Tell HN: Doing a chargeback against Google will get your account banned
old.reddit.com
old.reddit.com
In fact it is doing all three things we ask people not to do: it's editorialized, it's linkbait (sensational/indignant), and it's arguably misleading because it's making a general claim while the linked article is the narration of (one side of) one example—and note that its title never claims to be otherwise. When a HN title is more linkbait, more misleading, and more editorialized than the corresponding title on Reddit, that's probably a bad sign.
More generally, I don't think a $BigCo horror story on Reddit is likely to be much of a basis for a substantive HN discussion. There just isn't enough information—all it will do is evoke people's pre-existing opinions and judgments (not to mention indignation). The comments will be generic and repetitive of previous discussions in the same bucket. This is mostly what we're trying to avoid on HN.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
The title is not misleading since most companies will ban you if you do a chargeback. The thing to note here is that a chargeback was done against the Google Store and the Gmail account was banned.
My goal wasn't to editorialize, I just wanted to let people know that their Gmail account was at risk if they did a chargeback against any of Google's services. This was new information to me and a lot of people on this thread.
Why did you think that?
> My goal wasn't to editorialize, I just wanted to let people know that their Gmail account was at risk if they did a chargeback against any of Google's services. This was new information to me and a lot of people on this thread.
Sure, and I appreciate your good intention (it was new to me too). But if you want to say what you think is important about an article, you should do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://old.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/zndbku/tifu_by_accide...
Account stolen. Obvious fraudulent charges. EA refuses to make it right. Customer rightfully disputes the charges. EA closes their account locking them out of an entire catalogue of content THEY HAD PAID for.
This whole “you don’t really own digital content” ruse needs to be popped. A company shouldn’t be able to kick you off their platform if you have purchased content from them without refunding that content or providing you physical copies of the content they’re revoking your on demand access to.
This whole “you give me $20 for a one time purchase and I’ll let you watch this movie for anywhere between 100ms and 100,000 years mostly at our discretion” isn’t business - it’s fraud and it’s shameful regulators haven’t stepped in yet.
To be clear this is about digital purchases, not digital rentals and streaming services.
There would need to be a lot of work done to make this happen and big companies would have to get on board. It doesn't seem likely now, but it might happen with enough pressure or the right disruptive catalyst.
Will never happen.
Your solution is equivalent to letting customers download their game installer after logging in and giving them a license key to unlock with, something we already can do, except your idea includes 10,000 more steps
Not that I agree this is a good idea but IPFS decentralizes storage and provision of the content. A centralized server means the company can still arbitrarily block you.
Let's see, can't you solve the exact same problem by simply having a centralized organization have a database of digital content ownership? Essentially a title record DB? Seems like it.
And how does your blockchain solution solve the problem of someone is hacking the game and needs to be banned? Can the EA ban them or do hackers get to stay for good because it's on the blockchain? And if EA can ban them at their discretion then how did the block chain solve anything here?
And so yet again someone appears to have thrown out "blockchain" when it provides zero value at all towards a solution.
Please anytime anyone proposes blockchain, please explain how it is in any way better than a separate centralized DB in your proposed use case.
But wouldn’t the blockchain give a decentralised record of ownership that was protected from corruption? If a single entity owns this database, how does it fare against attacks/bad actors, or highly capitalists companies like EA going in and editing it in their best interests.
You need a truly good organisation to host that single DB and I’m not sure I tryst any of them at the moment.
(Also thought I have a cursory knowledge of blockchain technology, so please correct me if I’m off.)
Easy example is that nft tokens are decentralized, but the servers hosting the actual pictures are not. So you own the token but the picture itself can go missing.
Also not really the case with on-chain NFTs or those hosted by IPFS (where as long as 1 user has the file on disk it can be recovered and re-seeded).
Let’s say such a blockchain did exist. You buy Battlefield or some other game, years pass and EA bans your account. You want to download the game again. How are you going to do that? Sure, the blockchain is public, but EA can just maintain their own list of people to ban.
Okay, so maybe we pass a law that says that if you have a record on that blockchain companies must let you access your digital goods. You take EA to court for banning you despite having purchased the game. What’s the advantage over a database run by the government? The court trusts the government database, since they are the government, and you and EA have no choice but to listen to the court — they’re the ultimate trusted third party.
