They are the reason yet another blog exists. I was so frustrated by their lack of customer service; I posted a comment on Tech Crunch and on any other blog talking about Google that morning (see rant below). I have been driven to blog, I see now it is the only way to invoke change. So as soul driven to change as much of the world as I can. I have done it - I’ve started my blog.

The google story does have a good ending - so in my first post I want to thank a certain individual from google that cared enough to actually reach out to me in my helpless state - Paul Rivera if I can ever help you with anything let me know. I cannot thank you enough for your humanity in reaching out to me and trying to fix the issue, way above the call of duty. Google needs more of you. Google needs a division of you that they call customer service - and yes I would pay.

Google rant -

1. Julia French

October 18th, 2006 at 10:38 am

They wanted my trust and I gave it - I have used GMail in fact my entire office at Socialtext uses GMail instead of using an exchange server - the idea here being we are also part of Office 2.0 and should support others out there that are part of our group - an office with out Microsoft exchange.

I was in love with my Gmail, I set it up to pop serv into my email client on my Mac iBook - is was easy to set up and I was living the email life, it didn’t even feel like I didn’t have an exchange server. This was really working - they had me - a fan forever, and a product champion convincing others to do the same as I had.

And then it all came crashing down - Monday afternoon at 1:15pm my fantasy with google ended - I got error message after error message my password did not match my email client said - I reset everything, I even reinstalled the F*&(%$@ Software - I sent in a bug report detailing what I had done. I read the help pages, I called my friend who works on Macs, I joined a google group to ask for help. NOTHING- I sent another bug report - NOTHING.

It was determined by those smarter than I that it was not my computer, not my email client - it was GOOGLE - and they were not responding - I sent at least 3 bug reports none where responded to. When I worked at Amazon we had a company standard of getting back to people within 24 hrs. I live via my email as I am sure we all do. And to be honest it’s not just the lost email. It’s the fact that I spent all of Tuesday trying to work out how to fix it. Google once again proves the fact that THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH - pay with your duckets or pay with your time. So as of today at 10:30 am on Wednesday I have not heard back from Google - and they want me to trust them with documents - forget it. I will never and I encourage you all to refuse.

There is a great point that is at debate here - we heard about it at my Office 2.0 conference - is Software as a Service a must have? I would rather pay 40 bucks a month to have my gmail work - then to have it not work and to not even receive a reply - I want my Software but I want the service, I want to be able to have someone troubleshoot in a timely fashion when something does not work and I can not fix it.

And if you work at Google and are reading this - please HELP…….

Paul Rivera’s human response -

Hi Julia,

I saw your post today on TechCrunch and am deeply sorry for the experience you’ve had with Gmail. I don’t work in Gmail or support but I think I can at least direct your problems (and that comment) to someone who can restore access to your Gmail account.

What is the email address that you need access to?

Even if you’ve finally gained access, the experience you’ve had is very disconcerting for me as a Googler and I will make sure that it is at least brought up to to the people who need to hear it.

All the Best,

Paul

This entry was posted on Monday, October 23rd, 2006 at 7:42 am and is filed under Covered In Monkeys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.