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.

Just Look At Her Other Garbage Articles

[MediaStreams]

Notice a pattern about her Android articles?

http://labs.daylife.com/journalist/nancy_gohring [daylife.com]

One guess, which type of phone does Nancy own? i...

I can fully understand the operators

[dnaumov]

Disclaimer: I work for the biggest mobile provider in a nordic country. This is completely normal behaviour for a mobile provider. We are the bit/call/sms delivery pipe. 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. If your problem is directly relevant to our network (for example, bad coverage that is consistent across multiple phone models) or our actual services (ringbacktone, mms delivery, answering machine, push email, etc), you call us. If your problem is phonemodel-specific, we can't help, you call the phone manufacturer, even if you happened to purchase the phone at our store. There are literally thousands of phone models out there. To be expecting your operator to help you with with your random phone model and it's specific issues is naive at best.

Re:Avoid 1.0

[Paradigm_Complex]

It's version 2.1 of the software, which is the part Google did. HTC did the hardware, and not only have they released phones before but a number of Android-based phones.

It's really not all that much of reach to expect that, by now, they'd have it pretty close to bug-free, especially considering the (relatively) quiet front with regards to previous problems on Android-based HTC phones.

I agree with your point about avoiding the bleeding-edge, I just don't think it applies here.

Re:Avoid 1.0

[JorDan Clock]

Except the phone runs Android 2.1, so according to your rule-of-thumb, it should be safe.

Re:Question

[SignalFreq]

They claimed that the Google Support forums were being swamped with complaints. However, a simple search shows that "swamped" apparently means a couple hundred topics, only a few of which are related to service issues (most seem to deal with rate plan questions, upgrade questions, or how to order questions):

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/label?lid=18bf75ad33b7d554&hl=en [google.com]

Re:new to customer service

[Entropy98]

I've had to contact Google customer service in the past, as a paying advertiser and as a adsense publisher, and in my experience you wait 2-3 days to get a form letter that doesn't even apply to your question/problem.

I've heard, and experienced somewhat, that this improves once you start making them decent money.

In their defense they must receive an unbelievable amount of stupid questions.

Re:new to customer service

[Chees0rz]

I reported a fraudulent charge on my Credit Card from Adwords. Did everything Google said to do (followed links, submitted e-form to customer service). I waited a week, replied to the "We got your message email please wait" email and finally got a person to respond.

"Please work this out with your credit card institute."

Not the best experience.

Re:new to customer service

[maxume]

Ya know, a whole bunch of people do pay them to place advertising, and they have been doing so for a few years now.

Re:I can fully understand the operators

[todrules]

Wow, really? I used to work tech support for T-Mobile USA. We were expected to try our best to help troubleshoot any T-Mobile customer using any T-Mobile phone. I helped setup iPhones on our network, troubleshoot a ton of European and Asian devices that I had never heard of, and helped customers who couldn't receive text messages while they were visiting Zimbabwe. I was extremely surprised that T-Mobile was not doing the tech support for the Nexus, since they support every other device out there anyways no matter where you got it from. Pretty strange...T-Mobile will provide tech support for the iPhone but not a Nexus One.

Re:new to customer service

[digitalunity]

As a long time worker in a call center, I can vouch for this. The official business plan for customer support is to find the least effort solution that will make them happy enough to not need to call you again. You couldn't get an engineer on the line unless you knew exactly the right questions to ask or were a top 20 client.

Re:I'm inclined to cut them some slack.

[EZLeeAmused]

Same here. I',m not an anti-Apple-fanboy but I won't be writing Phone apps because I don't want to be forced to buy a *Mac to do so. My Nexus One sync'ed with my existing Google accounts with no problems, the apps I have downloaded work as expected. I do have an iPod Touch and the only thing I miss is the pinch on the web browser, but I'll probably download Dolphin tomorrow and see if that fills that small void. But you are 100% correct. People are quick to complain about any problem they have. Pitifully few are as quick to submit praise when things go smoothly. Granted, it isn't unrealistic to expect most bugs to have been worked out, but still...

Real Problem

[ukemike]

This is the google support forum discussion that has earned all this bad press.

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?tid=0bd8ccd4799040c2&hl=en&fid=0bd8ccd4799040c200047c99c44ddfe6 [google.com]

By 6pm today I read most of these posts. There are several squeaky wheels that are posting over and over but there are also dozens of individuals that are all telling the same story. These people are in areas with good 3g reception (as confirmed by the coverage map or by another 3g t-mobile phone in the same place at the same time. They report that their N1 continually switches between edge and g3. Their data download rates are about 1/10th what they should be. Many have reported that the constant switching between networks is draining their battery within a few hours. When they call HTC for support, HTC blames T-mobile's network. T-mobile blames HTC and claims that they have not been given any support documentation on the N1 from Google or HTC. The complainers are in a wide variety of locations throughout the country.

Gizmodo reports on the story and claims that their phones have poor 3g reception as well:

http://gizmodo.com/5443123/does-the-nexus-one-have-3g-problems [gizmodo.com]

The same problem crops up in the comments after this story at tmonews

http://www.tmonews.com/2010/01/nexus-one-incurring-3g-problems/ [tmonews.com]

Lots of people are reporting the same problems here on the androidforums

http://androidforums.com/nexus-one/34321-nexus-one-3g-problems.html [androidforums.com]

So I really don't think this is due to ignorant customers. There is a real problem with at least some of these phones. It may be there is a batch out there with bad antennas, or there could be a software glitch. If it's software then one would hope a patch is coming from Google asap. Regardless of what the problem is, Google has made a terrible mistake in ignoring this for almost 2 days now. Even if they had replied in their own support forums just once saying "sorry we're on it get back to you soon." They might not look so bad. Personally I think Google's experience with leaving their "products" in beta for years on end has finally bitten them on the ass.

Re:new to customer service

[dwater]

Actually, when I bought a Microsoft product (for my Mac, as it happens), the product came with a few (forget exactly) free calls. When I had occasion to call them, the support was excellent.

Yes, I hate Microsoft products (too?), but their support was excellent.

Re:The incumbent vendors won't give me progress

[leenks]

http://searchenginewatch.com/3634991 [searchenginewatch.com]

Re:The incumbent vendors won't give me progress

[dwater]

That doesn't list even baidu, clearly not comprehensive or accurate.

Seems like it is only considering the USA.

Re:new to customer service

[Anonymous Coward]

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 [htc.com] 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.

Which leads via the help center to http://www.htc.com/www/support/nexusone/