If you want to see an example of decentralization in the context of a game, look at Dark Forest.
https://www.designboom.com/technology/dark-forest-one-of-a-k...
What benefit justifies the drastically increased costs and reduced speeds from moving this on-chain?
Whether it’s “worth it” depends on your view. Dark Forest and L2 blockchains are much, much less expensive than a lot of modern games. The graphics are not impressive, but it’s not really relevant—anybody could build a better client; and many games can succeed despite limited graphics, such as Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft.
Not like EA because that wouldn't be a separate organization / 3rd party.
The only interesting thing OP is asking for is someone other than the game company to maintain digital title tracking. That is a reasonable request. The same way your city might have a database of who owns title's for our house. A centralized database owned by a 3rd party.
But none of that has anything to do with a blockchain or being distributed. Continuously people keep mixing up having 3rd party ownership (which sometimes does help solve problems) with a blockchain (which 99 time out of 100 adds tons of complexity and usually zero or negative value). That's the key distinction being made here.
Thank you for this. Reminds me of the form someone came up with about "Here's why your spam solution won't work" that was posted many times on slashdot in the '90s.
a) public will understand and support b) help with re-election prospects
Why have we allowed it with digital goods?
Walmart fines people for shoplifting? Of course not. That is a job of a government.
Companies should not be a judge, jury and executioner.
After all, disputing a charge on your credit card isn't some shady underhanded process; it's a right you have under law [1]. The real issue here is that, under digital distribution models, you have no real ownership of things you've purchased; in some sense, you're just renting or licensing them.
Merchant wants to ban your account for issuing a chargeback? Fine, but they should be required to preserve your access to purchased digital goods, or to otherwise compensate you for those goods. Consumer protection laws need to catch up to reality, and fast.
[1] https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/using-credit-cards-disputi...
Meanwhile the pirates still always find their way around it, so it's the paying customers who deal with the fallout.
Then I skimmed TFA, and they said that a CSR for the company told them to.
Maybe HN escalation will work, this time. But we should really figure out how the critical unique huge consumer tech companies can solve their due process problems, and be more consistent with US principles of society.
My experience is that they seem to have this mindset that if you aren't paying them for advertising specifically, you're not a customer, you're a user - the product - which is true if you aren't paying them at all, but isn't even remotely the case when you're giving them money in exchange for a product. Absolutely horrendous customer service every time I've needed to contact them.
Of course, Google is actively motivated to make forcing them to face consequences for mishandling product disputes punishable by complete ostracization from their "ecosystem".
On the one hand, this feels like a Surprised Pikachu moment: Of course a chargeback, the final legal method through which you have issues redressed, is a valid reason to deny you further access to a private company's platform.
On the other hand, I've been decoupling my life from Google's services for a reason, and I'm not the only one. Google has ceased providing products for my needs superior enough to the competition to merit putting up with the ever-looming threat of their hegemonic bullshit.
Forced corporate ‘fun’ never works.
Normally I would agree, but a representative from google told OP to do a chargeback!
In matters of "ToS;DR" it's generally the case that terms aligned with common expectations are enforceable but terms that don't aren't. That leaves me wondering if "chargebacks get you canceled" is a common expectation or not. The answer to this strongly influences whether my bridge analogy is accurate.
However, if I were to get into a disagreement with Google, and a CSR told me to "do a chargeback", I would assume that CSR was engaging with me in poor faith, because these megashitcorps have a penchant for completely banning people out of hand for chargebacks to the point where it's basically autonomic. It seems like something I'd tell an annoying customer to do if they were annoying me and I was having a particularly bad day, because doing tech support is a miserable and soul-destroying job.
Again, this isn't a justification/rationalization, because this isn't an okay state of affairs in my mind, but I generally expect that a chargeback means I am ending my relationship with a business. Perhaps the OP from reddit should adopt the same mentality defensively.
I would completely disagree. It depends on whether the chargeback was justified. If a company illegally charges a user and the user merely declines to pay it, the subsequent blackballing (and damages associated with it) are damages of and resulting from the original crime / tort. It begins to smell like extortion.
