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The only way to get hold of a human at Google

301 points by _pghu 14y ago

...is apparently posting to Hacker News. My GMail account has been disabled. "Unusual Usage - Account Temporarily Locked Down" "To keep our systems healthy, Google has temporarily disabled your account. This primarily occurs when we detect unusually high levels of activity on your account. In most cases, it should take one hour to regain access. In rare cases, it can take up to 24 hours for access to be reinstated." It's been at least 10 hours (Gmail app on my iPhone shows "last updated: 5/22"), and going "welp, you're fucked, wait a day to get your email" is not an acceptable answer. All of the "help" forms have no contact information and no other way to get in touch with someone, so I'm putting out the "hey, Google employees who read HN, tell me who I can talk to about this" bat signal. I haven't changed my email use patterns at all in months; the message occurs on a browser in incognito mode, I don't use any extensions, etc. On a more general note, on what planet is "you don't get any email for a day and have no recourse, and we won't tell you why, or let you do anything to fix that" an acceptable action? UPDATE At 10:20, my account magically unlocked itself (I did nothing between posting this thread - my iPhone started dinging like crazy and then I could log back in) and is now working again, without anyone waving the magic wand. So, if you run into this, just know you only have to go 10 hours without email, instead of a whole day. I have been using my personal domain for most mail for a while, and this has just prompted me to accelerate that process to at least be able to maintain backup ways to send/receive mail. I do still hope this thread stays up for a while, primarily so that the workflow around these account lockout messages gets better. It's fine to lock accounts out for security reasons, and I understand that algorithms have problems. That said, there should be more details of what they think triggered the algorithm, and a way to remediate it. If they think it is unauthorized access, try to auth with n+1 factors instead of the n normally required, etc.

