How can we get Google Support?

[fabpot]

The Symfony project, an Open-Source project (http://symfony.com/), uses Google Groups to host its mailing-lists. The service is free and we really appreciate it, but for no reasons, Google closed our access to one of our mailing-lists (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/symfony2).

That happened a few weeks ago and thanks to some inside people at Google, the mailing-list reappeared. As the admin of the list, I received no email about the closing of the mailing-list, no explanations, and not even an email when the mailing-list reopened after a few days of black-out.

I was not happy with this situation but I thought it was just a glitch. But then, some days ago, they did it again. The mailing-list is not accessible anymore, not even by me (the admin).

There is no way to get support, no way to get in touch with someone at Google. This is really frustrating. Of course, this is a free service and Google can do whatever they want, but I would at least expect a way to get some kind of support (hell, I'm even ready to pay fot it)... or at least, some kind of email (even an automatic one) telling me what we did wrong (and I doubt that we did anything wrong as the mailing-list is moderated and we are only talking about yet another PHP framework).

HELP! How can I get in touch with someone at Google? How can we get by our mailing-list?

[edent]

They actively don't want to support you. Google have an official explanation - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU0Z_HAzO3I

It boils down to the fact that even if every customer needed 1 minute of support every 2 years that would mean they'd have to employ 6 trillion people (or some rubbish).

As I said earlier this year, Google have total contempt for their customers - yes, even their paying customers. http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/02/googles-customer-contempt-co...

Self host. Don't rely on Google. Sadly, that's the only way to do it.

[yaix]

> yes, even their paying customers

This was the thread on Webmasterword, when Google closed Million USD Adwords advertiser accounts without warning, after changing their guidelines unannounced http://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adwords/4020049.htm

Google is completely automated, and individual customers don't exist, only statistically significant numbers.

> Self host. Don't rely on Google.

Or any other company if you don't have a contract that legally protects your data while it is on another company's server.

[runjake]

In your blog post above, you repeatedly imply or directly state that we are its customers. I believe that's a huge error in your argument.

We are not Google's customers, we are Google's product. Google is an advertising business and we are the eyeballs it seeks. Android is merely meant as a pathway for those eyeballs. Same with Gmail, Youtube, etc.

Google giving us support is akin to a beef farm offering massages and a counseling hotline to their cattle.

[albertzeyer]

He talks about 1 billion people needing 10 minutes every 3 years would need 20,000 support people.

And Google could setup the fee for the support in such way that it is financially self-hosting.

[mangoman]

How do you feel about Google Fiber if this is how you feel Google treats its customers? When it comes to Google Fiber it seems like the whole community is incredibly excited, but many people also seem to hold the opinion that Google couldn't care less about its customers. I'm expecting Google Fiber to be an incredibly wonderful service, but do those who hold the opinion that Google "has total contempt" for its customers expect Google Fiber to be an awful service as well? Wouldn't that essentially defeat the purpose of Google Fiber?

I think Google devotes proportional resource to the products which give them value, and I think that's probably why Groups is being negelected. It is unfortunate for Groups users, but Google does have to make money.

[ihuman]

Google's explination is a terrible explanation. The assumption that everyone would need support, but that cannot be true. It is just an excuse with no reasoning behind it.

[mayukh]

I actually see this as an opportunity for Google to experiment with customer support. Seems that a lot of people are willing to pay for some basic level of support - so why not test that hypothesis ?

Setup a separate Customer Support organization for specific services. Staff with lower-skilled folks from cheaper locations (since cost seems to be such a huge concern). So a $X yearly plan entitles you to Y number of queries and gets you a response from customer support in N days.

For example a $20,000 per year engineer (very reasonable in lower cost locations) would require 2000 users paying 10 per year to breakeven.

The question is why would google even bother ?

[mark_l_watson]

Yes, self host anything that matters. I love free services from Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc. but for things that matter like my email, my web sites, and my blog I spend a little money and time and control everything.

I prefer being a paying customer. If I should ever have a problem with Dropbox or Evernote I bet I get good support. And, I have my data backed up locally.

[wolfgke]

If there is demand of support (and there seems to be): why don't they sell support - let's say 100$ per hour (or more if they think this is too low)?

[OGinparadise]

Google acts this way because they can. They are a popular SE from back when they were relatively honest and unbiased and they also buy traffic from Mozilla, iOS, Opera etc. They use that traffic to push down competitors and promote their services via Search completing the circle.

When they get some real competition they will be nicer to their users and consumers. If you want to advertise online in any meaningful way, you cannot ignore Google. They know that so they act as a monopolistic tyrant (also see At&T, Verizon, banks etc)

[swombat]

I'm paying for our company's google email accounts. I did that solely so I could get access to their support.

The support experience was outstanding. There was a smart, informed person handling the case. It was a tricky case, there were a number of emails exchanged and several lengthy phone calls, and it turned out not to be Google's fault at all (it was Rackspace's fault), and yet they were courteous, helpful, intelligent, informed, hands on.

