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Comment by Analemma_ | Hacker News Reader

> People who pay for G-suite have real support, even ::gasp:: telephone support. Why on earth does google not offer this to consumer users?

I know people are getting sick of this phrase, but I'm going to repeat it here anyway because it answers your question perfectly: why doesn't Google have customer support? They do, but if the product is free, you're not the customer.

As you note, Google does have real customer support for people who pay. The other people are not customers, they are advertising targets. Why waste money on support for them?

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As someone using G Suite for personal purposes I'm glad to pay for support honestly (+ the peace of mind of being mostly in charge of my data, not having it be mined for whatever purposes).

> Why waste money on support for them?

On the other hand, a paid edge case support option for otherwise free services would be a win for both sides. If only the long term projection of the resulting incentives would not be so ugly...

Google One advertises real support for consumer users... but it turns out they can't really so anything but read support docs to you.

Is this a reference to something? I haven't heard much about Google One's support good or bad.

The concern I'd have with G-One is that if you lost access to your account, you also aren't a Google One customer, and the support likely won't assist you. Creating a chicken/egg situation.

Yes, there should be some support for non-paying users. Even if it comes at a cost, like a flat rate incident fee.

Not a reference to any story, just a few personal experiences. I had various issues, and they couldn't escalate anything to actually fix them, they just read support docs back to me. It's not like the paid support that gsuite customers get (although I'd be happy to pay more for that if I could).

I didn't realize, I apparently was automatically made a Google One user when they created the program because I pay for a bit of extra Drive storage. I'd really like to hear stories from people who have had a hacked/stolen account and the support Google One provided.

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