacart in that Instacart provides perishables but you can only order from a single shop at a time where with Express you can order products from across multiple stores but they focus more on non-grocery items.
I'd like to see it work for small businesses too, but their initial launch stores all seem to be loaded with bigger companies (Target, Walgreens, Toy R Us).
my question are these: how is shopping and consumer service a Google thing? And how long before this is shut down and google starts, say making shoes? Focus on their strengths and all.
You cannot build a great customer service team overnight, no matter how much you throw at it.
[+] [-] tga|13 years ago|reply
Also, forget about customer service. You got billed twice or your items never arrived? Feel free to post on the forums and wait for your neighbour down the street to reply with his impressions, since he's already had the same thing happening twice so he's now a community expert.
[+] [-] chucknelson|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] turing|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] martythemaniak|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bambax|13 years ago|reply
Google sucks big time at customer service, they always have and HN is filled with horror stories of customers (real paying customers) running into walls and interacting with stupid robots when trying to sort things out.
And now they want to compete with Amazon? Amazon?!? Amazon reinvented customer service, in a way that makes it impossible to shop anywhere else once you've experienced them.
At this point, "what are they thinking?" is a very legitimate question.
[+] [-] barry-cotter|13 years ago|reply
Think of it like this; if you hear a good customer service story from Google it's a huge surprise, like hearing about a part of Amazon whose corporate culture and work environment is not a toxic cesspit.
Over time, if you hear enough of these stories, they stop being surprising, but I have seen multiple people on this forum complaining about Google being unreachable when they spend tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Google's reputation for customer service is well earned.
[+] [-] Samuel_Michon|13 years ago|reply
Well, we can try ;) Anyways, I've reached a level of discontent that I wouldn't come back to Google Reader even if Google promised to keep it running indefinitely.
I'm ditching Google entirely, I only need to cancel my Analytics accounts (I switched to http://www.haveamint.com/). DuckDuckGo works fine for search, IMAP works fine for email, http://www.feedafever.com/ works fine for RSS, Vimeo works fine for video, and Dropbox works fine for online storage.
[+] [-] smackfu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sterlingross|13 years ago|reply
Unless you had self-driving cars with real time map data.
[+] [-] dxbydt|13 years ago|reply
Ok, but delivered by regular human in regular car ? No thanks. I want delivery by unmanned google-cars. For that, I'll even pay premium shipping.
[+] [-] smackfu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jfoster|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] angkec|13 years ago|reply
"Good thing google is focusing like a laserbeam . . . on . . . I dunno."
[+] [-] Zenst|13 years ago|reply
Now as long as they provide a tracking number(AWB) or the like you can see the progress with, then that does help greatly. If you can even have GPS tracking the last part and notification when hour away or within 5 minutes, well that would be great.
So that is why I don't get too excited about same day shipping. It is the hubs inbetween and there cut-off times that divide up the day so you could ship at 11pm and miss the 10pm cutoff for the hub transit and have to wait until the next one at 10am. In that case for you it makes no difference if 11pm or 9am. Though anybody who has had tracking information will know how weird some routes can be and wonder why they sit for almost half a day at some locations. Then there are customs if different countries are involved and more fun.
For me better item tracking would win over same day dispatch. I'd take a 5 day delivery window over a 1 day one if it meant I could refine the delivery time to a hour and not AM/PM. Though that may just be me.
[+] [-] huggah|13 years ago|reply
The delivery windows go as late as 9pm, so I'm sure they will try to push back the last time at which you can order and still get it delivered same-day.
[+] [-] shawndumas|13 years ago|reply
--http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/03/28/google-shopping-...
[+] [-] alec|13 years ago|reply
If everyone goes to eBay and Amazon instead of Google to buy things, no one will buy ads from Google.
If Google can provide a compelling alternative to eBay and Amazon, they reduce the risk that people stop shopping on Google and that people stop buying ads on Google.
This looks like Google focusing on their bottom line.
[+] [-] IgorPartola|13 years ago|reply
The thought with Express might go like this: "By pushing the envelope on buying things online, more people will buy thing online than offline, expanding the e-commerce universe. This would translate into higher advertising fees. Then profit."
In other words, they believe that expanding e-commerce will be more profitable than helping two dozen power users consume mostly as free content easier.
[+] [-] mikeash|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IgorPartola|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samwise|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r00fus|13 years ago|reply
However, if Google can get a diverse enough vendor pool to compete with Amazon on enough stuff (much like they did with Android vs. the iPhone), then they have a very powerful story.
[+] [-] scottmp10|13 years ago|reply
This service seems to be mostly orthogonal to Instacart in that Instacart provides perishables but you can only order from a single shop at a time where with Express you can order products from across multiple stores but they focus more on non-grocery items.
Looking forward to trying it.
[+] [-] mbreese|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mbreese|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OGinparadise|13 years ago|reply
You cannot build a great customer service team overnight, no matter how much you throw at it.