insertnickname 14y ago
It isn't exactly news that Gmail accounts are closed for no obvious reason. I'm sorry that you're unable to access your e-mail, but at least now you've (hopefully) learned that Google isn't trustworthy.
sparknlaunch12 14y ago
I have heard this happening a few times. However I thought you can register a mobile number to help resetting your account password?
- gergles 14y ago
  It isn't the account password; I can log in fine, it's just that I immediately get redirected to the "bad boy" page.
sp332 14y ago
Out of curiosity: if I set up a forwarding rule on my Gmail, and Google suspends my account temporarily, will it still forward my email?
- gergles 14y ago
  Yes, it appears to still do that. I can also still access my account via ActiveSync on my iPhone (but not IMAP or the web interface.)
andybak 14y ago
And this time I'd like the outcome of this thread not to be just "A Google insider wandered past and fixed this guys problem" but "Here's how we're going to make sure it doesn't happen again. Because next time it might be me and by then Hacker News might have grown weary of these kind of posts and I won't be able to get the necessary attention. Nothing. I repeat - nothing - is pushing me to move away from dependence on Google products more than the fear of this happening.
- gergles 14y ago
  Yes, I posted this because I've noticed that is what happens -- someone comes here and waits for a Google employee to wave their magic wand -- but I am well aware that people will get sick of seeing these on HN (and a company the size of Google offering products people rely on should not have the only contact method being "go to the secret club and say the magic word"). If there were additional authentication methods, or if it even just stopped you from sending mail (if they thought activity volume were too high), that would be... better, at least.
  - ChuckMcM 14y ago
    I note (for completeness) that if you pay for your mail service you get an escalation path that goes to a human. I agree that it would be nice if the free accounts had this option too but having been inside the chocolate factory I can also see why this is not practical.
    - gergles 14y ago
      You can't pay for @gmail.com addresses, or else I absolutely would. If I'm going to make everyone change the e-mail they send me things at, I'm sure as hell going to change it to a non-GMail address now.
      - dkulchenko 14y ago
        Switching to a custom domain is a good idea even if you don't pay for Google Apps. Because if Google kicks you off for whatever reason, you just change your MX record and your email is fine.
alainc 14y ago
Which planet? Planet Google, of course. You're a tool in their shed, not the other way around.
srik 14y ago
Someone must have gotten hold of your email+password combo. Mine got stolen once, Ive no idea how but suddenly all my friends started texting me saying they've been receiving spam mails from my account all of a sudden. Google might be reacting to similar?
anigbrowl 14y ago
On a more general note, on what planet is "you don't get any email for a day and have no recourse, and we won't tell you why, or let you do anything to fix that" an acceptable action? ON a planet where you get high-performance email services for free, apparently. I feel for you, but the lack of personal response (IME) doesn't mean that your communications are being ignored, just your need for a response. This is still far from ideal, but typing out responses take time away from simply fixing problems. If you pay for gmail storage or an apps account, then obviously the above doesn't apply.
- gergles 14y ago
  I do pay for GMail storage, so the predictable parade of "WHAT DID YOU EXPECT FOR FREE?????" (answer: exactly what was advertised, a working email service) is tiresome -- and besides that, there isn't even a contact form for this issue. There is no way to communicate with anyone or to even raise an alert of "hey, I have a problem". The only way that it is going to get fixed is for someone to manually intervene, and the only way to make that happen is apparently to complain loudly here until a Google employee waves their magic employee wand at my account.
  - rbanffy 14y ago
    > exactly what was advertised, a working email service Claiming Gmail (even the free one) doesn't work when, in fact, it experiences seemingly random and very infrequent outages, is disingenuous. It's incredibly hard to make a complex application like Gmail work perfectly all the time for all its users and I'm completely sure they are well within their ToS. Much like we are willing to live with software that has some bugs, we must be willing to live with services that aren't always there. Buses stop, rails need maintenance and your plumbing sometimes fails. Life continues.
    - rory096 14y ago
      To be fair, the OP shouldn't be able to expect a 100% working email service. But to expect that the provider not be actively causing it to fail seems reasonable.
wpietri 14y ago
> on what planet is "you don't get any email for a day and have no recourse, and we won't tell you why, or let you do anything to fix that" an acceptable action? On the planet where you're the product rather than the customer? The financial truth of 99% of their business is that users to the extent that they look at ads. And since ads aren't worth much individually, people must look in large numbers. All the people I know at Google are great folks, and they sincerely want to serve users. But customer service is expensive. So is writing special-purpose code for weird edge cases.
tocomment 14y ago
That's terrible. What are some better options for web-based email?
- minikites 14y ago
  I like fastmail.fm
  - zszugyi 14y ago
    I used to use their free service, but their spam filtering was pretty bad (in 2010-2011).
    - minikites 14y ago
      The free accounts only have basic spam protection, the paid accounts have more advanced spam protection. https://www.fastmail.fm/pages/fastmail/docs/pricingtbl.html https://www.fastmail.fm/pages/fastmail/docs/pricingtbl.html
  - rachelbythebay 14y ago
