Sounds like the epic battle I had trying to cancel my Sprint wireless card. I'd say my experience in dealing with Google Apps support has been good - they were slow to answer emails, but quick to pick up the phone, and were warm and personal.
Nice work PC World. You've successfully landed more traffic to your site with a misleading headline. A deluge of complaints? Horseshit.
I personally had countless issues ordering the Nexus One on Tuesday and Wednesday as a current T-Mobile customer with the G1. However, the error I kept receiving was on T-Mobile's side. "T-Mobile's servers are busy/non-responsive" something like that...
I ordered it Thursday around Noon CST with custom engraving and received free overnight shipping with no problems whatsoever. I received an email saying the device had shipped 90 minutes later.
Phone arrived yesterday. Charged it. Plugged in Google Account credentials and have had ZERO problems. Currently uploading/syncing a ton of pics I have taken with the Nexus One to my Picasa account, while transferring a 320kbps MP3 file via Bluetooth, with Pandora playing...with not a single hiccup.
In my opinion, one can expect someone to receive LOADS of negative press when they attempt to do something no one else has done, namely, sell smart/super phones directly to the consumer over the web. I think the only thing Google forget was to put the "Beta" badge somewhere on the ordering site...
People's brains stop working when they are given the opportunity to buy last-generation Apple hardware. That is not the case with anything else, though.
Often high priced unlocked phones are sold when there is a new flagship high end phone. This is uncommon in the states because of subsidized pricing and contractual lock-in, but if you buy an unlocked nexus one and go contract free you can sell your phone in a year to get the new unlocked nexus two.
Honestly, I'll probably keep it along with all the other Android devices (and Apple devices) for debugging and backwards-compatibility and graceful degradation testing on multiple devices.
Just because YOU had a good experience does not mean there is not a deluge of complaints. You have offered 0 evidence that the article is, as you say, "horseshit."
Frankly, this story is in line with what I've heard of Google's customer service in the past and is more than plausible since Google is entering a market that it has little experience in.
"Deluge of complaints" implies some major technical problem. But in fact, the problem is a bunch of people that can't figure out where the charging cable plugs in.
Look at Apple's forums for the iPhone. Same problem, I'm sure.
The PCWorld article is a bit overblown, but I expect this to be the first signs of an ongoing problem for Google. I know I've personally had a nightmarish time getting in touch with Google support, for both AdSense and App Engine, and I know Patrick had similar experiences with AdWords. I'm sure there are others.
In the past, Google's paying customers have been primarily tech savvy, and thus more apt to try to solve the problem themselves, contacting support as a last resort. With a more mainstream customer base I suspect this won't be the case.
Even if the Nexus One was bug free, there's going to be people who have problems and want support. For better or for worse, this is the "Google phone" and a large number of people are going to expect Google to help. A phone company with no phone support is just not going to fly.
I for one hope this forces them to improve their customer support across the board. Their lack of support is a serious concern for potential enterprise customers.
It's very overblown, I got a Nexus One and the complaints on the forums were there before the phone was even out. Granted there are some specific serious issues that need to be taken care of with support (of which none I've seen on the forums), but the majority of problems and complaints can be easily solved by simply reading. While I agree and think google should have good customer service all around, in my experience the nexus one works just as it should and are many videos from google detailing its features.
> Google appears to be only accepting e-mail customer queries, to which it pledges to reply in one to two days -- far too long, say most people who are complaining online.
This is the classic sign of bad service.
You can see this with any bad company (such as ISP) - they want non-telephonic complaints so that it takes an extensive time to respond and most people just give up.
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[ 0.28 ms ] story [ 40.5 ms ] threadIt's an interesting problem I had not thought of, who handles the problems that come up?
I personally had countless issues ordering the Nexus One on Tuesday and Wednesday as a current T-Mobile customer with the G1. However, the error I kept receiving was on T-Mobile's side. "T-Mobile's servers are busy/non-responsive" something like that...
I ordered it Thursday around Noon CST with custom engraving and received free overnight shipping with no problems whatsoever. I received an email saying the device had shipped 90 minutes later.
Phone arrived yesterday. Charged it. Plugged in Google Account credentials and have had ZERO problems. Currently uploading/syncing a ton of pics I have taken with the Nexus One to my Picasa account, while transferring a 320kbps MP3 file via Bluetooth, with Pandora playing...with not a single hiccup.
In my opinion, one can expect someone to receive LOADS of negative press when they attempt to do something no one else has done, namely, sell smart/super phones directly to the consumer over the web. I think the only thing Google forget was to put the "Beta" badge somewhere on the ordering site...
Honestly, I'll probably keep it along with all the other Android devices (and Apple devices) for debugging and backwards-compatibility and graceful degradation testing on multiple devices.
Frankly, this story is in line with what I've heard of Google's customer service in the past and is more than plausible since Google is entering a market that it has little experience in.
Look at Apple's forums for the iPhone. Same problem, I'm sure.
In the past, Google's paying customers have been primarily tech savvy, and thus more apt to try to solve the problem themselves, contacting support as a last resort. With a more mainstream customer base I suspect this won't be the case.
Even if the Nexus One was bug free, there's going to be people who have problems and want support. For better or for worse, this is the "Google phone" and a large number of people are going to expect Google to help. A phone company with no phone support is just not going to fly.
I for one hope this forces them to improve their customer support across the board. Their lack of support is a serious concern for potential enterprise customers.
This is the classic sign of bad service.
You can see this with any bad company (such as ISP) - they want non-telephonic complaints so that it takes an extensive time to respond and most people just give up.