One of the best support experiences I've had - but it only happened after we started paying for our email accounts.

[JPKab]

gasp you mean you have to pay for something to expect support??? I'm glad you commented, because you bring a bit of reality to some of the other commenters who chime "Google doesn't offer support beause they don't have to." Umm, no, they don't offer support because only an idiot would offer support to customers who aren't paying for anything.

I get so tired of people who get "free" (yes, i know Google monetizes their use with ads) stuff wanting support. If you want support, you have to pay for it. The skilled person wearing the headset in the call center doesn't work for free.

[jaredmcateer]

I had a problem with my Nexus 4, the FS got corrupted and wouldn't recognize any sim card, no amount of reset to factory defaults or flashing the rom would help. I had one small hitch getting ahold of their support, you had to call. My cell is my only phone so calling them was problematic. I had to use a friend's phone to do it, but once I got past the gatekeeper, I just interacted with the techs via email. After some very simple troubleshooting they emailed me shipping labels whilst shipping me a new phone. I've never had a company ship me a replacement before they received the dud, that was quite refreshing.

[jay_kyburz]

Hey I would like to jump in and say I had a great experience with the Irish support guys on two separate occasions. $50 a year for google apps for biz.

[onemorepassword]

How on earth did you manage that? We pay for our business Google Apps, but I never even got as much as a reply.

[Serow225]

This is an aside, but does anyone know if there's a way to get Google Apps but keep using your gmail address? I'd be happy to pay the Google Apps subscription rate, but I don't want to go through the pain of switching my email address to a new custom domain. I'm guessing that you can set up a forwarding rule from the gmail account to the new one, and then use the Send As feature in the new account, but that seems pretty kludgy. Is there a better way?

[zalew]

too bad there is nothing between free gmail and google apps. I'd like a personal paid account with support.

[alternize]

I have to agree with this. while I'm not always happy with the outcome of the support exchange (i.e. "it is how it is, we cannot raise the attachment size limit even for paying customers") the support staff was always prompt, technical versatile and friendly. once they even called me back after a day or two to verify I'm happy. and this was just for a 4-user google apps account.

[scardine]

I'm a Google Apps authorized reseller. Even for me it is very hard to get support.

Recently we had a problem concerning the Gmail IMAP API and the X-GM_RAW extension.

- https://developers.google.com/google-apps/gmail/imap_extensi...

Quoting from the docs: "Arguments passed along with the X-GM-RAW attribute when executing the SEARCH or UID SEARCH commands will be interpreted in the same manner as in the Gmail web interface"

But this is not true. For example, the in:anywhere filter will not work in the same manner as in the Gmail web interface. In fact, it is ignored. We opened a support ticket at the "enterprise support" portal (https://enterprise.google.com/supportcenter/), and after 2 weeks dealing with some entity that could very well be a chat bot, no solution.

By trial and error we discovered that in order to get the same result as "in:anywhere" you have to issue an IMAP select to the folder "[Gmail]/All Mail" - which has a different name depending on the user Gmail language settings - for example, its "[Gmail]/Todos" in Spanish (you have to list all folders and look for a folder with the "\All" flag).

The document is still incorrect today. Having a billion users is not an excuse for crappy support. Seems like the whole experience is designed to be opaque and frustrating, to make you feel like you were the character of "The Trial" from Kafka.

[atirip]

What support? There is no support at Google and this is by design. If they had support it would not be possible to offer what Google offers. You are shut down by robot and that decision is final. There is no support. And robots do not tell what you did wrong because this would be knowledge on how to play robots.

I seriously wonder how long such a begging - please Google, good Google - will finally end.

[zoul]

He’s willing to pay for the support. Just as most people in similar positions. Doesn’t that change the feasibility?

[ximeng]

At the moment their only feedback mechanism is social media / back door complaints and people leaving their services. This seems suboptimal.

[rplnt]

They do have support. For example http://contact.googleapps.com/?&rd=1

[ChuckMcM]

I like how this has 366 up votes in the last 8 hrs and is at spot 15 as I write this. Perhaps there is a strong bias against whining about free services not having support.

Short answer: In order to get in touch with someone to talk to at Google, first talk to a sales rep for Google Apps and buy the product, ask the Sales rep to put you in touch with your assigned support engineer. Your costs are going to go up quite a bit.

Longer answer: These services aren't "free", they cost money and resources to run. Everyone knows this of course but for some reason it sort of doesn't sink in. You have exactly two choices here, one you can use someone else's "free" service and periodically get bitten in the balls when it either fails, decides to shut down, or randomly disables your access. Or you can build your own version of the service for your organization where you end up spending someone on your staff's "free" time to maintain it and some of your excess budget to "host" it. The good news is that nearly all the groups that might currently be doing this can get away with a single "business" class IP service with 1 dedicated IP address. So figure $60 - $100 a month depending on your location.

