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German Court: Google Must Stop Ignoring Customer E-mails
jfruh writes If you send an email to support-de@google.com, Google's German support address, you'll receive an automatic reply informing you that Google will not respond to or even read your message, due to the large number of emails received at that address. Now a German court has ruled (PDF) that this is an unacceptable response, based on a German law saying that companies must provide a means for customers to communicate with them.
Update: 09/12 15:47 GMT by S : Updated to fix the links.
Did a mod even check the link to see if it went to what it claimed?
The link in the article goes to something completely different (free wifi laptop).
When I click the link about the ruling I get taken to an article about Wire-Free laptops...
Now this has interesting consequences: companies don't scale up well in this model: you'll have to have a number of eployees proportional (by some small factor, but > 0) to your number of customers. Until you have an AI equivalent to an employee, capable of meaningfully answering mails, that is.
Perhaps this is a Good Thing?
from what i understand of the definition of "customer", a "customer" means "someone who is paying for a service". here, there's no payment involved, therefore there is no contract of sale. i would imagine that it's fairly safe to say that we're most definitely *not* quotes customers of google quotes.
if on the other hand these individuals are actually _paying_ google for service and are not receiving a response, _then_ i could understand.
We need more customer protection like this. The companies' standard strategy seems to be that after the product has been delivered to the customer, the customer feedback and support is essentially a black hole.
good
...you're insane.
Seriously, I appreciate that the majority of businesses could be shut down tomorrow and have negligible effect on society, but there's not exactly zero competition in most markets - how do companies even manage to get along with free but proprietary app suites like Google's, where the provider is worth to you almost exactly what you're paying them?
Google is nothing but an analytics company. They work on aggregate. Any individual data point is irrelevant. Why accept a position of irrelevance? Set your standard higher.
...based on a German law saying that companies must provide a means for customers to communicate with them.
Google can argue that they've met the requirements of the law by providing a means for customers to communicate. No where in the law does it require Google to respond.
Since Germany is a democracy, they should change the law to achieve what the state really wants from entities like Google.
Google's customers (like Adsense or Adwords customers) can already contact Google. The general public can't. But that's because they aren't customers, they are the content.
Is a web site visitor a customer? Or does some form of payment for services need to be made? What about android users, does having an android device make someone a customer or would google need to sell the OS for that to count?
It sounds like the Judge ruled that any person who uses a google service is a customer even if that service is free. It seems like that is a win for the consumer, but I have to wonder if that was the correct decision in this case. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to need to be a paying customer for a company to expend resources to adequately respond to your communications. Some questions can cause hours of follow up work to send a reply.
If Google decides to discontinue all Google services in Germany as a result, would that really be a "win" for the German consumer?
The only difference between Google and most customer service today is that at least Google are honest about it and tell you that you will be ignored. Most other companies will just ignore your email and not tell you or leave you in a call queue for so long that you end up having to hang up and go do something else.
Here is the official ruling. Unfortunately in german:
http://www.vzbv.de/cps/rde/xbc...
"Verbaucher" (not customer) seems to be used in the official ruling:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/V...
That is very well known, and they trade that payment for cash from advertisers.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
That is, afterall, the currency they currently accept for many of the services they provide.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Nope. We are not Google's customers - those are the advertisers.
We are the product.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
That the German Goverment should also respond to ALL emails, seeing as german citizens could be considered customers of the government?
Given that probably over 50% of the correspondence the German government receives is from crazy people, and Google probably sees a similar proportion, I wonder if they would change their minds if the same rules were applied to them...?
On the surface this sounds like a great decision for the google users in Germany. But do you really think Google is going to change their ways? Or spend one dime to appeal this ruling? Nope! They'll just change their automated reply to "Thank you for your issue/concern. We'll look into it and get back to you if necessary."
So instead of being allowed to honestly say "Thanks! But we're going to ignore you" they're simply going to be required to lie to their users and say "Thanks! We might get back to you". And no, I don't approve of this and wish they did have to give a meaningful reply to every legitimate user concern/issue . . . but that's just not how big business works.
