Google forced to use humans to support Nexus One | Hacker News Reader

Google forced to use humans to support Nexus One

theregister.co.uk

18 pointsalexandros16 comments

Probably not a popular opinion but at the end of the day this comes down to google having no idea how to deliver a final product to customers. They have a company and business model based on releasing half baked free software early, calling it beta for a very long time, and iterating over it until it's really shiny.

Delivering somone a product they paid for is not one of Google's core competencies. I also don't think supporting an end user that expects functionality to be mostly flawless (A cell phone is an appliance these days) is really one of their core competencies. That being said they release amazing products and are doing great things with Android... But, the complaints are far fewer when you give something away for free as opposed to when people pay for it.

I think they stand a good chance of learning quite quickly as they have smart people and a corporate culture that favors rapid change. So "delivering a final product to customers" could become a core competency of at least part of Google over time.

It's not a new issue. Google has terrible customer service.

This is true for all their products and services, both free and paid.

I think most people look forward to being on the phone with a customer service rep just about as much as Google looks forward to maintaing the call center they're working in, but consumers need somewhere to go with their questions, especially when they've just shelled out a lot of money for something.

One could argue that Google should have offered this from the start, but we need to remember this a new space for them, and the fact that they identified a flaw and corrected it is a more important (and more interesting) lesson.

That's a good point. Google does seem more nimble in their ability to fix this kind of problem than most companies these days.

From the support issue, I'm not surprised. Take the example of the 3G issues people were experiencing. Someone would call T-Mobile and T-Mobile would say they know nothing about the phone, call HTC. HTC would say that it's a service issue, so you have to call T-Mobile.

Meanwhile Google's only support mechanism is a public forum, which isn't really support at all.

The way I see it it's not the mobile industry being resistant to change, but users being overly needy. How self-entitled does one feel to think they could get a $500 phone and pay half-price, enter into a 2 year contract and then, 2 weeks later, cancel everything and keep the phone for free.

What Google did looked very logic to me (including those restocking fees, etc) but then all this storm of getting actual support was started. It almost looks as if someone looked at what Google wasn't providing and then pointed the media towards this and repeated ad nauseum... Which basically tells me that perhaps one should buy this phone and see what all the fuss is all about.

FWIW, most people don't even realize that phone contracts exist to subsidize the handsets. Most of the time, when I explain to someone that contract cancellation fees are basically just the phone company saying, "Well, can you pay us the rest of the money for the phone we gave you," their consumer ire abates somewhat and is replaced with a contemplative, "Oh."

They don't realize it because the rates are the same whether you get a free phone or not. If you buy your phone you'll be paying the same monthly fee as some other person who got his for free.

That's not true of T-Mobile, Google's provider of choice:

The plans that subsidize their phones start from $60 a month for unlimited, and the unlimited plans that don't subsidize phones start from $50 a month.

This may, of course, vary from provider to provider. I'm only familiar with T-Mobile.

http://www.t-mobile.com/Shop/Plans/Cell-Phone-Plans-Overview...

Isn't that a fairly new development for T-Mobile though?

That's a pretty misleading headline: Not that Mountain View will be providing technical support as such, only enquiries into the ordering and shipping process will be dealt with by Google - everything else gets directed to HTC or T-Mobile as appropriate.

For paid services like AdWords you (sometimes) can get sales support. It's the support for actual issues that is a black hole.

Quick feedback. I have just spoken to a support person to learn status of my order and she was really good and helpful.

press one if you feel lucky.

aww poor google I almost feel sorry..

I like the heading. lol

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