    Don't go there for XMPP (Jabber). They clearly don't care about making it stable. It will disconnect you regularly.
donpdonp 14y ago
I agree its maddening to be locked out of gmail for no specific reason. I imagine the customer to employee ratio is a billion to one, so even if they had a ticket system, it'd be overwhelmed in a short amount of time. What are the chances your account was hacked and is now being used to pump out spam? Turn on two-factor authentication if you haven't already, once you are able to get back in.
- gergles 14y ago
  So close to zero as to be zero; my password is strong and I use 2FA. My account works on every other Google service but GMail.
- mayop100 14y ago
  They do have support reps and a ticketing system. You have to pay for them though. I suggest upgrading your account when it comes back online so that you're paying for support.
- Karunamon 14y ago
  >I imagine the customer to employee ratio is a billion to one, so even if they had a ticket system, it'd be overwhelmed in a short amount of time. If their system is locking out enough people who shouldn't be that they would become overwhelmed, google is doing something very, very wrong.
cletus 14y ago
I'm sorry for the trouble you're having. I have on idea of what's happened and why but thought it timely to point out for the benefit of those reading this thread: I highly suggest you use two-factor authentication with GMail: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/advanced-sign-in-security-for-your.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/advanced-sign-in-secu... Or Jeff Atwood's post on this: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/04/make-your-email-hacker-proof.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/04/make-your-email-hac... Your email is too valuable to be left open to attack, hijacking or theft.
- patio11 14y ago
  cough If any Googlers are reading this, Google often phrases error messages more like that quote ("Us us us us us us, ergo, you don't get what you need") instead of like cletus did ("You you you, you you you, ergo, we're going to take this action on your behalf".). Dale Carnegie, Cletus, and every sane copywriter on the planet strongly suggest rewriting that prompt and related ones. After taking baby steps like sounding like one cares more major interventions like actually caring may be called for. (I enormously respect the Googlers who I know that that line will discomfit but this is criticism that you guys have gone out of your way for years to earn.)
  - deleted 14y ago
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- OzzyB 14y ago
  Really? It is now a suggested policy to use additional authorization flows in order to use this email service? Are we talking about the same email service? You know, the one that's supposed to be so awesome that you'll quickly forget about getting your email the "old fashioned way" by having to mess with those pesky things like setting up a POP/IMAP account on your host provider? Talk about things coming full circle. [Addendum} No, haven't had my email hacked. I guess I was a little blow-hardy, thanks for responses :)
debacle 14y ago
Here's a serious question - how much would you pay per annum to be able to talk to someone when you have an email problem?
- gergles 14y ago
  $50, the same they charge Apps users. You can't buy support for @gmail.com accounts.
  - bdb 14y ago
    Forward your email to an Apps account, then set up your @gmail.com address as an alias. Works great and you get support. Gmail is smart enough to set the outbound email address properly for any replies.
- eli 14y ago
  I don't know, but I'd be willing to pay a fair bit per incident. I suspect it would be well in excess of what it would cost to provide such support.
  - debacle 14y ago
    I think that model creates a moral hazard considering that in this instance the account was locked down by Google.
    - eli 14y ago
      Yup, it's perhaps a tough PR sell because it create the potential for misaligned incentives, but I don't think it is a totally crazy idea. I'm pretty sure Microsoft waives the fee for their paid TechNet support if the problem was due to a legitimate bug or problem on their end.
      - debacle 14y ago
        Microsoft probably has a much higher ARPU than Google does.
amalag 14y ago
So much of my life is on Gmail, I HAD to setup two factor authentication, and it was easy.
- sjs382 14y ago
  OP claims to have 2FA set up. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4014014 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4014014
alaskamiller 14y ago
There's actually a big support team for Gmail. For enterprise customers. Here are instructions: http://gmailaccountrecovery.blogspot.com/ http://gmailaccountrecovery.blogspot.com/
- dsl 14y ago
  gmailaccountrecovery.blogspot.com appears to be unrelated/unaffilated with Google. The bottom of the page says "(c) 2012 Brett K. Carver". Also, blogspot?
  - snowwrestler 14y ago
    Google owns Blogger and hosts all their official blogs there. Example: http://analytics.blogspot.com/ http://analytics.blogspot.com/ That does not prove gmailaccountrecovery.blogspot.com is an official blog though. Edit: for clarity
    - DrJokepu 14y ago
      The site you've linked doesn't have any Google branding. Moreover, none of the real Google blogs have adverts on them. In addition, the visual design of the page looks rather unprofessional. It's very unlikely that this site is affiliated with Google.
      - stfu 14y ago
        Plus there is some other hint: " This page is not sponsored by or affiliated with Google."
      - snowwrestler 14y ago
        Agreed on all that; my post was just addressing the last question.
  - zacharycohn 14y ago
    Blogspot is owned by google.
deleted 14y ago
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robomartin 14y ago