I am glad to know that I'll have the option of contacting Google customer service for any issues related to the missing wires.
Or something.
Sure they are customers. They are paying with their personal data, which Google hords and then sells to third parties. Without the people who use Google's free services, Google wouldn't earn a cent.
The data Google collects is the price paid by the users of its "free" services. I can't see how anyone can argue that an exchange of value is not taking place here.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
In many states in the US, all that's required for a "contract" to exist is agreement on actions AND compensation. That compensation does not have to be money; it may be anything of value, including one's attention (as to ads.) Other states do not limit contracts to need compensation at all. I dunno about other nations....
And why does the German government or any government for that matter think they have the ability to tell a corporation how to service their customers or otherwise run their business? If the "customer" of google is unhappy, then they should change to a company that provides them the level service they want. Or in the case of google, they can start paying for what they get free and get a corresponding level of support.
The whole premise of this ruling I find abhorrent.
I always get a little jealous of other countries and their willingness to bully companies and corporations especially on behalf of the citizens. It always feels like theres a small amount of willing people who would like to do the same here in the US but money > *.
But I guess there is nothing unique about a US citizen being jealous of other countries for a wide array of reasons.
Google should hire the judge's granddaughter to read and respond to the e-mails.
Ads get through to me as long as they're text or images, not SWF.
At one time I subscribed to Slashdot. During that time I was Slashdot's customer.
Even if what you offer is free, you are still offering a service, even if you do not get a compensation. per see if you use gmx.de , you are still a customer (taking the offer of service from gmx.de for free email) and thus fall under the law.
A customer is someone who receives a service from a company, even if the (monetary) price for that service is zero.
That doesn't make you a customer. That makes you a charity recipient.
In any case the general relationship between Google users (as opposed to paying advertising clients) is that the user is properly thought of as a vendor or supplier. We supply data to Google in exchange for in-kind services (email, search etc) which Google then turns into a product which they sell to their paying customers. Customers are people who pay you and vendors are people you pay. Google "pays" users for their data with online services which is a sort of barter really. They then process that data into a product they can sell to their customers which generally are advertisers.
What sometimes confuses people is that Google also sells IT services (like data storage or corporate email) but what that simply means is that someone can be both a vendor and a customer depending on the specific transaction. This is perfectly normal. It's not at all uncommon for companies to sell stuff to each other and have both a vendor relationship and a customer relationship but they can be only one or the other for a given transaction. The key distinction to determine whether they are the vendor or customer is (generally) the direction of the cash flow for the particular transaction in question. In cases in-kind exchanges its a little fuzzier so you have to look at what they do with the item received.
You can ask google anything you want and get an instant response 24/7 at http://www.google.com/ if you're not happy google's response go to http://www.bing.com/
They're testing to see if anyone reads the articles anyways. If the test succeeds, they don't bother linking anything anymore and will just post semi-controversial pot-stirring blurbs instead.
Of course I'm one of slashdot's customers. Slashdot would be out of business if we (the customers) stopped coming to their website.
I'm an accountant.
Unless you are sending cash to slashdot, your relationship to them is most accurately described as that of a vendor or a supplier if you prefer that term. You provide data to slashdot in exchange for entertainment which is a form of in-kind exchange. Slashdot then uses that data to sell advertising to their paying customers. From an accounting perspective by providing this forum to you, you would be on slashdot's books as either Cost of Goods Sold or more likely some kind of Operating Expense. This effectively makes you a vendor to them, not a customer because they don't sell you anything.
It can get a little murkier if you have a paid subscription but they still advertise to you because then you become both a customer and a vendor. Which you are depends on the transaction in question. Logically it would make sense to have the subscription be treated as a contra-expense because then you don't have to have this dual relationship. But it's more likely that they would book it as income and have the user on the books as both a customer and (indirectly) as a vendor.
