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Google Faces Deluge of Nexus One Complaints
wkurzius writes "It seems Google is going through some growing pains as far as customer service is concerned. Since their new phone, the Nexus One, can be bought unlocked, many people are turning to Google themselves for help, but not getting what they're used to from traditional mobile carriers. T-Mobile and HTC are also getting hammered, with many customers being bounced back and forth between the two companies' service lines."
It seems they're also taking flak from Android developers who are unhappy that no SDK has yet been released for Android 2.1, which runs on the Nexus One.
A friend of mine works for Google, and he will be receiving the blame for this (as he does for all Google's screw ups). :)
How we know is more important than what we know.
it's little wonder this is biting them in the arse.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
For the lack of customer service...someone didn't think this through very well, did they. For the lack of an SDK... that will be corrected very soon, no doubt.
That *is* what you get for being an early adopter...
They haven't even worked out how to work out problems yet, it seems like.
you can almost smell the hair transplant.
Can you hear me now? Uhm, this is not good. Can you hear me now?
How does PC World have any idea of the volume of traffic Google is getting from disgruntled N1 customers? By stories from random people? Yeah, thought so. A
48,000,000 for i hate t-mobile
1,660,000 for i hate verizon
1,330,000 for i hate at&t
361,000 for i hate vodafone
Looks like they picked a winner to start with...
(Bonus: 1,590,000 for i hate sprint)
Google got all the hip going for this phone, and probably thought that only the "super geek" would get it. Now that Ma an Pa Bell are getting this phone, and don't know how to enter in the information for looking onto the cell phone network, or how to send text message, google will find out how "smart" the average american is :)
A good idea is to avoid version 1.0 of any commercial offering. It's not a bad idea to avoid .0 versions in general.
If you have to get one, wait a month. They don't call it the Bleeding Edge of technology for nothing. I prefer it to be someone else's blood...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Notice a pattern about her Android articles?
http://labs.daylife.com/journalist/nancy_gohring
One guess, which type of phone does Nancy own? i...
Google is good. But I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire if they were soley judged by customer service.
Give 'em a break... the phone's still in beta!
Disclaimer: I work for the biggest mobile provider in a nordic country. This is completely normal behaviour for a mobile provider. We are the bit/call/sms delivery pipe. We don't really care at all what device you use on our network as long as its approved by the relevant authorities to be used on the appropriate radio frequencies. If your problem is directly relevant to our network (for example, bad coverage that is consistent across multiple phone models) or our actual services (ringbacktone, mms delivery, answering machine, push email, etc), you call us. If your problem is phonemodel-specific, we can't help, you call the phone manufacturer, even if you happened to purchase the phone at our store. There are literally thousands of phone models out there. To be expecting your operator to help you with with your random phone model and it's specific issues is naive at best.
This sounds just like the support I'd get if I bought an iPhone from eBay and had T-Mobile service...except I would actually have a choice on the plan configuration I want. Not having nice and responsive customer support over the phone blows, especially for an expensive phone that you can't try until the cash is dropped and the item is shipped.
plus, was Google EVER known to have good support? Changing one's password without the forms can take a while...and is email only. I hope they're working on rectifying this, since this form of support will kill them.
Getting your act together when launching a new product takes time.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The butthurt iPhone fans in the media are out in force. One of the idiotic iPhone fanboys at Engadget was caught falsifying his review to try to make the Nexus One look slower than his precious "OMG!!! the iPhone!!!"
Here's all the help you need: http://www.google.com/
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Now, I'll admit it's been a week or two since I last checked, but wasn't this phone invite-only? Maybe there was a *reason* for that, like they wanted to see what common complaints people might have, so they could fix them before the thing is available to the general public?
i bought an unlocked N1 the second it was released. it's been working great i'm very happy with it. zero bugs and zero crashes so far. note that no review of the many that i read before i purchased the phone had anything significant to complain about let alone bugs or stability problems.
i'm fairly certain google and t-mo are not releasing the number and details of their support calls. i have no doubt that *some* support calls are being fielded, and some users are unhappy. here's the "proof" from the PCWorld article,
More than 425 comments are listed on a thread about service eligibility issues. Some of them are from people who say that they ought to be eligible for the subsidized price of the phone but the Google sales site says they aren't. Many others are simply complaining of a policy that requires even longtime T-Mobile customers to pay more for the phone than new customers.
translation: people are complaining that the phone costs too much.
it's not a beta phone. it's a 2.1 release, a minor update to 2.0 which has been shipping for some time on the motorola droid, on a mobile OS that first released 2 years ago. HTC is the first and most experienced android phone manufacturer.