This is a general problem with Google and their customer-no-service attitude. It's just deplorable. It really is. You have to wonder: What is it going to take for them to give a shit and actually do something about it? Very soon the word gets out that HN is where you can get your Google bullshit problems fixed and we'll be treated to pages-upon-pages of people with Google problems. The general issue is that of account suspension or closings without any recourse. It seems that the most damage is being done in the AdSense/AdWords ecosystem. I've said this before, with the introduction of services like Google Drive, one has to really think hard before jumping in with both feet. If you have your email, documents, advertising, revenue generation, file storage and other important services with Google you might be risking a lot. At the present time you have to assume that all of those services could evaporate and go "poof" overnight and you'll never know why. That's why I don't use any of them. I have better things to do with my life than to have a heart-attack because a Google algo decided to shut-down my business and cut me off from all of my data. Seriously, Google, Larry, Sergey, this is embarrassing (and evil).
- bmelton 14y ago
  Giving away an awesome mail service for free to the world is not evil. Being too busy to support every Tom, Dick and Harry that has problems with it is also not evil. An analogy: "Hey Tom, I'm not using this rake any more. Would you like to have it? I'll give it to you." "Sure Dick. Thanks, this is a very nice rake indeed." The rake breaks. "Hey Dick. The rake doesn't work any more. Come over here and fix it." "Sorry Tom, I can't do that. I'm busy raking my lawn." "I hate you Dick, because you are evil." It's been said numerous times in this thread -- if you want support, you pay for it. If your email account isn't important enough to you to pay for it, then you don't really have much grounds to gripe if it breaks. I don't see how that makes anyone evil.
  - Karunamon 14y ago
    > if you want support, you pay for it. That's no excuse to provide a shitty service. For 99% of people GMail is not shitty and is infact quite awesome. That doesn't change the fact that with the amount of people Google has, not having even a queue for people to get minor issues fixed (Freaking MICROSOFT can get this right, for crying out loud!!) is ridiculous.
kyt 14y ago
Someone broke into my gmail account in 2009, changed the password, and I've never gotten it back. I tried to recover it using their standard form, but they ask all sorts of ridiculous questions like the day I started using gmail, the day I started using Google docs, etc.
capo 14y ago
You have my sympathies and all but this is getting annoying, every once in awhile the HN front page gets cluttered with these sorts of posts, wait the day out it’s not that unreasonable. Complaining when not even half way through the designated time period comes across as whining. And for the record you could have gotten human support if you were a paying Apps costumer, for the free stuff you have to deal with automation. It’s just the same thread with the same comments each and every time; “They don’t respect users”, “Their customer support sucks”, this doesn’t elevate the discussion on HN and shows the false sense of entitlement we all have even in regards to the free stuff.
- JumpCrisscross 14y ago
  I don't mind paying for a premium account with support. But as an individual with a small data footprint I really don't have a need for Google Apps (the OP pays for extra storage which isn't evidently magic enough). If they gave me the option I'd gladly pay for the service (in fact, on some level I'd feel more comfortable).
  - capo 14y ago
    My point is that for the price of "free" their support is good enough. Not to mention that they did so to protect your account.
- pyre 14y ago
  Gmail isn't free. We are paying for it with our eyeballs. Gmail would only be 'free' in the way that you imply if Google was getting nothing in return. Just because money isn't changing hands doesn't mean it's free.
  - capo 14y ago
    which means pennies for every hundred user, the support is good enough for ~free.
  - statictype 14y ago
    So you've redefined the word free to make it meaningless. Giving a way food to homeless people? You're getting the satisfaction of having done something good in return! That wasn't a free meal!
mmahemoff 14y ago
FWIW and taking the subject a bit too literally, another way is to be active on Google Plus.
- slurgfest 14y ago
  How do you do that when you are locked out of your Google account?
  - mmahemoff 14y ago
    I guess having to switch between my GMail and my Apps account has that one advantage. But fair.
paulhauggis 14y ago
I've noticed this trend with many big companies lately (Amazon, Paypal, and Google). Everything is automated and they give you almost 0 chance of defending yourself. They also don't care because they are de-facto monopolies. Amazon suspended my account 4 months ago. I'm just getting the $5K they owe me in money now. To this day, I still don't know why they suspended me (100% feedback and virtually no problems). They shuffled me around their automated system with the result being that my account stayed suspended. I was also suspended a couple of years ago from Google Adsense due to one of my scripts going awry. I wasn't clicking my ads, but It refreshed a page a bunch of times with Adsense ads on it. If I try to signup with my name, I just never get any response back. This one was definitely my fault. I could just use my LLC, but I got out of that game ages ago.
- lopatin 14y ago
  PayPal is actually very reasonable when it comes to getting in contact with human operators. I've never had a problem with that. Receiving decent support from them however is a whole other issue.
  - mikelward 14y ago
    I tried to change my legal name. Faxed them copies of official documentation twice. Never received a response.
- pyre 14y ago
  I noticed this recently with CraigsList too. They have a 'contact form' that just sends you an automated email suggesting that you read their FAQ page. Why bother to have a contact form then?
  - paulhauggis 14y ago
    Amazon is a little better, but not by much. They send you an automated email, but sign it with a real name. I wonder if they just have a program on the other side that cycles through names.
bifrost 14y ago
