Tell HN: How to get Paid Support for Gmail account | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: How to get Paid Support for Gmail account

15 pointscodegeek10 comments

Seeing a lot of stories about People getting locked out of Free Gmail and google providing no support, I thought to share. They have a "Google One" plan which you can buy for $1.99/Month or $19.99/Year to upgrade storage etc but it also adds Direct Support for Gmail, storage etc. This could be useful if you rely a lot on your Gmail account.

https://one.google.com

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Google One family subscriber here.

My wife was locked out of her Google account after breaking her phone (her only recently used authorized device, 2FA method, etc.). Our fault, we should have had backup 2FA methods (and now do).

We were able to get Google support on the phone, which was cool, but they weren't able to help at all. It's like they were reading the same support pages we were.

1. Everyone should have a Yubikey (or similar) 2FA method stored away from your phone and other devices. 2. Google support wasn't particularly useful for us.

Everyone should practice signing in to all the things using someone else's computer and without touching your phone. Just to make sure you could in a pinch.

I'll chime in Authy, which can be setup in parallel over several devices. Google Authenticator is sort of broken - they don't have sync across devices

some would call that a feature…

As others have said, unless actually tested, it is only an extra fee for storage, no more.

However if you do get locked out, and the usual story of no support happens, you might now have standing to sue for fraud.

There are tons of services on GCP which incur a bill. And unless you're on a premium support plan, you'd be extremely lucky to talk to a solution architect.

That being said, Google Workspace Solutions engineering roles has slowly broadened in last few years. The demand has outstripped the supply. Internally, it is acknowledged its a problem.

It's almost worthwhile buying a very cheap phone/laptop and signing in to your Gmail account and only ever turning on said phone/laptop until your primary device is locked out through some misfortunate event.

But does this really work? What happens if you need help logging into the account?

I've tried it. The support is incompetent. In my case, not only did they not solve the problem, but I was 6 emails deep before I got someone who could competently read English.

My interaction: messages backup wasn't working. I said that, and shared why I believe that. The response: here's how to enable backup. Reply: enabled, not working. Response: how to enable. And around we went.

I certainly wouldn't rely on it for anything.

And then they lock you out of your account and you can't even prove to them that you are actually the person paying for One so there's no way to get support anyway?

I do this. I pay 2.19 a month, but like the other comment implied, I've never tested it.

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