If their customer support is anything like Google Apps, good luck with that one. My experience is that Google isn't geared toward customer service and it seems like they could care less. They seem to be coming from the position that everyone should be able to just figure out their products without any help.
My prediction for the year is that we see Google's stock price starting to decline as more and more people realize that beyond search, Google doesn't do anything very well. They have a lot of neat ideas, but their execution blows.
Really? Its just a phone. Its not particularly impressive. The only thing it has that you can't find on a hundred other phones is probably the silkscreened 'Google' on it, otherwise there is nothing unique about this phone.
Its not particularly impressive from a CPU power standpoint. Nothing special about the display. Not a lot of storage space. The OS isn't really all that impressive. I'm not really sure what this is supposed to have over other smart phones. There better be something far more impressive than 'it runs android' or they should just put a 'I'm a google fanboy' sticker on it like the stickers they include with Apple products.
I have a distinct feeling that Android and OpenMoko are going to be kissing cousins that only a few people have ever seen in the wild.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Love:Hate
T-Mobile:
49,800:145,000 (1:2.9)
25.6% love
74.4% hate
Verizon:
259,000:469,000 (1:1.8)
35.6% love
64.4% hate
AT&T:
103,000:447,000 (1:4.3)
18.7% love
81.3% hate
Sprint:
45,500:287,000 (1:6.3)
13.7% love
86.3% hate
Most Loved: Verizon
Most Hated: Sprint
Why can't Google offer a cell phone that provides browsing, etc via WiFi, WITHOUT REQUIRING ME TO HAVE A CARRIER DATA PLAN?
I filed a complaint with the FCC (and I encourage you to do the same) that Verizon had no such phones offered. Verizon reps then called me and confirmed this, saying that this is a decision of the phone manufacturers as to how they design their phone devices (they also confirmed that some older smartphones they used to sell and you can still get on ebay don't have this "feature").
I of course doubt this is purely a disinterested phone manufacturer decision.
The Nexus One boards do seem to confirm this is one of the drawbacks of the NexusOne device for those of us who spend 90% of their time in WiFi enabled spots but don't want to pony up another $25/month.
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google%20Mobile/thread?tid=5a6199119e618525&hl=en#all
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?tid=2a191af88d779975&hl=en#all
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?tid=4bc273c38698835c&hl=en
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?tid=7a0b65cae4aa6b88&hl=en
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?tid=3d253758857e6f67&hl=en
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?tid=07bbaac95aef0a15&hl=en
Why does the design of these devices force me to activate a carrier data plan to access the internet when the hardware has WiFi?
Can this "feature" (of Android?) be modified in software since this is open source, and since WiFi hardware is so clearly present?
Inquiring minds want to know!
The Nexus One is by the best phone I've ever used or owned. My friends old iPhone looks like a tacky piece of crap next to it with all that awful chrome on it.
The speed and UI are amazing. And so far the phone has been flawless. T-Mobile 3G coverage is very good in my area.
Nancy Gohring really needs to get a life. Spewing out Android FUD articles isn't going to make precious iPhone as good as the Nexus One.
... of the 1.0 version. So what else is new? Anyone here remember Windows 1.0 (a.k.a Interface Manager) announced at the Plaza Hotel in NYC overlooking Central Park? Well, we're up to Windows 7 and Microsoft is still trying to get it right.
Notice a pattern about her Android articles?
No. What is the pattern?
For one thing, you cannot tell anything about a news article by the headline alone. More often than not, reporters don't write their own headlines.
Breakfast served all day!
