Forum Moderators: goodroi
[news.bbc.co.uk...]
But confusion over who should answer customer queries has lead many to file complaints on support forums.Many people are unhappy with Google only responding to questions by e-mail and are calling for it to set up phone-based support.
Welcome to the world of Google happy citizens!
And to top it all off, one day, they switch on their phone to find a text message that reads "Your phone has been disabled as it has been determined that it poses a threat to our advertisers". After that, you'll find that you can never use a Nexus One phone again!
Now being that I am an engineer I feel qualified to say that for the most part Google doesn’t know this about their organization.
We “engineers” tend to feel that people are smart enough to solve their own problems.
Now, when I say “engineers” what I really mean is American engineers or culture.
That alone is one of the reasons I would stay far away from a Google phone (even if I were a fanboi, which I am clearly not): Customer service, or the lack thereof. I don't want to wade through endless, useless forum pages on the web or receive automated emails from badly programmed bots containing links to more useful information elsewhere.
As consumer, I want good, honest, useful customer/partner service with reps that go the extra mile for me. And many here know that this is VERY difficult (read: expensive) to provide.
Google has such a bad reputation when it comes to customer service, that it will be interesting to see how this will turn out. I have been in the mobile business for several years and know the market from various angles.
First, Google will be facing tons of different bugs. If they decide to pass any of these, the bad word-of-mouth will quickly make the round. Technically, they might be forced to look at these issues because of liability problems (especially in the U.S.). But if they decide to look at the bugs, their teams will quickly go in overload mode. Whatever they do, it might turn out to be risky.
Second, Google will be facing tons of issues where they basically are not responsible (i.e. the manufacturer, the network operator, or the end user are), but mobile operators (with some of them having been in the business for 20 years by now) will not be keen on fixing problems on "unsupported devices" either. So the fingerpointing will begin. This could easily end up with the network provider offering another phone (a "supported device") to the person in exchange for the Google phone. They want to keep the customer, but they don't want this Google rubbish in their networks because they cause such a high customer service load. So they offer another phone. LOL, really. But can you blame them? If you were a network operator, would you like to fix the settings of a phone coming from a (former) partner who proved to be not friendly to you and who will, ultimately, ruin your business?*
Third, Google clearly decided for the war-path: they want to disrupt the network operators' business model by selling devices on their own. Fine. The network operators don't like to be on the receiving end of this. Fine. They will turn up the heat with the weapons they have. Google need to face the consequences. So, I don't want to hear any whining from MV when they realize that there are real people shelling out real money for (what they think) real devices, expecting real customer service...
Just think of it - there was a good reason why Google did not want to enter the device market. But yeah, that was before the company decided to run for world government.
* Yes, yes, I know that Google will have a different pov here. They will go out and claim that Nexus One users are so much more active online and that this will help operators. Only the daftest of operators will buy into this though. THEY know that Google is just disguised as sheep.
