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Comment by Lazare | Hacker News Reader

Google periodically flirts with the idea of being a consumer products company that provides products to consumers and then supports them.

There is extensive evidence (of which this is just the latest element) that this is not a good idea, and won't be until there's a fundamental change.

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I've found Google Fi to have exceptionally good support, and the same is true with Nexus phones - a very painless RMA process when something didn't work quite right.

I call that the Google myopia.

the new users of a new, sexy product, usually free, are always in awe because they really go the extra mile and have the best team working on it. that's when everyone else is looking from far away and they see that everything is perfect.

then the team gets promoted, leaves, etc. and what's left is the real Google consumer product. and that is the crap they everyone sees up close. and every problem goes to support forum hell.

Yeah, that might be the case with fi, and it is sort of the natural way of things. I don't remember any older Google products having ever had a good support system, though.

I had three of the Bootloop phones hit me, not only were they not helpful, but the MFG has been a nightmare even with the extension. I ended up migrating lines back to T-Mobile because of the headaches.

Occasionally someone has a good experience with Google support, usually but not always involving one of their latest products when it's still a big corporate focus.

But so far, those good experiences always seem to be rare exceptions. The median customer service experience with google seems to be extremely negative.

If google collected (I don't think they do?) and then published NPS scores for their major customer-facing products, would any of them have positive scores? :)

I had to RMA 3 Nexus 6Ps. I'm not sure if it was bad luck or the 6P just had a bad build quality. The first one the backwards facing mic died causing it to be the world's most expensive text messaging device. The second had a battery issue that caused it to be a brick for about 2 days (this happened over New Years too). The third, bootloop.

The process is relatively painless, with the notable exception being the 2nd time my Nexus shat the bed. It is unreasonable to tell a person "You have to live without a phone for a week." when they rely on UBER/Lyft for work. I had to buy a $100 burner Android. I'm sort of hoping I have a problem with my Pixel. I accidentally chipped the screen at the gym, and it bothers me slightly.

Support from Play has been pretty good. I've used it a few times. I have gotten one person whose English wasn't strong, but they did manage to get me a workable contact. The thing they get right, when they get it right, is that their reps have the authority to solve problems.

> fundamental change

Empowering support to be able to task engineering resources? Blasphemy!

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