But that is also flawed because AT&T does more than mobile phones, T-Mobile is offered in many different English speaking countries, Sprint until 2006 had landlines, and Verizon has an ISP service.
There is no fair way to do this with Google because you don't know what context that is in. Does someone love their TV from AT&T or their mobile phone service from AT&T? Does someone hate T-Mobile in the US or T-Mobile in the UK? Does someone really love their fiber service by Verizon or their phone service? About the only somewhat fair result would be with Sprint because Sprint hasn't had anything other than mobile phones for ~4 years and even that could be swayed with people talking about landlines.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Net10:
1840:2
Tracfone:
26000:1850
Ouch :)
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
This isn't an issue with early adopters. It's an issue with Google selling a product and then being shocked and amazed that people have questions and problems. It's an issue with Google having a culture from the search engine world of holding the customer off not at arm's length, but at continent's length.
Before they could hide behind the carrier, which had the infrastructure for this sort of thing. With their online products, nobody was really paying for anything, or if they were, they were B2B-type customers.
This is a consumer product, and the cardinal rule of consumer products is that you stand behind what you sell, or you won't be selling it for long. There's another cardinal rule, which I read off a sign posted above the door of an industrial supply company: "For every customer that walks out this door angry, ten never walk in it."
Unfortunately, Google is failing to remember something critical: screwing over people with the "Google Phone" they just bought means devaluing their brand name, which is their biggest asset- those people are more receptive to switching to different alternative products (mail, search, etc.) and also, they're going to post about their problems on Facebook, Twitter, etc. One negative status message kills thousands of dollars in advertising.
To me, the API stuff is just further proof that Google has committed the Apple Of The 90's Sin: they're now into everything, and doing nothing well. This is a problem that should sound familiar for other reasons *cough*Microsoft*cough*.
Please help metamoderate.
Anybody else get the feeling that this story was cooked up in the marketing department of one or more telco or well-known manufacturer of fashionable consumer electronics?
I mean, if people can start buying cool unlocked smartphones, that's going to cut into a big profit center for them. People might actually start looking for the best calling and data plan instead of "whatever plan the company that carries the phone I want insists that I sign up for before I can get my hands on the phone".
I mean, didn't they just announce the Nexus One a few days ago? I'm surprised many buyers had a chance to even charge up their batteries and sign up for service by now, much less have had enough contact with Google customer service to make a complaint.
I'm not saying there mightn't be problems, but the speed at which this story arrives is just a little fishy.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Their army of almighty and omnipotent pigeons will answer customers. Have they all flied away or been BBQ'ed?
One customer going by the name Roland78 said he was transferred between T-Mobile and HTC four times, spending a total of one-and-a-half hours on the phone with customer service. "T-Mobile also said Google hasn't provided them with any support documents for the phone. Welcome to direct sales Google!" he wrote.
This guy is just being asinine, someone sitting there with a stop watch, and writing the things the reps say down just so he can contact some news organization with it or works for them already. Honestly, if you have plan questions T-Mobile won't be referring you to HTC, and if you have phone questions HTC won't be referring you to T-Mobile. You'll notice how the article never refers to the information their quoted 'users' were seeking.
Honestly the phone's step by step walk through setup is so easy that if you don't understand it, then see this flowchart.
Or, at least, a second one.
Care to make a wager on who the biggest advertiser is in PC World? As always, follow the money. In this case north...
Google Ignoring Criticism Of Nexus One Distribution.
Then read the first comment:
You have really bashed Google pretty well the last few days.Some of it is deserved although harsh. One thing I would like you to keep in mind is that your articles have consistantly been featured highly on the Google News web page. That is why I like Google and trust Google.
Priceless! (No, it wasn't me.)
Help stamp out iliturcy.
You put the sim card in, and you turn it on. What else is there? Even the APN generally works when defaulted.
Sounds like you want an iPod Touch :)
This is the google support forum discussion that has earned all this bad press.