This is why you should never use free email for anything you care about, and especially not GMail. I hate to break it to people but the PAID service is not better either, you're just paying for what you used to get for free...
vibrunazo 14y ago
A 2 second google search for "gmail support forum" brought me to: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/gmail http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/gmail Have you tried that? I honestly never have and would love to know if those are actually efficient. If you haven't tried it, please do then report back to us.
- alanfang 14y ago
  The Google support forum is a black hole. At best you'll get a canned copy pasted response from a Google employee that won't help you.
drivebyacct2 14y ago
Are you sure you have 2FA on? Do you have a desktop client that could have been compromised? I'd love a follow-up on how your account got flagged if it wasn't compromised. (Note, I ask because the last time this happened on HN, several people errantly thought they had 2FA turned on when they didn't). (Some days I wonder if I angered a stalker who downvotes everything I post... or if it's some darker HN sign. Sigh)
- gergles 14y ago
  Yeah, I have no clue how it got flagged. See my update above. And yeah, I had 2FA on -- I was challenged appropriately logging in to GMail even, it was post-login where I got the "you're bad" page.
bobbydavid 14y ago
The vitriol regarding Google's services is unjustified. Gmail is a free service. Google allows you to use it for free, in exchange for being shown ads. You have access to the same infrastructure that paying clients use, and the same uptime, but without paying. You can download all of your data easily, and at any time. Nothing about that is predatory on the free users. What would you say is the appropriate market "price" of 10-hour turnaround on emergency technical help? Having worked at a company that provided optional sub-24-hour response, I can tell you it's usually expensive.
- gergles 14y ago
  Well, that depends on why I need the "emergency help". If I need it for their problem, then I expect it for free, given that I am already "paying" for the service with my ad views and my personal data. If I need it because I screwed something up, that's a different (and irrelevant) discussion.
- antihero 14y ago
  Nope. Completely untrue. They benefit from us using their services. We are doing them a favour by choosing them over others - their business is built upon people using their services. If everyone just their our money back (£0) and stopped using Google's services, they wouldn't have a business any more. By using a service such as Gmail, we've trusted them and invested our on-line lives in them in order that they can monetise that usage and grow their business. It is completely unacceptable when that trust is betrayed and they cut you off without recourse.
  - bobbydavid 14y ago
    Google definitely benefits from free Gmail users, but that wouldn't be true if every free user got human attention when things went wrong, regardless of who was at fault. I guess I see OP's problem stemming from the existence of bugs/quirks/spam attacks. As a developer, I know these things are simply impossible to prevent with 100% certainty. I don't feel that Google is morally culpable for bugs or spammers, unless they are somehow adding bugs to the point of negligence. In fact, as a developer, the idea of being morally culpable for bugs scares me, since that kind of implies I am doomed to be immoral.
deleted 14y ago
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DanBC 14y ago
> On a more general note, on what planet is "you don't get any email for a day and have no recourse, and we won't tell you why, or let you do anything to fix that" an acceptable action? Serious answer: email is not reliable. There are lots of factors outside your control. Please don't rely on email being available. Unfortunately most providers today are pretty solid most of the time, meaning people put too much trust into their email providers.
gattler 14y ago
Sigh when will people finally wake up and understand that Google, Yahoo or Facebook are Advertising companies. Anything that isn't affecting their really big clients in advertising isn't getting any sophisticated support and even that area of business might be maltreated in respect to professional support. And don't be shortsighted here. IT absolutely -needs- support. So if you really wanted professional support for emailing you have to go to a tech company that doesn't earn a living with selling your Browsing history to other parties or worse. In case of an email product I did not find anything yet that would serve my professional needs. The only really 99% reliable thing yet has been renting a root server (or using my own machine with DynDNS) with a nice swell Postfix/Dovecot install. The Internet was invented as decentralised, if not even distributed technology. Buying in (you buy with your cookies) a centralised technology like FB, Google or Yahoo, even if they are in the cloud or in the edge - it's still one vendor, for me was always against the economical philosophy of the Web. If you don't have the knowledge how to set up a distributed email node (if you allow me calling it that way), I would recommend lavabit.com, they are reliable and non-commercial (However also subject to the patriot act b/c located in the US). And not only the Internet with its industry-raped non-standard HTML language, its ridiculous insufficient Border Gateway Protocol or its patchwork 7bit/8bit e-mail MIME protocols is one heck of an enormously cool hack, also the Web can be nowadays. If you don't get any support from cookie traders like Google or even Ghostery, why don't go self-made and install a distributed Social network like GNUSocial? The Internet used to be a business opportunity for everyone, don't let it get destroyed by monopolies, that block inventions with 15 year-old patents.
antihero 14y ago
I think if I got my account disabled I'd go to their offices and demand an explanation.
- niels_olson 14y ago
  It's a closed campus. Best of luck with that. In fact, why don't you do a trial run and let us know how it goes?
  - antihero 14y ago
