zlacker

>>benhur+(OP)
Google uses non-human automation to make some decisions, including banning accounts. As others have mentioned, this is not unreasonable as long as there is a reasonable (in terms of time and effort) path to disputing a ban - i.e., speaking to a human about the issue.

But Google (and Facebook, and probably some other companies) don't have reasonable processes for disputing or resolving these situations.

Some have said that we should consider Google's challenge: lots of users/activities that need to be monitored and policed. The assumption is that Google could not afford to do this "reasonably" with humans instead of automated systems because the volume is high.

But Google certainly could hire and train humans to follow a process for reviewing and assisting in resolving these cases. They don't. It is doubtful that they cannot afford to do this; I haven't checked their annual report lately, but I'm guessing they still have a healthy profit.

In the unlikely event that involving more humans would be too expensive, then Google should raise their prices (or stop giving so much away for free).

To summarize, there is no excuse for Google to operate this way. They do because they can, and because the damage still falls into the "acceptable losses" column.

>>blunte+xU
I'd bet Amazon has more retail customers trying to get disputes resolved, than Google has business customers attempting to do the same, yet Amazon manages to get a human on the other end of the line. And I'd bet that Amazon's disputes have far less monetary value per incident. Maybe apples to oranges, but it's impressive from a customer service perspective.

>>strong+hY
Amazon has tremendous numbers of contractors and employees who handle customer issues, seller issues, and partner issues.

Google, on the other hand, pretends to be a good provider of lots of software services, but if anything ever goes wrong with any of them, you are screwed, including if it's a premium service that you pay for. This is why you should never allow Google to control anything that is important to a business of yours or to your personal life.

Google has tons of sales reps on the ad side who will be happy to give you a rationale on why you should spend money more aggressively on their platform, but even they will sometimes be useless at fixing problems unless you are a truly massive customer for them. If you ever need to talk to a sales rep, you can get a Google ad person on the phone in minutes, but they will tell you to bid more aggressively and to buy more display ads.

If your problem with Google is that you aren't spending enough money on display ads, they're Johnny on the spot; they've got 9 trillion hammers that they want to sell you for that particular nail. Need help with anything else substantial related to a Google service? We have a robot you can e-mail for that, and that robot will ignore you.