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Comment by silisili | Hacker News Reader

Why does Google support consist of clueless 'product experts' who offer no support at all, ever? I've never seen a more useless support channel, it's insulting. I'd honestly rather them just say they offer no support at all, as it would save a lot of time and frustration.

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At least this Product Expert's replies, if you can translate Helldesk to English, had the clear meaning of you're totally screwed by our dumb policy, but I'm not allowed to just _tell_ you that outright, so let me try and say it passively. Who knows if that's what they really meant (the Helldesk language is nothing if not deniable), but it's interesting to note!

It's frustrating because the poster was basically asking if the Wifi of the Pixel 7 was disabled when it is in certain country, but the 'product expert' kept hiding behind the fact that it is currently in an unsupported country without answering the original question.

> I've never seen a more useless support channel

The Apple support forums are the same. Full of self-righteous fanboys and broken or irrelevant links to "documentation". I think there's only one real Apple employee that actually makes an effort to answer questions.

These are most probably not google employees just people who like to "help" and get such titles for their posts resulting in a skewed persception of support without the company paying them which is a "win-win" situation (???)

the issue in the specific thread is the lack of common sense, so I buy a device and I can't travel with it ? a mobile phone that is not a gun. These are answers that could be attributed easily to a low-mid level chatbot

>which is a "win-win" situation

All these company support websites are so bad that people have been trained to ignore them in google search results, and hence they go directly to stackoverflow or reddit where real humans interact. Not seeing how anyone wins in this model. MS also has this issue. If you ever google for windows problems, the stuff on any microsoft.com domain will be utter garbage with clueless people talking over and over about things like clearing the cache or rebooting the machine with a paragraph long boilerplate that will ask for upvotes.

I put it in quotation marks exactly because it is really the opposite of a win-win situation. It provides the sense of official support while in the majority of more complicated issues it just increases entropy and frustration

Yes this. Like a blast from the past, the 2000s with arrogant mods on vbulletins and phpbbs who were proud of their titles and Postcount. Say what you want about Reddit, but their implementation of karma improved that situation by so much.

"It's impossible to say what the issue here is" like wtf

You should see the Microsoft forums then.

User: Hey guys I get error 2389042 when using Windows Update.

Pradeep Chadurniyaad: I'm here to help you sir. Have you tried to format Windows?

No, it's more like this.

User: Hey guys I get error 2389042 when using Windows Update.

Pradeep Chadurniyaad: Hello, I'm am independent advisor and I would like to help you today. Have you tried to format Windows? If this answer was helpful, please mark it as the solution.

Pradeep Chadurniyaad, Independent Advisor Et Al

The majority of people giving stupid answers on Microsoft's servers have American names.

But then their hidden stereotypism wouldn't work.

Nah, Microsoft forums go like this

User: Hey guys I get error when trying to activate my Windows

Pradeep Chadurniyaad [Verified Answer]: Please use this script /link to illegal KMS activator/.

So they're actually useful.

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