Sure they are customers. They are paying with their personal data, which Google hords and then sells to third parties.
That makes you a vendor/supplier rather than a customer. Google "buys" your data with an in-kind exchange for IT services and then they sell it to advertisers. You aren't a customer, you are a vendor in that transaction chain.
From TFA that's not in TFS:
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
The user's relationship with Gmail does involve payment in the form of consideration, and they are customers.
That doesn't make them necessarily a customer for that transaction. As far as Google is concerned they are vendors because Google "pays" users via an in-kind exchange of services for data which they then sell to their customers for cash. In that transaction chain the user is properly considered a vendor to Google and that is how they would show up on Google's financial statements. In that transaction Google would be your customer rather than the other way around.
You're not the customer. You're the product.
That's not correct either logically or from an accounting perspective. The opposite of customer is not product. The opposite of customer is vendor. Every transaction has two and only two parties. If you aren't the customer then you are the vendor for that transaction. Unless you plan to go into slavery the product isn't you. The product is data about you. What that makes you is the vendor of the product. Google "buys" this data in exchange for IT services and they then sell the data to advertising customers. In that transaction chain Google buys from you and that is how you appear on Google's financial statements - as a supplier, not a customer.
I am mostly pro-Google and against many weirdnesses we have here against companies with our laws. I try to explain what is going on here.
In Germany a company which has a web presence needs to have a so-called "Impressum" with essential business data and a way to contact them in a reasonable time. When there is a phone number, it needs to be answered. Emails need to be answered soon, too, when there is only email address as contact possibility. The impressum is regulated very stricty to prevent fraud and anti-competetive practices. So it is generally not that bad, except that it abolishes anonymity.
My opinion here: In fact, Google is avoiding its users. Have you ever tried to contact them? In this case it might be a good idea to give people the possibility to contact Google somehow.
And to the people joking about Slashdot. Yes, also Slashdot would need to have an Impressum page when it had a subsidiary in Germany.
The remarkable thing in this area is not that the EU has lots of rules that try to protect their citizens.
What's remarkable is that the US has the incredibly uncaring attitude of "our citizens are so worthless that our companies can screw them over as much as they like and they don't even have to provide a support address to iron out difficulties".
The government doesn't conduct its affairs online (which is an important point here), so I'm not sure if they have to react to every email. But they are certainly legally required to answer requests that you address to them by mail -- that's a constitutional right called the "right to petition".
Google can comply with the ruling by simply un-checking the 'automated response'.
So your emails vanish into a black hole, *never to be responded to*, rather than you getting something confirming (what you suspect) that nobody will ever read it.
Is that really better?
Having dealt with "customer service" (seriously, I can barely say that with a straight face) with German companies for years, suddenly things make a lot more sense, however.
-Styopa
If Google is not being taxed on the data it receives for its free services, then the government itself is saying there is no monetary value on that data.
Lack of prosecution, even more so when it comes to acts of giant US corporations, is entirely different from a legal finding of innocence. So "the government itself" hasn't said shit about whether Google is or is not receiving something of value from its users.
Not being able to ignore your own customers simply is un-American.
"companies must provide a means for customers to communicate with them."
As we used to say in 1970s, "if you want to get a message to J. Edgar or the NSA, just pick up the phone, call your mom, and tell her."
Same for Google nowadays.
We have logged your problem with ticket number 9422154788899955221477775986322111
Somebody will contact you immediately in the afternoon of October 1st, 3221.
I once e-mailed their abuse address when I worked at a web hosting provider. They had a bug in Gmail that made them send the exact same message hundreds of times per second, for days. We know this was a bug because the sender was one of our customers who had sent the e-mail to his own address with us, and now he got thousands of copies of it per minute. Something had apparently ended up in an infinite loop on Google's end.
I obviously contacted the abuse address listed in WHOIS with this rather important message but when I didn't get a response within an hour we had to ban Gmail. Not everybody can say that they made that decision! (Eventually we unlocked everything but his sender address).
