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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like a very standard Google experience. To anyone stuck in a similar hell in the future - once the company has demonstrated that they aren't willing to help, there is no point continuing down that road. Escalate it to your credit card provider (with documentation) and they will clear it up pretty quick.

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That's the quickest route to having your Google account permanently suspended. (YouTube, Gmail, etc. goodbye)

I wonder if this is a good thing.

Really random aside incoming:

I once was only able to quit my League of Legends video game addiction because I gave my account away that I had so much vested in (skins, all characters, rune pages) by basically messaging a random stranger, changing the account to their email, going to a random password generator site, changing the pw copy+pasting the password without me looking, and sending it off -- in effect "suspending myself".

I was unnerved for a couple of weeks, but eventually, the itch to play died off. I tried starting up a few times, but it wasn't worth it especially knowing how much time I sank into it previously.

I wonder if I got myself permanently suspended from Google, (I want to quit Google given how unethical they have become) would I rid myself from them for good?

He is an Android Developer. Getting banned could have career-disrupting or even career-ending repercussions for him. It is not exactly comparable to quitting a video game.

Start building iPhone apps? It’s not as if there aren’t any alternatives.

I'm sure the costs (both direct costs and the opportunity cost) of a career change is orders of magnitude higher than the $70 he is going to get back through the chargeback.

F-Droid repos.

Stop being so helpless, "hacker" community...

I tried to do the same thing with an expensive bottle of liquor a few weeks ago. It only worked for a week :/

I'm sorry to hear that. Alcoholism or just an expensive habit?

If alcoholism, luckily it is taken "more seriously" than video game addiction. Although now as I get older I just realize addiction is a trait we all have the propensity for, and some people just manifest it in healthy ways where as some of us in not so healthy ways. I have people in my family that were compulsive gamblers, alcoholics, workaholics, and drug addicts, sometimes a combination of all four -- all different forms of addictions. Sometimes I view my video game addiction in that light: "well at least it wasn't drugs or alcohol" but, who knows, maybe in 50 years we will find out that it harmed me just as much.

Definitely some form of Alcoholism, but not crippling and not expensive since I can tolerate the $15 1.75l vodka, mixed with water. Never (mostly) during work or times I expect to drive. But most days, for the past 20 years, from 5PM to 11:30PM I have a strong drink on hand. The big bottle last only 3 days. I only get bad hangovers once in a while, though there's no doubt the habit slows me down during the day. And I'm a huggy drunk, not angry. In fact, people seem to prefer tipsy me over sober me. I'm sure it has damaged my body (but who goes to the doctor?) and I felt way better in general the week I was off it. I quit Ultima Online (decades ago), smoking (years ago), and caffeine (months ago) without assistance, I'm pretty sure I can get this figured out. Maybe abstaining from things can be my new addiction :)

Google has demonstrated enough times already that your account can be permanently suspended for any or no reason at all. While the services they offer are definitely useful, if people are relying on them in their personal or professional lives it's best to be ready in case they are taken away without notice.

Yeah, their propensity to random account shutdowns in lieu of resolving whatever issues got them worried is why I've started paying FastMail and am slowly migrating to mail at my own domain. I can live without any other Google service, but having been a heavy GMail user for the past decade, account shutdown is an existential threat.

So basically never get into a business relationship with Google because if they screw you over you have absolutely no recourse, unless you've managed to steer clear of using Gmail, etc.

And this is why we don't use gmail

I'd love to find a good alternative to Gmail.

Since I don’t know what your requirements are, I’m just going to list some “good alternatives” for email that are paid services and have a better focus on privacy/customers:

- Posteo.de

- Runbox

- Mailbox.org

- Mailfence

As a Gmail user, you’re probably not as concerned about five eyes surveillance as some others may be. If that’s true, then add Fastmail into the above mix.

FastMail

You would think that if they weren't connected that Google wouldn't ban you across accounts, but I know a person who had their name banned from Uber, so if Google wanted they probably could deny services to you.

There is nothing of value on my google account. Everything that is, has backups on my own servers or mirrored to other services. I consume youtube only via rss-bridge, so my youtube account being banned means I only loose nothing at all.

I'd chargeback Google in a heartbeat if I had even minimal reason to do so.

They'll clear it up by banning your Google account and blacklisting you for all Google services. Just be prepared for that.

That is called "doing you a favor".

I don't think they will actually...

A credit card chargeback bans you from Google Pay/Wallet/Android Pay/Google merchant services/google shopping basket/gBilling/whatever it's called now and all services requiring payment. I think you can still use gmail/youtube/whatever.

You would think that the credit card companies would have 'fines' for companies that retaliate against their customers.

Something nice like $10k per violation.

There is no incentive for them to penalize anyone who generates lots of transaction fees. Especially as any I’ll will accrues to their customer (google) and not to them (visa et al)

This thread is what has finally pushed me into registering my name as a domain and begin transitioning off of gmail.

It seems that anything that has any sort of customer service component is not Google's forte.

Google is shit in meatspace. It has been demonstrated too many times. They'd better hope the day that they'll only need to interface with bots arrives soon.

Ironic that a company that specializes in solving hard problems can't tackle an already solved problem.

Google tried to hire additional customer support reps but none of them got past the whiteboard code test

As a former GCP support rep, this is actually true. Their strict hiring practices prevented them from scaling up support along with their platform, so they had to contract with other IT companies to provide the necessary manpower. Unfortunately, that also meant that Google's support was manned by people not up to Google's own standards. This started to change over the last year when they got sick of the lackluster support from their contractors, but I still doubt they are able to get enough Google qualified engineers willing to work in customer support. It's definitely not for a lack of trying, though. The problem is that if you're good enough to pass a Google whiteboard exam, wouldn't you rather build things, rather than coach other people building things? I sure did.

Evangelists and Teachers definitely exist in the tech space, however FAANG companies are usually headed up by people who marginalize them in my experience.

This has been known for awhile.

The exception is if you pay good money to advertise with them.

The enterprise support tier for GCP is as good as Azure and AWS top tier in my experience.

With regards to consumer products. It‘s probably not possible to support 2.5b+ users with humans. Voice assistants are getting there though. 5 to 7 years maybe?

Google has too many hobby products for me to trust them with an actually mission critical part of my life that is my only phone line.

I really need to be able to walk into a store or physical location to talk to an actual person. Plus the accounts of Fi customers getting locked out or if you can’t use Google Payments, you can’t pay for Google Fi.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18886804

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