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Comment by josephagoss | Hacker News Reader

If the $5 is to keep out spam, doesn't the fact that he has already confirmed that he is not a spammer by paying the $25 from before for the android thing? Why keep asking for money and bounce him around like this? This is what you expect from a crappy company with outsourced customer support , not google.

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> This is what you expect from a crappy companies with outsourced customer support , not google.

I'd expect you to expect algorithmic customer support from Google.

True, but even Google need some real thinking people in customer support. Algorithms are not enough for all your customer interactions, at least not for now anyway.

Sure, common sense suggests that they do need some real people in customer support, but haven't you read the horror stories of their algorithms banning people?

People had their accounts closed with messages like: "Your account is now closed permanently. We won't tell you why. Don't try contacting us, we will not respond. Fuck You."

They have some real people working with customers, but they're meant for big, rich customers-they-want-to-keep. You get the algorithm treatment, and you're not supposed to even reach the real people there.

I'm surprised Google act like this, on the one hand they want us to use Google for everything, apps, email, cloud storage. And on the other hand all we get is the algorithm treatment. Unless they change this I can see blog post after blog post slowly eating away at Google's reputation.

I bet we've only seen a small fraction of all the cases. As long as they can keep doing it without "too many" people knowing, they're fine.

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