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.

Comments

new to customer service

[timmarhy]

google doesn't have any experience fielding public customer service - all their products are free to the public with some commercial products that i guess would generate some limited helpdesk demands.

it's little wonder this is biting them in the arse.

Re:new to customer service

[Man On Pink Corner]

That really hits the nail on the head. If you give your stuff away for free, you can tell complainers to get bent. But if you charge so much as $0.15, your customers own your sorry ass.

Google's going to have to learn that little fact of life sooner or later.

Re:new to customer service

[Threni]

Can't they answer questions - 10 month old questions at that - about whether developers are supposed to be locked out of their own apps, or if this is a bug they'll be fixing over the next 2 years?

What about the droid/milestone - are google interested in selling this in the uk? What about the nexus one?

Google seem a little clueless at the moment. I want a droid/milestone, but not from this shitty UK website which has nothing but complaints from customers about an inability to deliver/missing cables etc which are being removed from boxes and then sold as extra/faulty units magically turning up 'broken' when they're returned etc etc.

Why can't I walk into a phone shop in the UK and just buy one of the latest Android 2 phones? I really want to avoid Apple because they suck far harder than Google but it looks like Google is fast catching up.

Re:new to customer service

[zill]

Exactly.

Warranties; Disclaimer of Warranties

You agree that Google is not the manufacturer, but the seller, of the Device. You acknowledge that HTC is the manufacturer of the Device and provides the Limited Warranty for repairs and service of the Device. Please refer to http://www.google.com/support/android/bin/answer.py?answer=166519 or the warranty card in the Device package for details on the HTC Limited Warranty terms and how to make a claim under the HTC Limited Warranty. If you are a purchaser of the Device in the EU, you are entitled to a two-year warranty for parts, labor, and service. If you are a purchaser of the Device outside of the EU, you are entitled to a one-year warranty for parts, labor, and service. These warranties are in addition to and do not affect your legal rights as a consumer.

OTHER THAN THE ABOVE AND TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, GOOGLE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, REGARDING ANY DEVICES, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT.

Unlike traditional electronics companies, Google is delegating all warranty and customer service support to the ODM. And people do not understand this, since it's completely different from what they're used to. Since no one bothers reading the fine prints, they go and seek help in the wrong place.

Legally speaking, Google is not at fault here. With the above disclaimer, they have successfully disclaimed all their responsibility of providing service and customer care.

To the average folk who received customer support on their electronics for their entire life however, Google's stance is completely unacceptable.

Those smart people who actually read the fine print will not have this problem, because they'll head to HTC to confirm the level of support they'll be getting (that is to say, exactly 0), and will hold off on purchasing the device until better support is introduced. It's not that hard really, just go to http://www.htc.com/us/support where the Nexus One is obviously missing from the drop down menu. To make matters worst, HTC decided it would be funny to make a link titled "Google Nexus One Support Information" which links to a functionally useless page on Google.

Of course HTC is smart for not providing support since it's Google's reputation getting damaged here (see /. article title for example), not HTC's. This is the perfect method for silently eliminating an potential competitor in the mobiles market.

Obligatory car analogy: Bob sells me a used car and claims that Alice can repair it if anything goes wrong within a year. The car breaks down within a week but Alice is charging an outrageous amount for the repair fee. I get mad at Bob because he deceived me.

In the end:I get stuck with a broken car.
Bob's reputation is damaged.
But Alice lost nothing.

Well

[mewshi_nya]

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.

Question

[Karganeth]

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

Avoid 1.0

[Gonoff]

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...

Re:Avoid 1.0

[neokushan]

However, there isn't anything actually wrong with the phone itself (or at least, nothing I've seen), the problem is Google's (supposed) lack of Customer support, that's all. No matter how perfect a device or service is, you'll always need customer support for those that simply don't "get" it.
As someone who works in this field, myself, I can assure you that thousands of people calling for help doesn't always mean there's a problem.

Re:Market Research using Google...

[herksc]

Try it in quotes:

144,000 for "i hate t-mobile"
468,000 for "i hate verizon"
444,000 for "i hate at&t"
286,000 for "i hate sprint"

Searching 'I hate t-mobile' on google (no quotes) comes up with results that include "i", "hate", "t", and "mobile" separately. Your research method is highly flawed.

Anything like Google Apps?

[dave562]

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.

Re:I can fully understand the operators

[iluvcapra]

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.

To be honest, this sounds like the sort of arrangement many of us here can only dream of here in the US. All of our carriers here want to "help us" by locking-out phone features and plying us with terrible value-added services, and structuring rate plans so that the carrier is essentially charging rent instead of providing a compensated service.

My complaint: Carrier data plan still required!

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:I can fully understand the operators

[bhagwad]

Really? You don't even support phones you sell?

I think you misunderstand. The carriers don't sell phones at all. They just provide service. Other companies sell the phone. Like one company selling you a computer and the another providing the Internet connection. Savvy?

Suspicious..

[PopeRatzo]

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.

The incumbent vendors won't give me progress

[symbolset]

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.