    I think they just have normal offices in the UK. Otherwise, dress like a courier.
nilsjuenemann 14y ago
Do you using Chrome with these two extensions? https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mihcahmgecmbnbcchbopgniflfhgnkff https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mihcahmgecmbnbcchb... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ejidjjhkpiempkbhmpbfngldlkglhimk https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ejidjjhkpiempkbhmp... For me these combination made a request loop (response from gmail was 404 and 501) for some circumstances. As a result my account was temporary disabled ...
- gergles 14y ago
  I do use Chrome, but no GMail related extensions (and specifically not either of those.)
packetslave 14y ago
there should be more details of what they think triggered the algorithm One problem with this approach is that it also provides information to the bad guy, e.g. "here's what you did to get caught, so don't do that next time"
pyre 14y ago
For all of the people railing against Google/Gmail, what do you use that is comparable to Gmail? Do you use Android? How do you use it without a Google account?
CrownStem 14y ago
It amazes me that people rely upon a free Email service for critical personal infrastructure.
dholowiski 14y ago
Depends what service you are talking about. I have a phone# to a helpdesk for Google Adwords. Real live human beings work there. But we pay a buttload of money for that service. Also google apps for business promises 'Around-the-clock phone and priority email support.' I guess you're just getting what you paid for.
Matt_Cutts 14y ago
[redacted], it looks like this issue resolved itself; I'm curious, did you mention your email address anywhere on this page? I didn't see it mentioned. I'm happy to ask people for more details. Normally when you have two-factor authentication on, I wouldn't expect you to see this message. So there might be some improvements we need to make on our side to try to prevent this from happening for other people.
- brudgers 14y ago
  Matt, I think your message is consistent with the disconnect people feel when experiencing problems with Google services. The root of the issue for the consumer of Google services is not a loss of email access (that's just the sort of technical problem everyone has when dealing with the internet). The issue is that there is no person representing Google who says, "I'm sorry you are experiencing difficulty, let me see what I can do to help you." Google doesn't even go there on their own support forums: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/gmail/%22Account$20Temporarily$20Locked$20Down%22/gmail/U3ql67r2VFo/Ip-Sm-cSxuIJ http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/gmail/%22Ac... There is a meaningful number of posts for the exact issue the OP experienced and what little assistance that Googlers provide is generally of the "you did something wrong" variety rather than "we're working on making it better."
  - Matt_Cutts 14y ago
    brudgers, I think the larger mission for Google has to be to drive down the number of people having problems like this. So Google's philosophy (for better or worse) is often to find and fix the root causes of problems. So for an account that was hijacked, we'd prefer to put our resources into finding new ways to prevent and protect against hijacked accounts, rather than putting a ton of people into one-on-one sessions to work with people whose accounts are hijacked. For one thing, the scale of Gmail makes those sort of one-on-one consultations extremely difficult. Imagine if tens of thousands of accounts are hijacked every day. There's not an easy way to interact with all those people, which is why we look for ways to drive down the number of hijacks or provide additional solutions like two-factor authentication or other self-service solutions. In this case, there was a subtle point that I was trying to make, which is that the problem resolved itself even though the original poster never appeared to give his email address. Sometimes these issues are a matter of transient issues like connectivity or data centers where it's just a matter of time for the issue to fix itself.
aliasaria 14y ago
Once while waiting in the lobby of a Google office I could hear the receptionist answering a frustrating call from someone asking for a search result removal request. She had to read from a script because people call so often -- they call reception at any Google-related business asking for help.
kikito 14y ago
Ask for your money back
Cerin 14y ago
Google's response to user complaints is probably the worst aspect of the company, since it's effectively non-existent. Unfortunately, that's what happens when you have millions of users, and only a few thousand employees. Even if everyone at Google responded to user complaints, they probably couldn't get to them all. You're wise to have a backup plan.
Urgo 14y ago
I travel fairly often and most of the time when I travel I remote into my machine back home so I'm many times logged into google services from those two locations, then throw my android phone into the mix as well and my webserver which uses google api's linked to my account as well. All in all I have tons of connections to google at any given time. A few months ago I was flying home from a trip and was using the in flight wifi. As soon as I landed though at my connection city and turned on my phone I quickly noticed things weren't working. I tried logging into services and my account was disabled for some reason. I of course started freaking out since I have so many things linked to this such as my suplemental adsense income. I filled out a form assuming it'd go no where. I wasn't able to accomplish anything before boarding my next flight. Before take off I had the inkling to try the recover password option. To my surprise after doing that and having it txt my phone I was able to change my password and magically my account was unlocked..... Anyway I know the OP already fixed his issue but just wanted to share this story. If you ever get locked out saying your account is disabled try the recover password option as a way to unlock it....