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?tid=0bd8ccd4799040c2&hl=en&fid=0bd8ccd4799040c200047c99c44ddfe6
By 6pm today I read most of these posts. There are several squeaky wheels that are posting over and over but there are also dozens of individuals that are all telling the same story. These people are in areas with good 3g reception (as confirmed by the coverage map or by another 3g t-mobile phone in the same place at the same time. They report that their N1 continually switches between edge and g3. Their data download rates are about 1/10th what they should be. Many have reported that the constant switching between networks is draining their battery within a few hours. When they call HTC for support, HTC blames T-mobile's network. T-mobile blames HTC and claims that they have not been given any support documentation on the N1 from Google or HTC. The complainers are in a wide variety of locations throughout the country.
Gizmodo reports on the story and claims that their phones have poor 3g reception as well:
http://gizmodo.com/5443123/does-the-nexus-one-have-3g-problems
The same problem crops up in the comments after this story at tmonews
http://www.tmonews.com/2010/01/nexus-one-incurring-3g-problems/
Lots of people are reporting the same problems here on the androidforums
http://androidforums.com/nexus-one/34321-nexus-one-3g-problems.html
So I really don't think this is due to ignorant customers. There is a real problem with at least some of these phones. It may be there is a batch out there with bad antennas, or there could be a software glitch. If it's software then one would hope a patch is coming from Google asap. Regardless of what the problem is, Google has made a terrible mistake in ignoring this for almost 2 days now. Even if they had replied in their own support forums just once saying "sorry we're on it get back to you soon." They might not look so bad. Personally I think Google's experience with leaving their "products" in beta for years on end has finally bitten them on the ass.
-- QED
As someone who quite admires Google in many ways, I also know first-hand that they flat out don't have customer service. I discovered this when I downloaded Google Sync to my Blackberry, which is supposed to sync my Blackberry/Lotus Notes/Google calendars. Instead, it (unbeknownst to me) sent cancellation notices to hundreds of meeting invitees, erased all repeating calendar entries and generally caused astonishing mayhem. After investigating and finding many, many others with the same problem on a Google thread, I posted my $0.02 and subscribed to the thread. That was about 6 months ago. No one from Google has ever addressed the issue and it remains unsolved.
I like Google for disrupting industries in that anti-Apple-we-need-to-control-everything-and-you-will-be-assimilated-sheeple! way, but a service organization they ain't - I get better service from my cable company!
I don't care about these problems. They'll work it out.
Google is selling this phone because it advances the technology and their phone partners wouldn't sell it. Expect them to sell an Android + Snapdragon slate for the same reasons. The top 5 OEMs have had that for a year and still no products - ASUS even pulled their Snapdragon netbook in the middle of last year's Computex, some say because Microsoft told them to, and now they "see no future in it":
But the company quickly put the project on the back burner, refusing to discuss it days later at a press event that featured Asustek's chairman alongside executives from microprocessor maker Intel and OS giant Microsoft.
All the major vendors have had this platform for a long time and they wouldn't sell it for strategic reasons. Google isn't submarining them - they declined their first refusal options. Dell had 3" and 5" models ready in September, and didn't launch for the pivotal Christmas season - there's a video of a guy with three thumbs playing with it but I can't find it right now.
Dell, HP, and other top-tier OEMs have announced Snapdragon + Android smartbooks, netbooks, phones and slates, but they will never ever come to market branded by a top tier OEM because of the leverage that Intel and Microsoft are applying to prevent it.
If the incumbents won't give us progress, Google will: even if they have to enter new lines of business to do so. I doubt Google can avoid selling enough units to encourage adoption of modern open technologies in phones, considering they've got the best online ad placement there is.
I doubt Google even wants to sell phones - I think they just want to get the new good technologies adopted so that people can get used to Internet everywhere quicker. This serves their bottom line because when most people use the Internet they use Google services, which Google sells ads on. You can't very well sell Internet ads to be viewed by people who aren't close to a browser. I'm in favor of this because open platforms with internet access everywhere always on let me do things I couldn't do before. I'm also in favor because less power burned is good for CO2 emissions. It also lets me afford to put some high tech shiny stuff under the tree to impress the youngsters.