Would you really, though? What does "complete" disagreement take the form of here, the denial of banning for chargebacks entirely? For every random hypothetical one can provide of a company engaging in poor faith, I can invent a hypothetical of someone charging back against a company despite receiving their product in good faith. I did not say "Is always a valid reason", and it perplexes me when I receive responses that seem to deliberately interpret statements as absolutes when they aren't phrased as such. :(
I see dozens of people do this weekly against big companies (my company, link in bio) and it does tend to work well because the legal department is generally more motivated to resolve things than customer support. Airlines and car companies are the most common disputes from our data.
That said, you can't force Google or anyone to do business with you. This kind of thing should be regulated for big gate keepers.
Though, thinking about it, I am not sure that's accurate either, because it's a bit difficult do a chargeback by yourself if the card issuer doesn't want to cooperate. Whoops.
I contacted google asking them to cancel my order. Two weeks later, it's still not shipped, CS rep is basically useless ("we are investigating! Thanks for your patience! :)").
Did a chargeback yesterday. Now I am running Google Takeout. Trying to figure out what happens to the domains & google fi service when my account is banned.
I am now realizing I am banking too much of my life on a company that offers 0 customer service.
On the off chance someone from Google sees this, Case is 8-4940000033434.
Is apple any better?
Who can I transfer my google domains to?
Who can I transfer my google workspaces to?
Google in my experience is basically a giant black hole if you need any real service on the consumer side. This is one of the various reasons that like others in this thread I've disconnected myself from any reliance on Google services over the past few years. Having the vast majority of my digital identity linked to a single gmail account was super convenient, but there's way too much downside risk if someone at google decides to shut you out for any reason.
You can get to a human pretty fast, you have to go through an annoying script, but at least it’s with human and not a badly written automation.
Or for that matter to never use Google Pay, even if the c/c charge isn't run by them. You could go from "credit card buyer protection" to Google Doomsday with a single disputed charge.
I wonder how they handle "bank reversals", where a report of a stolen card (but not specifically a customer-generated chargeback) results in a reversal of the charge by the bank and issuance of a new c/c?
The difference being that a customer-generated chargeback for "goods or services not delivered" is handled differently by the bank than a "my card was stolen, reverse these charges" issue.
I have a c/c I use for Google. Said card # is stolen, and used to buy Google services (under a different ID). I call the bank, they cancel the card and refund the amounts charged to Google for the unknown services.
What is the chance of Google cancelling my other account, since it was on the same card?
> since it was on the same card?
Quite high. Majority of companies have this automated.
And if you decide to do chargeback assume that that is a "nuclear option": that you will never be able to use that company again.
This was of course an automatic process and there were (completely predictably) false positives. This would kill your entire Google account, Gmail included.
I was one of many voices who argued that was completely stupid. The worst thing that should happen is a policy violation on a given service should terminate or suspend that service only. It should NEVER kill Gmail. Why? Because the end result is people will ultimately only use their Google account for Gmail.
That's what I have done since and what I recommend everyone else do. Never tie your Google account to any other Google product. You may well regret it.
It's wild to me that this is still the case. The issue isn't large enough for any executive to care. That means the decision will come down to a few stubborn individuals (probably a VP of PM) who are maintaining this position.
There's nothing you can buy from the Google Store that you can't get from Best Buy or Amazon and those will be infinitely more accountable.
Sure, there will be some rough edges (what when I am banned from GDrive but not Gmail, but then I click the 'save to drive' button in gmail?). Who will test that codepath?
How about when i DDoS the antivirus service API? - does that mean my email will no longer be scanned?
But a few rough edges for a few users seems better than a few users very unhappy and enough to become negative PR sources for life.
Don’t use gmail as your primary email provider.
Voice and sms only SIM card is only $6/mo from tello…
Google pretty much forces you to do so.
The only way to win this game is to not play it.
I have not tried in a few years, but I was nearing the 10 year mark previously, and they still would not allow me to use adwords. I am not sure if it is a lifetime ban or what.
[0] https://rclone.org, https://rclone.org/drive/, https://rclone.org/googlephotos/
But yeah, Google takeout can be done once a month if you have time to spare for that task.
It seems to me like deleting the files over your storage limit is the easy path for both you and google and I don't see how this is an example of holding you hostage. At most bad communication and a lack of warning.
