Google really fails hard in the face of providing support when issues like this occur. The average person has to try various automated account recovery options which, as in the author's case, are readily changeable the moment the account is compromised, rendering them somewhat useless, and then users are out of luck.
It's a situation that is mind-boggling. Users as asked to place a significant chunk of their digital lives in the care of Google, it is unbelievable that they fail this badly. It's useful to note than it's not a situation that business users face. 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 would gladly pay for that level of support and security. For that matter if there were some way of converting my personal account over to G-Suite I would do so.
I would even not mind something like one-time payments for support calls, for example pay $50 for a service call to get assistance in a case like this. I just can't fathom the "no support" model at all.
This is why I panicked when they announced they won't sync Google Photos with Google Drive anymore. With the sync, I can setup one of my computers to constantly download the photos and then copy it onto a local backup and an online backup. If my Google Account gets locked - I'll just copy the photos into something else and move on with my life. They removed that saying it's confusing to users - all the while it was an option users had to go explicitly enable.
I switched to iCloud which supports the download feature.
Where did they announce that? I still have that setting enabled, and I'm using it for backing up exactly the same way you described, so I really hope this doesn't just get magically turned off someday.
The most common way to do this is to have the Photos app on MacOS set to "download originals," then use whatever backup solution you like best.
I highly recommend setting this up. Last month through some sort of iCloud glitch my fiancé lost almost all of her photos from before the beginning of this year. We've escalated it to their highest tiers of support but the photos are gone. Redundancy is important, and even the best providers aren't foolproof. It was devastating to lose all of those memories.
Card-based cameras -> Plug in card, Dropbox + Google Photos pick up new photos
Backup 'server': Local synced Dropbox folder -> Local + Cloud backups
I couldn't see how to add iCloud to my existing syncs / backups. When I looked at it, I couldn't be sure it would keep photos on my phone long enough to allow Dropbox and Google Photos to pick them up. It's good that it's possible to get the originals over at a MacOS machine. Might be worth exploring then.
This is how I do it too, then backups are done through Arq and Amazon. I consider Google Photos as a “share / social” area. I would never entrust masters with Google.
> I would even not mind something like one-time payments for support calls, for example pay $50 for a service call to get assistance in a case like this.
I can just see the people raging about this on social media now.
“Google charged me $50 to fix an issue with my account!”
“Google won’t give me any help unless I pay them! Extortion artists!”
Sure, people would complain. But they complain now when these issues happen. I'd rather a scenario where people complain but the problems are getting fixed. It's not completely unreasonable that Google offers low/no support for free products. It is unreasonable that they don't have any way to pay for help when there are serious problems.
This was quite unfun. (Fixed now, after I blackboxed what the actual problem was. Some Googlers are looking into the docs/error messages to fix that half.)
There’s also another bad side effect of Google. Google makes and gives away stuff for free and one of the reasons they do it is because they run a lean operation. They don’t provide any kind of support. Let’s say someone want to start a new company that provides all the same features of Google and provide solid support - there’s no way they can do it for free. Or even if it’s a reasonable price, people are going to pick free anyway. Except those of us who care. Just the fact Google and Facebook gives it away from free, in a sense, kills any possible paid service in the domains they operate. IMHO that qualifies as anti-competition and anti-trust. But the laws aren’t designed for this scenario at all.
Google One has support, it's pretty much the only button in the UI when you go there.
EDIT: actually it looks like the support might need to be reached from within the account, so that's still a major problem when you can't get in at all.
This kind of stuff is horrifying to me and why I willingly pay the Apple Tax. At the end of the day they have stores full of humans I can walk into and tell my sob story to and excellent telephone support.
I don't believe it works the way you think it does:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204921"If you need more help, contact Apple Support. While we can answer your questions about the account recovery process, we can't verify your identity or expedite the process in any way."
That is fine but the scam started by reassigning the SIM; something not related to Apple. I am not having enough criminal fantasy but in your Apple World you live in a monoculture...usually this makes it just easier for intruders to make problems.
> I would even not mind something like one-time payments for support calls, for example pay $50 for a service call to get assistance in a case like this. I just can't fathom the "no support" model at all.
Have you considered alternatives that do offer support?
> 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?
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).
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...
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.
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.
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).
Buy a domain (12+USD year depends on extension) + G-Suite (around 4-5USD/Month) and that's it.
As a bonus, you always can swap your email provider without changing your email address.
It's a situation that is mind-boggling. Users as asked to place a significant chunk of their digital lives in the care of Google, it is unbelievable that they fail this badly. It's useful to note than it's not a situation that business users face. 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 would gladly pay for that level of support and security. For that matter if there were some way of converting my personal account over to G-Suite I would do so.
I would even not mind something like one-time payments for support calls, for example pay $50 for a service call to get assistance in a case like this. I just can't fathom the "no support" model at all.