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Comment by Lazare | Hacker News Reader

It's a persistent story: Google reliably has the worst customer support of any large company, to the point that Comcast or your local DMV starts to look good in comparison. It's impressive, in its own way.

And as long as their consumer facing products were things like free webapps, they could get away with it.

...but if they want to sell a premium-priced handset, they can't get away with it. It's a USD$750 phone, come on. Telling the user that it's probably just a non-existent screen protector?

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Very true. I use Google Fi, but am about to drop it because the support has been horrible. They're friendly, but I constantly miss calls and their support's solution is to ask me to get another working phone to test with and spend a couple of hours filling out diagnostic tests and bug reports. They are also unwilling to do something as simple as send me a new SIM card until I do this.

This, along with they they gave the middle finger to the Nexus line, has turned me from a strong Google supporter into someone who will give a second thought before considering using their services.

Google Fi support is extremely friendly and often almost zero hold time. The actual substance of the support however is very much lacking. Google Fi sent me somebody else's SIM card with my Pixel. It turns out Google Fi pairs a SIM to a specific Google account. So when I booted my Pixel for the first time the email field was pre-populated with someone else's email address (but not the password luckily) and I got a "B010" error trying to activate. This is a very specific error code which I later found out means that I was sent the wrong SIM card (or trying to activate someone else's SIM card). But they didn't have this properly documented so they spent a long time on the phone with me factory resetting it, clearing data for certain system apps, booting in safe mode, etc... before escalating the issue and saying someone will get back to me later. A week later they contact me and say I was sent the wrong SIM and send me a new one. It was a terribly frustrating introduction to using their service. Also seems a needlessly frustrating experience if their support documentation and call back times were better.

A week later they contact me

I really don't understand how people tolerate this. I can't be without a cellphone for a week, my family and I use ours to coordinate many of our activities.

I've not been disappointed when I've walked in to an AT&T or Verizon or Apple store and said "here's the problem ... fix it". And they fix it!

This is exactly my experience with Project Fi. I started having major problems staying connected to a cell phone tower and they were asking me to spend so much time troubleshooting.

I have a full time job, my phone wasn't staying connected to a cell tower in downtown SF for more than 15-30 seconds at a time. I was having a ton of anxiety and Project Fi support was content to let me do their troubleshooting for them. It was very frustrating and Project Fi is still unreliable as hell!

You've galvanized me, I'm getting rid of Project Fi, I'm done with this. WiFi SMS isn't worth this crap.

Get an iPhone. Christ. It's almost as if you people enjoy suffering for the sake of it.

That's exactly my experience as well, and a major reason I moved away from google services in general. I had about as much chance of my cat helping me fix an issue as I did google.

Same here. When my database server died two weeks ago it was shit for me. Until I fixed it, it meant no email, website hosting (not much static content) or telegram bots for me, but at least I can fix it myself. No risk of getting banned or being included in dragnet surveillance when the NSA decides to ask Google for something (I'm not American so protection laws don't apply; I might be a terrorist). Of course that's putting it all too strongly, but there's just no chance of that happening, plus I can help myself. It's like moving out of your parent's place: you have to do more shit, but at least you get to do it your way.

Their support for Google Apps for Work seems passable and, their support for in warranty Nexus devices (which may well be handled by a third party, I don't know) has been decent for the three warranty replacements I've had over the years.

Someone on here was just telling me that their customer service is fine when you're an actual paying customer.

Guess not.

I have heard SOME reports that their support is decent if you are purchasing ad space through their platform. Since that's where the bulk of their profits come from, perhaps that's to be expected.

Just went and found the comment, it was a google fi user using their fi experience to suggest that google's support for self driving cars would be fine.

I think this is a pretty good confirmation that google doesn't know how to support hardware.

If you are purchasing a lot of ad space. You won't be getting any higher level service spending a few thousand a month.

That's not my experience, their adwords support isn't great either.

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