Two WEEKS later I got a template reply with totally irrelevant links to their FAQ. I lost all respect for Google then and there. I thought that they would at least know how to be good netizens on the tech level but no.
money for IBM ...
"Communication" and "discussion" are two entirely different things.
If I were Google, I'd simply reply to the court with Fuck You, and turn off Google.de, and then wait for their response since I don't care if I have users in Germany or not. But hey, I'm not Google, and I'm sure they care about making money there, so I wonder if they'll start answering that support address for only provably German users, or for anyone that uses that address regardless of location?
I want my free ipod and free xbox!
http://i.cubeupload.com/T6cyLu.png
Increasingly convinced Europe is a fantasy land.
Yes, it's great they actually defend consumer rights.
Have they ever worked for a company with an email address? My first job after my programming degree was with a small market research company in Cincinnati who only dealt with the tri-state area and had only about 200,000 regular clients.
I manually - MANUALLY - handled data processing for these 200,000 people, alone, for 2 years. Because I filtered it through a system. We set up a tech support email address that we literally did not even set up to come to a computer for half of that time - and even with 8 or so people checking it, even if we hadn't let it pile up tens of thousands of emails, it was impossible to maintain.
So to pretend Google can sit there and literally respond to or even read every single email from people in the entire country of Germany, that's fucking absurd.
They ignored every job application I ever took part in. I'm fairly well qualified and experienced, but ignored by Google. I'm not "Google" material.
Google don't care what you think because you will always "gouge" your rage at google. You won't bing for it.
I like the quote: "If you're not paying for it, you're not the customer. Your the product."
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
The word consumer is appropriate here.
As I understand it, "consumer" came out of the advertising industry long ago, since Ad agencies needed a word to describe the people viewing the ads when talking to their "customers", ie the advertisers.
Somehow the news industry has become confused and now refers to everyone who buys anything as consumers. As if we "consume" everything we buy. They are using the word incorrectly, and it is a pet peeve of mine. As if we are all consumers of Target, Costco, Walmart, etc, not their customers. annoying.
But for someone using a free service that is advertising supported, ie most Google users, the word consumer fits.
Yet the journalist (and apparently German government) thinks free users are customers. It's as if they have somehow swapped the two words in their minds.
Now, if the consumer also pays google for something ( google play, etc ) then they are a customer for that service, but still a consumer of the free service(s).
It's not going to make a difference. Google will just change the auto-response to a simple response like: "Thank you for your feedback!" Then they technically responded. It was just a vague response.
I am a customer. When I view or click an ad Google gets paid.
Sorry mister google apologist and the anus who modded you up. Stupid niggers are still making excuses for that NSA/CIA controlled google. Funny.
They have lots of staff.
Having worked with them in various partnerships, I can say google has no provisions to communicate period. They tend to only respond through business channels and they are usually really stupid in interfacing with customers (random updates to APIs, firewalls, or even apparent jerking around). They are the quintessential template of the future dystopian faceless corporation and admittedly I tend to fuck with their head hunters when they call.
Wrong.
If Google is forcing you to "accept their policy", they try to enter into a contract with you. If you have a contract with them, you are a customer, no matter in which direction the money flows or whether there flows any money at all.
Sure that works in Germany?
Well, it works everywhere else, why not in Germay?
A budget is a statement of what's important. (A more-or-less clerical friend of mine said that the most important theological document a church has is its budget.) If a company is required by law to do something, then that something will be held to be important, and an unwillingness to devote the resources to doing it will not necessarily fly with the judge.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
A budget is a statement of what's important. (A more-or-less clerical friend of mine said that the most important theological document a church has is its budget.) If a company is required by law to do something, then that something will be held to be important, and an unwillingness to devote the resources to doing it will not necessarily fly with the judge.
That is why you hire the judge's granddaughter. The judge will be reluctant to declare the effort insufficent, because she won't want her grannddaughter to lose her cushy job.