Just stop using these services.<p>Don't use any service provider that does not align well with what is important for your business. If this includes guaranteed service availability and solid customer service and the company in question just can't provide these guarantees, well, don't use them.<p>It really is that simple.<p>I have not touched anything Google except for Search and Analytics for probably three years. I learned early-on where my business needs did not align with their offerings and we don't use those services. I couldn't be happier. From my perspective Google is a great company.<p>There are other approaches to all of the other services. We host our own email for a number of domains on different private servers. Easy. A license of MS Office on every machine isn't a problem if you have a real business, just like a license of the appropriate Adobe suite is almost a must. Tools like GoToMyPC, for the technically challenged are a no-brainer and they are cheap. There are a multitude of cloud storage solutions. And, frankly, for a lot of stuff, there's nothing wrong with hosting your own access-controlled FTP site to share files with your team (although a paid Dropbox account is oh-so-simple).<p>So, yeah, Google is a good company. Just stick to the stuff that works the way you need it to and you'll be fine.
Remember, to receive prompt support for failing Google services, you need to contact Google via a story at a famous blog, a major social news site, or (ideally) The New York Times.
Good. The more this happens, the more people will realise that contracting out your critical services to a company with virtually no support and a false reputation isn't a good idea. It also undermines "the cloud" which is a good thing IMHO.<p>Sorry but I have little sympathy and I don't want to hear the "well it works for me excuses" and the financial advantage crap.
Are people still surprised by Google's lack of support?<p>I think one of the messages here is to take note of any support codes (account #'s or PINs in this case) and store them outside of the service that requires them.
I use Office 365 (Exchange Online) and made the mistake of using my own email address as the primary Exchange Online address. I was unable to access my email for close to two weeks. Other than that they've been better that expected.<p>What I'm saying is that unless you do it yourself these things will happen. A service level agreement can only be viewed as "this is what we promise as our best endeavour", but when it goes south it goes south, and you're at the provider's mercy.<p>I made the mistake of regarding"the cloud" as this "machine" that's impervious to human error.
I haven't read the article. First thing that I saw when visiting this blog/site whatever was a long pageover list with checkboxes and email input fields asking me to subscribe to something. There was no close button immediately visible, so I just closed the tab instead of proceeding.<p>Sorry, but if you really want your story visible, please stop treating your visitors like that.
Google has a well documented history of it being next to impossible to talk to a real person unless you have an $X0,000 hardware search appliance or similar. As an individual, if you're not internet famous, you're taking your business into your hands using Google for critical services like these.<p>That said, not everyone looks at the level of support provided before they choose a service. So, if you get blindsided with this type of thing, you do a quick search to see if it'll get resolved quickly, realise it won't, change your MX records and learn your lesson / plan for a migration out of the service if/when you get your account back. Just like with any problem of this nature.<p>Usually it's just worth paying for something more expensive (and often less featured) for which you know that there's someone you can call when the service goes down in the middle of the night or you get locked out for some random reason.<p>edit: I'm really only being overly harsh because the guy who wrote the article is the CEO of a <i>cyber risk management</i> and security company, and should know better.
Something similar happened at a company I work for; the account of the CEO suddenly becomes "temporarily unavailable".<p>I take their word for it and 12 hours pass and the account is still inaccessible. We're a paying customer, so I open up a ticket and it is eventually passed on to the "technical team".<p>I give them a call but they cannot offer any additional details nor any timeframe whatsoever when this will be resolved. Another 20 hours pass and my requests for any update go unanswered. Finally, after a total of 48 hours the account is available again. Still no update from Google.<p>Having been completely cut off for two working days, the CEO is now (correctly) questioning their use of Google Apps so I update my original ticket requesting any additional information they have that could assist me in justifying staying with the service. They tell me this will be forthcoming.<p>A week passes, no update. I reiterate my request and 10 hours later I'm told that the cause was a "server issue"...
TL;DR A bug in Google's internal systems took his Apps account offline for a week. Slow customer service upset him greatly.<p>To be fair to Google, this was hardly an assassination...