If there was a problem with insufficient warning, that's a problem, but not a hostage problem.
To be sure I backup my phone's photos using rsync (via termux) to my own backup locations.
I have a rather large library from Takeout and it's been a burden.
It seems I'm going to need to write something to interpret their metadata to make it remotely useful again; they provide a flat archive with images and JSON files.
If I have to do this, I'd rather pick my tools on familiarity - compared to Takeout, I have slightly more with rclone
Truth be told I'm a data hoarder, I'll probably do both and reconcile
It seems I'm not the only one experiencing those encoding issues with Google Takeout https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/71153/takeout-br...
I want very much for the rclone/Gmail integration to work well but it’s very complicated and fussy.
You are better off doing a takeout and downloading in your browser.
> The current google API does not allow photos to be downloaded at original resolution. This is very important if you are, for example, relying on "Google Photos" as a backup of your photos. You will not be able to use rclone to redownload original images. You could use 'google takeout' to recover the original photos as a last resort
Now, of course, I understand that even Google can't reasonably be expected to provide free 24/7 customer support for the entire Internet. If they had a normal phone number available where anybody could reach a human at any time, every confused person would call them with issues that are completely unrelated to Google's actual products and even Google would be overwhelmed.
The solution is to figure out some payment level for support that dissuades casual abuse of customer service, but is still reasonable for people to use in an emergency to save their business or communication accounts.
I'm convinced that at least some people have lost jobs and companies, had their lives ruined, or even committed suicide over being completely unable to salvage everything they've worked for all of their lives. This should be horrifying to every Google employee.
Microsoft did this back in the 1990's. It provided a strong financial incentive to reduce the number of support calls generated per Windows installation, which is what they ended up doing.
And that definition was quite liberal: not just obvious software bugs, but also confusing documentation, etc.
In other words, as long as you RTFM before you called, it was free.
No it is entirely reasonable. Even with a decline this quarter, Alphabet is sitting on ~$116 Billion cash on hand. Spending $1B on customer service would be trivial.
They won't though, because end-users are not the customers of Google, advertisers are. You can betcha advertisers get excellent customer service.
You would think so, but no. Even advertisers get bad support from Google. Even companies using Google as replacement for Microsoft stack (Gmail and Calendar instead of Outlook, etc) get bad support from Google. Even Google Cloud customers spending millions a year get bad support from Google.
The terrible support might have started for the reasons you mention, but it turn into whole organization dysfunction.
Have you ever advertised on Google? I'm guessing not.
Go search on Reddit and other places for stories from people who got their Google Ads accounts banned, including advertisers spending millions of dollars a year, and see how much help from customer service they've gotten.
Excellent might not be the word that comes to mind after you've been through that exercise.
Furthermore, if Google is going to shove search, email, maps, Chrome, ChromeOS, Play Store, Android, etc, etc, etc, down our throats maybe they should be made to actually do a little customer service.
In general, I don't think you can expect free support for a free product. I do think businesses should let you buy support for any tier of product, both as part of a subscription and on a one-time basis.
And that’s ignoring trying to minimize call length or even the need for any calls in the first place.
For sake of argument, let's pretend you can shave half off the costs. So, now we're talking $8B annually for one support call / user / year. Does this undermine my argument about under-estimation of $1B costs?
I suspect they could get net costs below 800m/year.
Their ad platform is so confusing, I had to take a Udemy course just to make head or tails of it.
This is besides the fact that their ads are nowhere near as effective as on other platforms.
That would be the fair consequence of wanting to dominate the whole internet, no?
If any company providing a product would refuse to have a human that is reachable, they would never get to a dominating position.
And IMHO, google should be forced to provide that human service given its dimension, or scale down until it does.
We've gotten phone calls asking for help with fixing peoples' Yahoo mail accounts, asking for returns to stores that were completely different than ours, trying to get refunds on products we don't even sell, and many other nonsensical and time-wasting calls from confused people.
If we, at our extremely small scale, were often annoyed by dealing with irrelevant phone calls, I have no doubt that Google would be drowned out by every person who had an issue installing Windows, trying to setup their printer, asking for help getting their money back from a shoe store, running out of gas on the highway, their apartment not turning on the heat high enough, and a host of unrelated things that most of us would never dream of calling Google about.
