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> My takeaway was that if I was ever in a dispute over a couple of hundred bucks for Google, I would not risk a chargeback for fear of retaliation.

My takeaway from that is to never spend more than a few quid (i.e. money I'd care about losing) on anything linked that directly to Google.

To me, a chargeback is a 'burn the bridges' moment. If a company has wronged me to the point I'm prepared to do a chargeback, then I obviously don't want anything to do with that company anymore, and I welcome them to close my account since I will never do business with them again. Why would you want to continue doing business with a company that has frustrated you to the point of doing a chargeback?

I hear you, but Google is a giant dominant player. Just because their third party cell phone hardware service contractor loses a phone doesn't mean someone doesn't still need to use them for email or cloud computing services.

It's the lack of a central, accountable point of contact for everything under the "Google Account" that's the real problem. Since its very beginning Google has been bad at consumer relationships.

Maybe I'm reading this too negatively, but I just view it as their cost for not having a streamlined process and that it is just part of the transaction. It is one of the main reasons I use a credit card. If a company takes my money and reserves my room at a hotel and I show up at 2am, I expect access to the room. If they don't, I request my money back in person for services not rendered. If they cannot do it right then and there, I just tell them I'm going to chargeback because I don't really trust a company that took my money in the first place to return it in a timely manner. This happened to me in 2022 and I still plan to stay at that hotel chain. Just a rare occurrence for which they paid.

The problem is that Google is a conglomorate. You might be disappointed with their phone service or their phone store or their tv service or whatever and never want to do business again with that section of the company, but still want to keep using other parts. Maybe that sours you on the whole company, maybe not, but even if you don't want to end your ties with them, you probably want to end it on your terms, not immediately as you get your money back.

Because you have to. For example, no matter how badly Microsoft wrongs them, people in many industries need to use Windows, or Office, or LinkedIn.

Microsoft, I get it.

Google no. I am very very close to being able to kill my google account though I probably will just leave it parked.

Believe it or not Google Voice is the one thing holding me at the moment. Nobody offers the same quality service period, let alone free. Come at me HN, I'm open to alternatives. Google Voice also has one killer feature nobody else has; the ability to make and receive calls using your carrier voice service and not DATA. Generally a higher quality connection that on most plans these days is unlimited, where as a lot of plans still count data usage whether it's a "unlimited" (but throttled) account or not.

OpenPhone is the closest I've found and seems their customer service is horrible, I see people on reddit complaining about them all the time.

Google Voice is the only service I don't have a good replacement for either. I pay for Youtube TV (cable streaming) because it has the best price/value proposition for my viewing habits but there are a half dozen other services I could switch to and be happy.

I still have a shared calendar on Google but only because I can't convince my wife to try something different. I used to be all-in on Google but have spent the past 2 years getting away as much as I can.

Maps was my killer app for google. Early on I started with TomTom on a PDA, but Google maps for years was the absolute best. Until all the blatant ads showed up. First every McDonalds is visible at far zoom levels. Then garbage I don't want starts showing up in search results. Viewing your travel history is mildly disturbing and even if you delete it you just know it's already been data mined.

I hear OSM has some decent map and navigation solutions now, but for me Apple maps long ago passed the touring test. I only trust that Apple with all their positions and statements on privacy will suffer irreparable harm if it is discovered they sell user behavioral data like google blatantly does.

Sometimes you have little choice⁰, sometimes there are convenience¹² issues.

My point is that to avoid even having to consider this choice to make by never doing anything that I might ever want to charge back. Separation of concerns: don't do (significant) money stuff with Google, then money stuff can't affect your other uses of Google.

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[0] Some have a lot of contacts who know them at their @gmail address, getting people to update your contact info when you deliberately change address can be enough of a faf, imagine having to do it without warning. Some also have other accounts where they login via Google, they need to make sure those are transferred to something else (if possible).

[1] I have nothing irreplaceable in Google's sphere (my phone contacts & other content is backed up there, but not only there) though there are a few shared photo albums and so forth that I interact with using that account.

[2] Even if you intend to move away from Google or other large multi-pie-fingered company, and are actively doing so, you want to do that at your conveniences not with them chucking you out in an automated hissy-fit.

There are stories of Apple locking accounts over chargebacks too. Cutting both of those out would be nice but probably tough for me.

Or get yourself a chime account or something that does not allow overdraft and put that debit card on your google account.

> My takeaway was that if I was ever in a dispute over a couple of hundred bucks for Google, I would not risk a chargeback for fear of retaliation

And my takeaway is that it is high time that these corporations that hold people's livelihoods in their hands got regulated like public utilities...

Exactly! Maybe this way we could do something about mail delivery issues too. I think it shouldn't be okay to accept mail and then still drop it, yet Microsoft does it sometimes with new mail servers.

It also really needs to be mentioned that Google’s store was (is) absolutely awful for buying gear.

I wanted to buy 2 pixels from them. Put the order in, no news for 7 days, at the exact 7 day mark my order gets cancelled. Tried talking to customer support with no success because there isn’t any.

So I put the order in the second time and the exact same thing happens: after exactly 7 days, my order gets cancelled. I say f’ it and buy from a local dealer, with next day delivery.

A few days after the fact, I try using my credit card for something and my transaction gets denied (I had a -200 euros limit). I call the bank and they tell me that there’s a hold on my account from Google, for the price of both orders (about 1500 euros I think) and they are waiting for the funds so it can clear. My only two options is to talk to Google to cancel the charge (lol) or wait 30 days.

I simply closed my card and got a new one.

A few months later I started getting notifications that transactions on this card are being rejected - someone was trying to buy stuff for 1-3$ with my card but it was closed so they didn’t go through. Since I mostly use virtual cards for online stuff (which Google doesn’t like), and the physical card rarely, there is a really big chance that my credit card number got leaked from Google, but there is no way for me to prove that.

Googler, opinions are my own. I work on payments, and have dealt with our credit card processing a bunch.

As far as I know, we've never lost control of credit card numbers and had them leaked. We actually work very hard to make sure humans can never see card numbers (our internal controls are more strict than most banks and card networks).

Also, I didn't think we would hold an auth on a card for 30 days (normally it's less than that). For the MCCs we charge payments on, I believe Visa and the others will only hold an auth for 7 days[0]. If the Auth is staying on your card for longer than that, it's likely your bank is holding the funds, not Google. We try to always cancel auth holds before they expire, to make sure we don't have lingering auths like you saw (I've tweaked this previously due to complaints like yours).

I can maybe look into the payments on your account if you'd like (my work email is in my profile), but I wouldn't be able to reply. It would just give us data if we are failing to cancel auths in some cases.

[0] https://www.chargebackgurus.com/blog/credit-card-authorizati...

Hey, thanks for the reply. I got the info with the 30 days from my bank alongside with the options I had, so it may as well be from them - I use a VISA card in Europe.

Also thank you for the offer to check my account, but there’s no need for that as I will try to never ever buy anything directly from Google

They're so bad at it I wonder why they try. They clearly don't want to do it well.

Is there any company that won't blacklist you if you do a chargeback? As far as I know, this "criticism" applies to every company in existence.

While it's true that most companies will probably blacklist you at least for a while, you can work around it by using a different card or having a partner make the purchase if you really want to continue doing business with them.

Google knows more about me than the CIA and FBI. If they truly want to blacklist me, I'm not working around that without the aid of operators I'd rather not be associated with.

That is very close to if not monopolistic behavior.