[HN Gopher] Google user asks Google support for help, user ends ...
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       Google user asks Google support for help, user ends up helping
       support employee
        
       Author : davidbarker
       Score  : 42 points
       Date   : 2021-05-05 18:14 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (twitter.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
        
       | aranelsurion wrote:
       | This is a good opportunity to take it as a reminder to backup
       | your data from Google. In three steps you can ease some of the
       | future pain when/if disaster strikes and you get stuck between
       | the cogs:
       | 
       | 1) get your own domain if you don't already, and run your e-mail
       | over there. (so, no @gmail.com emails) 2) use google takeout,
       | it's a service that can e-mail you periodically with a link of
       | your data over various Google services. IIRC it can also sync to
       | other clouds, dropbox etc. Data will be stale, but still better
       | than losing everything I suppose. 3) if you use google drive,
       | install google sync app and let it sync to a trusted computer of
       | yours.
       | 
       | optionally you can also sync your e-mails through IMAP if you
       | keep a large archive, or if potentially losing recent e-mails
       | (that are not picked up by last takeout) is too big of an issue
       | for you.
       | 
       | as a bonus, I try not to pay Google for anything through my main
       | account, to prevent issues with payment, chargebacks/disputes,
       | false positive fraud detection etc.
       | 
       | .. or you can get a paid workspaces account, you'll likely still
       | need to do all of the above to make sure, but your odds of
       | getting some kind of support will be at least bigger than zero,
       | esp. if you don't have a million followers on Twitter.
        
         | timeless102 wrote:
         | I have a domain and use it with Gsuite but my domain contact
         | email (to change anything with the registrar like moving the
         | domain to another registrar) is still set to my gmail account.
         | I did that because I thought you could get stuck in a sort of
         | loop if you ever had problems with the registrar. You'd then
         | not be able to potentially access your email to transfer your
         | domain. But the same issue is possible if I lose access to my
         | gmail.com account. How do you handle that situation or do you
         | simply use your domain gsuite account as the admin contact with
         | your registrar?
        
           | timeless102 wrote:
           | Additionally, what do you use for your registrar account
           | recovery email? Like if you need to recover your registrar
           | account password? I just can't think of a way to set it up so
           | a free gmail account isn't involved at some point.
        
       | financialize wrote:
       | This is what decline looks like. All the techno-optimists should
       | take note.
        
       | weird-eye-issue wrote:
       | I've had this same thing happen with a piece of furniture I was
       | putting together. I ended up realizing their phone support was
       | wrong and the manual was wrong too. So I emailed the support to
       | tell them how the step actually needed to be completed so they
       | could pass it along to fix the manual. I guess they didn't
       | understand, as they replied to my email telling me again the
       | wrong steps and that I had built mine wrong.
       | 
       | A couple weeks later I got an email from somebody higher up
       | thanking me.
       | 
       | This is not really relevant to the Tweet but I wish companies
       | spent more time on their manuals, I consistently get frustrated
       | with how ambiguous and sometimes wrong they are.
        
         | soylentgraham wrote:
         | I wish more companies had somewhere to send (sometimes solved)
         | issues, or even any feedback. I use Twitter to vent, but that
         | rarely reaches anyone past social marketing.
         | 
         | As i like my small screen, often I feel the iphone SE is
         | neglected everytime i get an app update as banners start to
         | fill an app i use regularly and left with a scrollable 14px
         | high content area :) Just let me send a screenshot to someone
         | please!
        
       | peanut_worm wrote:
       | That is so insane I almost can't believe it is real. Is Google
       | just completely operated by robots?
        
       | belval wrote:
       | This is very funny but not very relevant I think. The employee
       | explains it well: they don't have live support for free gmail
       | accounts so they can't help. The employee should not give
       | information about himself.
       | 
       | At the scale of Google the employee is effectively just another
       | customer.
        
       | vlovich123 wrote:
       | I tried to follow the solution but I couldn't figure it out. Does
       | anyone understand what they did to fix their account? Kind of
       | ends abruptly after "hit f12" to open devtools with no indication
       | of what they did in the Application tab of the dev tools.
        
       | jonny_eh wrote:
       | Wait, what was the fix? Did he delete his cookies?
        
       | ForHackernews wrote:
       | Hang on, the headline here should be: "Google support exists" -
       | how do you talk to a live person there?
        
         | AdamJacobMuller wrote:
         | If you're a paying customer of gsuite/workspace? It's very
         | easy. If you're not, it's impossible.
        
         | miles wrote:
         | Free Google / Gmail customers can pay $2/month for Google One
         | and receive phone support: https://one.google.com/about/support
        
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       (page generated 2021-05-05 23:02 UTC)