I'm not asking for perfection from Google: I'm just asking for Google to help desperate people that are completely screwed and giving them some option, even if it requires some payment, to fix major life-changing issues.
People are how they are and will always find the path of least resistance to get their problems solved.
That doesn't exclude them or anyone from providing support to the services they offer, and that people pay for (one way or the other)
I don't get this, I engage human Google support for paid Google products at least a few times a month. It's not great, but definitely on par with other tech giants. Are you expecting human support for ... free services?
But its free isn't an automatic get out of jail free card for the expectation for a company to behave like reasonable human beings.
How about only paying customers outside of consumer subscription services (and maybe even those)? I don't know why it's reasonable to expect them not to be able to provide that service at volume when I can and have reached amazon support for small sales and even before sale events and I'm sure they move more stuff around than google does pixel phones.
IMO they should be legally required to provide an appeals process with a real human and reasonable turnaround time (e.g. 1 business day would probably be fine with me) for all forms of account banning or website banning. For payment disputes they should also be legally required to provide human assistance within a few business days. If you can't do that then you shouldn't be allowed to take payments.
I had a location-based file sharing website banned across the internet because Chrome falsely labelled it as a suspicious website or some BS. That new Chrome version marked the end of that project. No way to reach a human. I can't imagine how many businesses and startups have been ended because of Google's rash policies and no appeal process.
I used to be a paying Google Workspace customer and I cancelled my account through the usual process. After my account was closed _and deleted_ they sent some unknown invoice amount to collections, sent threatening emails.
Was there a reply-to? Was there a phone number? No, "log in with your account and raise a support issue". The account that you deleted. And another threatening email with no help about how to answer. I emailed the Collections address and I got auto-generated responses.
And I spent days combing help pages. Finally sorted it out by opening a new trial account (and then the help agent was very helpful). But even then it was awkward.
I will never send a cent their way.
Oh, and I know a google employee who was kind enought to look into it. He followed the internal channels to try and help and ... it was broken. Best he could do was file a bug report.
They do: https://one.google.com/about/support
See... for me that is actually an argument that they are way too big, because they are not able to properly service their existing customer base.
I’ve migrated everything I possibly can off their services as a result. Google Maps and YouTube I find hard or impossible to really replace but I don’t have any critical data there.
I remember how exciting it was when Google IPOed (2005?). I was rooting for them. Every passing year my opinion of them diminishes further.
I actively avoid getting involved in any business relationship with Google because of the mountain of evidence that it’s a bad idea. No Google suite. No Google cloud. No hardware.
Google is an advertising company. They make their money from advertising and the rest of the revenue is a pittance to them, so they have no incentive to provide any support or empathy.
Avoid doing non-advertising business with Google at all costs.
Google can do what it wants, I just wanted to let people know so they think twice before doing a chargeback against Google.
It seems like a lot of folks are surprised by a chargeback causing a loss of access to the company services so wanted to share my experience that this is not abnormal. Big companies tend to do this.
IIRC google requires a non-voip phone, so you’ll need a burner phone too if you want to go that route.
They also themselves will prevent you from using those cards to break ToS if they can detect it (i.e. multiple sign-ups for known service).
I can generate single-use cards with an arbitrary limit, limit cards that can be used any number of times, and cards with a monthly renewing limit.
This works for literally any bank in Portugal via an app called MBWay.
It should be illegal if you're a global monopoly where it's nearly impossible to function in modern society without an account to.
The problem I see time and time again, is that Google acts like it is completely unaware it's a monopoly.
In my university, professors and old T.A. have a mix of gmail, hotmail and yahoo, let's say 1/3, 1/3 and 1/3. But students have almost 100% emails from gmail.
I't not a monopoly, but it's getting very close.
Monopolists of the past are jealous of how many monopolies google is getting away with.
Google abuses these positions to decide what web technologies the web uses, which businesses get found on the web and which don’t, and how android device manufacturers build their phones.
(Having said that, I more-or-less never log into my google account, and also don't intentionally use any of their services.)
Curious what you meant by that? Which TLDs are that and why would my local network collapse?
Man it sure is a great gig being google!