Seriously, that is it. Those are your choices. So suggestions:

1) First exfitrate all your meta data you currently use for Google Groups. Which is to say download all the email addresses and membership lists.

2) Second start looking around for an alternative solution (check in your organization perhaps someone already has a machine "hosted" somewhere they can donate to your cause)

3) Third, I really would talk to the sales guy (or gal) at Google to get pricing and while you are at it you can mention your having troubles and they may be able to contact someone inside who will help you out.

[mablae]

This is simple: Don't use google Services, if you do not pay for it. (EDIT: Search is not meant)

GoogleReader is best example, Google has actually become evil.

@fabpot Did you take a look at Discourse?

[ry0ohki]

The key is to find the Google people on the Groups team on Twitter. This is how I finally got an Analytics issue resolved that had been going on for months. Google employees generally want to help, there is just no way into the wall.

[k3n]

Sadly, public shaming on social media seems to be the most efficient way of getting issues resolved these days.

[almost]

This is why I'm working on a mailing list service to replace Google Groups. We're just finishing off things at the moment but maybe we can help you? We're planning on giving free accounts for open source software projects. Email me if you're interested: [email protected]

[reustle]

Unless you're doing something awesome, it's going to be hard to compete with a paid mailing list.

[BenoitEssiambre]

You're supposed to use g+ communities now. Have you not been following? E-mail based lists you say? pfffff, didn't you hear they're shutting down email and replacing it with 'Babble'?

[hamax]

This is the second most upvoted comment in this thread? Wow. I had to double check I'm not reading Reddit.

[ixacto]

You can't unless you submit it to techcrunch and Google’s pr sees it...

  I just spent a couple hours figuring out how to get blogger custom domains to play nicely with google apps.  

It pains me to say this (CISPA, Elephant hunting et al) but Godaddy actually has decent customer support and last time I used it, it was based in the USA. Hell even Comcast has an office down the road.

[jpalomaki]

If people are willing to pay for support, then why do they stick with company that does not offer paid support? Why not simply switch some other company that has adequate support plans available?

I see also positive side in Google not catering all possible needs. This leaves space for smaller companies to cover these needs and make some money while doing it.

[mablae]

Looks like @ianbarber fixed the issue..

[1]: https://twitter.com/ianbarber/status/321942852823289856

[lylejohnson]

As of this writing, there's still no explanation as to why this Google Group was shut down. Google may shut it down again later today. I hope OP moves quickly to archive the list's contents and get that mailing list hosted elsewhere!

[mablae]

Seems to be in Read-Only mode. I couldn't post to group.

[songgao]

I think the problem here is not only about Google providing support or not. The problem is when they are not providing support, how they make it possible for users to solve problems themselves.

If you are gonna close a user's account, either by human or by a robot, you should notify the user before you do it, so that the user can fix the violation if there's any, or find/migrate to an alternative.

Mailing-lists might not be the worst. I mean if you have a backup list including every members email address, you can email them about switching to an alternative. But imagine your Google Apps free account is closed without any prior notification. You suddenly cannot use your email. You decide that you can't have your email address dead knowing that emails sent to it just sink, so you sign up another custom-domain email provider (or build your own on ec2), and tweak with the configurations, which takes an hour. Then you go to your DNS provider and update MX records. Oops, DNS updates can take several hours even one day to synchronize. That's up to a day that you are worrying about missing important emails.

And it did happen before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4825445

[lnanek2]

> If you are gonna close a user's account, either by human or by a robot, you should notify the user before you do it, so that the user can fix the violation if there's any, or find/migrate to an alternative.

Google is not providing support to save costs. If Google implemented warning emails and some sort of compliance check or communication to indicate issues have been addressed, that would add costs as well.

[anuraj]

Google Support - isn't it an oxymoron?

[Kiro]

This could be an idea for a startup. A middleman support service for contacting Google.

[btipling]

That's a terrible idea. You couldn't help those people as you don't have access to anything.

[fedir]

It looks like Google underestimate consequences of such fatalistic behavior.

[jpswade]

Try mailman. It's pretty old, but it's pretty widely used for mailing lists.

[MichaelApproved]

The point is that he probably has many people already subscribed to this list which he will lose without getting it turned back on.

[sgdesign]

What are some good alternatives to Google Groups then? Seems like it'd be good territory for a startup?

[ceautery]

I have no evidence for this, but my guess is your group's name (Symfony2) fails a heuristics challenge, and was disabled by a bot. Perhaps other groups with variants on "phony" or ending with a number have been used for ill purpose by others.

(Yes, I realize Symfony is a software framework, but my hypothetical bot may be using name-matching alone.)

[mndrix]

Google should auction off customer support, like it does AdWords.

Hire as many support staff per product as Google deems profitable. When submitting a support request, I indicate how much I'm willing to pay to receive an answer. The highest bids get answers, the rest don't (or get slower answers depending on request volume and difficulty).