I've been looking for a functionally equivalent alternative to gmail largely because I fear ending up in a similar situation. I'd like to host my email with a company that has remotely competent and caring support.<p>What are the best services?<p>And no thanks to cloud haters - I will not be setting up my own imap servers.
Just for my own personal curiosity, has any company made a reasonable attempt at competing with Google apps core services? I know Microsoft offers similar services, but it's not that well "put together" the last time I looked.<p>You're probably not going to be able to compete with Google Drive integration, but if someone put together a well designed integration of inbox, calendar, and contacts with an API, they would do well.
im not suggesting every google apps customer should do this, but if you had purchased google apps through a reseller, said reseller could have helped resolve this issue within a couple of hours, most likely. without a PIN. also, why wait so long to use another domain's PIN to contact support? why not do that on day 1? lastly, if you change your MX records away from google apps, your mail will route to wherever you point it. google looks up MX like everyone else, for each domain. every time you send an email to or from a google apps account, it goes outside of google and then if it is an apps/gmail account and mx is pointed to google's mx, it goes back into apps. only then. could support be better on google's end for normal paying customers? yes. so could every company's IT support. just go through a premier reseller next time. most charge the same price ($50/yser) and include support, especially for issues like this.
I wasn't aware of this PIN either. Even if you do change your MX record, and move your email elsewhere, you still get locked out of access to your old email, which can be important.<p>I have a (free) google apps account for my domain, but I configured it so it actually still goes through my own MX server. It took a bit of trickery, because google wants you to use theirs, but I managed to get around it. It works well for a couple of years now. My email always goes first through my own MX, and then to google.<p>I would still be pretty upset if they blocked me though. But I guess I can't expect much from a free service.
I am currently unable to login to one of my domains on Google Apps (i.e., www.google.com/a/example.com returns an error). When I try to register it, it says the domain is already registered. Fun.<p>It isn't my primary domain, so I haven't bothered to pester one of my Googler friends to see if they can do something about it.
Appreciate all the interest in this story.<p>As I mentioned in the follow-on comments, no service is perfect but I think Google needs to try harder for instances like this. The account was disabled and was also the Google Apps admin account. In that instance, I think Google is at least obligated to kick-off an email to the Google Apps back-up email address and alert to the issue with a time-expiring form that triggers a support request with a slightly higher priority. This could all be automated I would think.<p>I realize Google is huge and they provide critical services to many of us (I continue to use Google Apps for several domains) but the "can't be bothered" customer service attitude can have a significant impact on operations and I wanted to generate some awareness about that. Looks like we succeeded on the awareness front.
Yet another great example proving google's bad customer support.
What is google trying to prove by such pathetic customer service? I have heard complain about almost every google service: admob, adsense, google app ....
Not being a part of the Google ecosystem is always a good thing for business.
I grief with the author for the loss, and really encourage to use Rackspace, which has more than enough human support options.
Google has similar attitude on providing customer support for all its services. A quick example, I have integrated my Sprint number to Google Voice, all my messages and phone calls go through Google Voice, for past few months I have stopped receiving text messages on my phone. I only get them through Google Voice. There is no support, Sprint has no idea, and Google is not reachable.
This whole discussion (post was written by my friend) and my personal experience says to be very cautious about dependencies on any service provider. A simple smart hack would be to auto forward 100% of emails to a different account just for backup, then have the domain registered at a non-google DNS so a fast change to an MX record could be made.
I don't understand why people use google apps for something as important as email in the first place.<p>Is making a marginal cost saving really that much more important than having actual support?
To recap: In order to receive support from a human being for Google Apps the account holder needs her account associated PIN, but since this guy was locked out of his account he didn't have it available to take advantage of the phone support. So after a week and by using some trickery he got hold of someone on the phone and the issue was resolved.<p>I’d argues that Google Apps has reasonable support (bigger accounts, I assume, have direct support lines) and these occurrences are relatively rare considering the user base, but they get amplified rather loudly, especially when there are plenty of cloud haters, and Google haters (and competitors) ready to pounce.<p>There might be some risks or trade-offs involved but they’re much less pronounced than some of the comments on any “Google support sux” thread lead you to believe. I haven't had an issue with my personal Apps account but my case is statistically insignificant, same as the case discussed here.