The plumber has a wife answering the phone who can be reasoned with and who can reason with you and you can arrive at some compromise or understanding or other deal before getting to a chargeback. And that's just for a noncritical service. What compromise or understanding does google offer? For their service which they have actively made as critical as possible?
This sob story about how bad chargebacks are falls flat.
The issue is Google told them to issue a chargeback to get his money back. That was Google's representative saying this.
Dealing with support was near impossible, no one had power to override the order, until finally I said I'd chargeback, then they were suddenly able to cancel it...
Obviously I'd never actually charge back though, as shown here, I assumed I'd get the boot
Amazon nuked my account. I've been an Amazon customer since the beginning, almost 30 years, and have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with them. For this $30 chargeback, they yanked back all of my Kindle books, Amazon Prime movie purchases, etc.
I got shifted from the normally incredibly helpful and friendly Amazon Customer Support to one hosted in the Upside-Down and manned by an army of demogorgons. They were essentially debt collectors, and had the attitude to match. Zero understanding or empathy. Incredibly aggressive, unpleasant, and unhelpful. I ended up reversing the chargeback, which of course took two weeks, and it worked itself out in the end.
But wow, customer LTV the size of mine could have been blown up for such a small thing. Seems like someone isn't doing the math inside Amazon.
I think we need to be principled when dealing with companies. This is the only way to make them behave as they should.
Products and services will improve at the learning rate that the market imposes.
But it’s different when it’s a company that provides your email, your browser, your phone, your entertainment, your car interface, your telecom, your operating systems, your office productivity suite, your online storage solution, and your method of communicating with your friends and family.
I’m not going to blame the victim, but encourage future victims to stop using Google products whenever possible.
But only if they have reasonable system for telling the difference.
Nobody in any of these situations thinks they are being unreasonable.
Okay? I didn't say they get to choose. Was the implication of "shouldn't be able" not clear enough? You'd have externally imposed rules.
And in this case google hasn't expressed that they think the process was reasonable, they're just refusing to do anything.
Steam froze my account to punish a PayPal dispute, the amount they would not refund was ~£2. Their refusal was contrary to UK law.
Small story about Steam. They sold me a broken game, in UK one can return broken things according to the Consumer Rights Act, specifically including digital goods. Steam said, at length, they would not refund me: the game would crash (losing some settings) after ~30 minutes, I spent more than 2h of playtime trying to fix it [it's a 50h+ game, I'd have accepted an 8p reduction in my refund!].
I complained to PayPal. PayPal decided in my favour -- ie in keeping with UK law. Steam didn't dispute PayPal's findings but instead froze my Steam account (and I assume paid PayPal the money back). PayPal made me whole, financially.
My Steam account was blocked for a month or so. Ongoing they "punish" me by making it hard for me to give them money -- which is good for me, but my kids are not keen!
WhyTF would I complain over a few £. It's the principle, clearly.
It was very interesting to me to see how a big company can ignore the law in this way. But also spend what must amount to quite a bit of customer service time just to avoid a minimal refund.
All I wanted was a refund for a game Steam sold, that was broken and wouldn't be fixed. I did cursory searching for bugs before buying, but hadn't found this particular one before my purchase.
You know what I did with the refund money, bought the next game in the same series, because it was only the bug that I didn't like, and I paid more money for it than the game they wouldn't refund ... mad, eh!
I much prefer Android over iOS, but the fear of Google just being able to completely shut me off on a whim keeps me up at night and is seriously tempting me to switch. I pay Google for Fi, Pixel phones, Home/Nest devices, One Storage for Photos/Gmail/Drive, YouTube Music, and probably some other stuff. My company pays Google for Google Workspace and their 30% IAP tax.
Despite being a paying customer, I know that there's a pretty decent chance of all of that getting shut down with absolutely no recourse for no reasonable cause. It's clear the bad PR from this isn't enough to make Google care. At this point, there needs to be regulatory pressure to stop the casual cruelty.
1. Search around for back channel support. Google things like “executive customer support”. Often times these emails get published by bloggers, forums, etc.
You can also look up support VP /Director’s names and then guess their email (e.g. first.last@example.com) and tell them your story.
2. Send a signature-required letter detailing out the issue, steps taken, and your requested resolution
These two steps get you significantly closer to having a person who can actually solve your problem actually look into the issue.