Intel and Microsoft are scared to death of Snapdragon and Android, and they should be - they don't have offerings like this, and the buzz about cheap, go-everywhere always on low-power application rich platforms that don't use their products is evidence that if they won't innovate in the way that we want, they're done. We want progress, and progress isn't about the widget - it's about the people and what they can do with it. If they try and leverage their market position to kill this progress the truth will out and they will be beset with lawsuits and it will do them no good because there are manufacturers and vendors like HTC and Google who are not afraid of them.
Their best bet: surf the wave. Get their products in line with current demand. Or go away.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
A group of engineers trying to actually handle customer service.
Shouldn't it be Nexus One Beta?
Any chance this will cause their stock to dip low enough so I can afford to buy it?
If I hear the phrase " your call is important to us" while waiting for my carrier to answer their helpdesk number for hours, I'll go even crazier......
IME, most carriers run a bare-bones operation and expect callers to give up. That's of course if you can get through over the networks which seem to have unexplained outages. And when was the last time that you got a refund for lack of service...?
Oh ye Googlists! Where is your Google now! Ha ha ha! Your Google cannot save you! Burn in shell!
Nexus users, quit all your whining and belly-aching. When I get caught in a fight between vendors, the solution is bloody simple: conference call all three together and sit back while they hash it out!! That way, any finger pointing gets done by them to each other and they can't pass you on to someone else. In EVERY case where I did this, I got my problem(s) solved.
*** Don't be dull.***
This seems like a pretty good metric for anything.
Microsoft: 288000:369000
43.8% love, 56.2% hate
Google: 1,690,000:153,000
91.7% love, 8.3% hate
The main problem is that a lot of "I love..." statements are actually sarcastic, as in "I love Monsanto, they are so comically evil".
As far as I know HTC doesn't sell direct to customer, unless you count the Nexus where they may be virtually drop shipping for Google.
Since none of HTC's partners like T*mobile or AT&T were interested in personally selling it, while at the same time giving Google penultimate control of the phone hardware and software specs to make it Best of Breed, that left Google to do the dirty work. When it is a raging hit they can't ignore, maybe they will put it on their shelves too.
HTC is about the only phone hardware manufacturer with the cajones to build devices with Google, and later with Snapdragons. They got a big jumpstart on companies like Motorola and Samsung because they had no legacy cellphone business. They got in at just the right time to hit the smartphone frenzy, and before they became big enough to really interest the Windows Mobile business unit at Microsoft. They rolled the dice on partnering with Google and won in a big way.
Don't get too excited. I think what parent is saying is if the call rolls to voicemail, they will give you 500 minutes of voicemail usage for free. Generally I am pretty sure on all carriers, if your caller leaves a 3 minute voicemail message, they will withdraw 3 minutes from your wireless minute pool.
The other thing they may be doing is since calling from your mobile to check T-mobile voicemail is free, they are giving you some bonus minutes to in effect check your messages for free by calling another phone number. I wonder if this credit applies only to that phone number, or if you could never check your messages from your mobile and get 500 more minutes to call anywhere.
I swear, they put this big menu bar on the left, on the Google site... what's up with THAT crap! THEY CHANGED IT!
This is my sig.
I have paid for Microsoft's shitty products for two decades and never received any kind of meaningful customer service. I really doubt Google can do any worse than that.
Jesus wept, what's wrong with you people? Just buy a frigging Nokia off the shelf that runs Maemo aka Linux and you can do what fucking like with it. How hard is that?
Instant free wi-fi access and surf to your heart's content - don't even need a SIM card, just like a netbook, notepad, smartbook, whatever it is.
you forgotten in love/hate consider synonyms. You missed even simple truth that 99% people hate sex http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=fuck%20sex%2CI%20love%20sex&cmpt=q
Why do Bob and Alice get all the attention? WHat about Ted? What about Carol?
According to Alexa, Google.com is the #1 site on the internet for traffic, Baidu is #8.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
While this is a very good point to raise, and I might have done well to consider it when I finally broke down and got a mobile phone, my thought process ran a little differently:
I searched through "reviews" of various mobile service providers, and who would have guessed that the vast majority of reviews are strongly negative? What this taught me is that there are some categories of services and goods for which most people, for the most part, are ambivalent.