In the U.K. we have the Money claim online service, to start proceedings against a company or person who owe money. There is a nominal fee starting at £30 and if companies don’t respond the court will de facto rule in your favour.
Unfortunately there's no real alternative to Google with full parity, aside from other proprietary platforms that have major downsides like Apple's high cost and incompatibility.
There are open source voice assistants, but not every service supports them. And the things the do support might not have whatever crazy optimization Google does to make Keep load instantly from the widget.
There are other email providers, but few free ones I would trust more than Google, small companies disappear all the time, and Google has a relatively good record of avoiding data breaches.
Nobody except Google provides the APIs Android apps use, probably 60% of the usefulness of my phone would go away without their services, I would guess.
Chrome could be taken over by the FOSS community if need be, although they have a habit of ripping out features so you might as well just use FF.
There's alternatives for finding lost phones and recording location history... but what's the battery life like, and do they have the ability to remote lock a phone?
I'm not sure how anyone would get away from Google without losing a lot. It doesn't seem like anyone but Apple has anywhere near that kind of integration platform.
And the FOSS community seems to have little interest in duplicating the things that make Google what it is.
Google provides dozens of minor conveniences that would be questionably worth it if you had to set them up individually, and definitely not worth it if they were even slightly worse implemented.
It's extra concerning since a Pixel is high on my list for my next phone.
The EU has some institutions showing muscle too.
Big states like California can also do similar.
But don't forget Delaware, their agencies may not get a lot of attention but they have leverage due to the commonality of companies incorporating there.
Same for Cayman Islands.
UPS tells me to file a claim on their website and they can't address this through phone support, but they closed my case. Apple tells me they are waiting for UPS to respond to them before they can refund my order.
I'm not getting anywhere from either party. My only recourse seems to file a dispute so I can get my money back to place a replacement order, but being blacklisted by Apple is exactly what I fear.
If anyone has any thoughts, please let me know. I'd expect a company like Apple to have a better policy for replacing lost computers. While I understand fraud, I've made numerous purchases in the past with the same account.
(Disclaimer: I’m a employee of one of Googles peer companies, but still only speaking for myself)
I ran a hemp business from 2018 to 2020. I had Google ads going in 2018 but then the ads got taken down because I was using some banned words. I forgot about the ads and never deleted them. They were disabled so I thought that was good enough. Sometime in 2020, after I had gone out of business, I was charged for some ads that ran. Google's policy on CBD ads had changed and they started showing my ads again. I couldn't figure out how to contact a human and I didn't want my account banned so I didn't do a chargeback.
I wouldn't be surprised if it's standard practice at a lot of companies to black list you if you make a chargeback.
1. If a chargeback is issued, that means the company messed up massively and they should investigate, not ban the user
2. Some people fraudulently issue chargebacks and we assume our support would solve all legitimate issues, therefore it's a ban.
Probably the answer is to use risk signals about users to inform an investigation.
yeah i'm going avoid buying anything directly from google
In general companies will disable the account and the amount might be sold to collection agency (so you will receive unpleasant news when apply for mortgage or something like that).
But majority of companies do email you and do have email address for support so I never run into issues like this.
I really wish they had someone I could call.
I don't believe|understand this.
Why would Google ban someone's account just because of this? A Google account is a personal thing, and this is about logistics.
In the original post, the author had multiple conversations with support, and the support agent told them to do a chargeback. And another support agent later acknowledged that the support agent was not supposed to say that, but that the ban remains in place regardless.
This is completely normal for companies to do this and there is a 99% chance that doing a chargeback will get your account immediately terminated.
You cannot have it both ways with chargebacks and keeping your account as I have said before [0] as it is rife with abuse and friendly fraud and the merchant reserves the right to suspend, terminate and ban your account if you do so as per their ToS.
So this is of course hardly a surprise here.
I run my own email, but getting delivery can be a pain, so I also use Mailgun as an SMTP relay. It's worth paying them for this service.
edit I think dang's post kind of declares what I was implying with my question.
“Oh you think you can do a chargeback on us?!… We will fu#king destroy you at the touch of a button. We are untouchable. We are Google motherf#ker!”
Not if your motivation is avoiding the fraud the user just told you about. You'd investigate more.
Definitely not "of course".