I would not generally think to myself how much I love my utility companies (although admittedly, I really have no choice regarding their selection anyway). But my ISP? I have choices on that one, and I can tell you from personal experience, just like a phone service provider, either they do what I want, in which case, congratulations to them, they did what I expected them to do and I am not angry -OR- they do not do what I want in which case I am going to be all kinds of fired up and angry with them and voice my opinion to whoever will listen.
According to those ratios, only 1 in 3 customers love verizon. The other two obviously hate verizon. But it does not consider the relatively large segment of their customer base who do not *care* about verizon enough to rant about it online. The most vocal group is always going to be the people who are extremely displeased.
Seriously, my experience reading reviews taught me that while a lot of people do have certain preferences for their mobile phone service provider, for the most part, everybody hates every provider they are not currently paying, and in a lot of cases, also hate the provider they are.
Moral of the story? Just as filtering out negative reviews will not help your customers (you listening, newegg?) find what they want, if you really want to figure out which provider is the "best," you have to understand that most people do not feel strongly enough to say anything at all. Which means that for the most part, any of these companies are actually doing a pretty good job.
Disclaimer: My service is provided by T-Mobile right now, and am not at all dissatisfied with it, and while I can think of ways to improve my experience, I really do not ever think I would say to anybody that I love (or even like) T-Mobile. They do what I expect them to do, therefore I do not hate them.
As noted (by all the comments below), there are many reasons why google search results aren't a useful metric (except for measuring how many pages such-and-such is mentioned on). It's mostly just for entertainment. If you're the kind of person to make a major investment decisions (like a cell bill at $60+ * 24 months) based solely on something like these comparative google searches... you're gonna end up with all kinds of headaches. If you took my above post as being "full of useful information" or even close... Hah! :D
I ordered several phones (abiding by the per-account limit) and some relatives in my home country ordered some and had them shipped to my address too because Google wouldn't ship there. I started placing my first order literally 10 seconds after the web page went live on the 5th, because I didn't want to be behind a line of 250k people placing orders. The phones reached my local Fedex and sat there all day undelivered, then they were sent back to Google. Somebody at Google had frozen the shipment and then requested them back. Four days later the credit card charges have not been reversed. Nobody ever called me to explain why the order had been canceled, I can only assume because red lights went on with that number of phones being shipped to one address, however there was no problem with abiding by ToS per-account limits, and the credit cards had been charged successfully. I spent three days on the phone to Fedex, Britepoint (the distributor) and HTC, sent several messages through the checkout contact form, and eventually tried contacting some friends at Google until I actually got any sort of contact from Google about this. I received an email from a generic support address saying they made a mistake and were sending the phones back -- finally. Several hours later I got another email saying that the phones could in fact not be sent back because they tried too late to return the shipment and they were already headed back to the warehouse, and that I would have to order them again. Still my credit card charges hadn't been reversed, though I was told eventually they would be. I tried re-ordering from the same checkout account and was told I couldn't reorder because I had reached the limit of five phones on that account. At last tonight (four days after ordering) I got a call from a director on the Nexus One team apologizing and saying they would try to get the phones back to me. The fact that I had already tried to re-order was problematic, but she said they would try to sort it out. Anyway it's a huge mess, but I appreciated finally getting to talk to a human being. I suspect I am one of the few who has been able to talk to a human at Google about their problems so far however. Honestly the last person to call me sounded pretty worn out by it all (and was working late on a Saturday too...) I don't know why Google didn't install a large call-center when they decided they were going to try to pull this off. I imagine some process review meetings are going to happen as a result of all of this...
Here's all the help you need: http://www.google.com/
And for people who still need a bit more help...
http://lmgtfy.com/
That *is* what you get for being an early adopter...
One thing that surprised me in my early stints of software companies of all sizes was how little the R&D department is in some of the more mature companies. That is because they ad sales, support, marketing, etc. Google is now in its "awkward teen years" in this regard.
You missed >100K AT&T haters. You need to search with and without the punctuation in the names, i.e. "AT&T" vs. "ATT".