301 points by _pghu 14y ago

insertnickname 14y ago

It isn't exactly news that Gmail accounts are closed for no obvious reason. I'm sorry that you're unable to access your e-mail, but at least now you've (hopefully) learned that Google isn't trustworthy.

sparknlaunch12 14y ago

I have heard this happening a few times. However I thought you can register a mobile number to help resetting your account password?

gergles 14y ago
It isn't the account password; I can log in fine, it's just that I immediately get redirected to the "bad boy" page.

sp332 14y ago

Out of curiosity: if I set up a forwarding rule on my Gmail, and Google suspends my account temporarily, will it still forward my email?

gergles 14y ago
Yes, it appears to still do that. I can also still access my account via ActiveSync on my iPhone (but not IMAP or the web interface.)

andybak 14y ago

And this time I'd like the outcome of this thread not to be just "A Google insider wandered past and fixed this guys problem" but "Here's how we're going to make sure it doesn't happen again. Because next time it might be me and by then Hacker News might have grown weary of these kind of posts and I won't be able to get the necessary attention. Nothing. I repeat - nothing - is pushing me to move away from dependence on Google products more than the fear of this happening.

gergles 14y ago
Yes, I posted this because I've noticed that is what happens -- someone comes here and waits for a Google employee to wave their magic wand -- but I am well aware that people will get sick of seeing these on HN (and a company the size of Google offering products people rely on should not have the only contact method being "go to the secret club and say the magic word"). If there were additional authentication methods, or if it even just stopped you from sending mail (if they thought activity volume were too high), that would be... better, at least.
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  I note (for completeness) that if you pay for your mail service you get an escalation path that goes to a human. I agree that it would be nice if the free accounts had this option too but having been inside the chocolate factory I can also see why this is not practical.
  - gergles 14y ago
    You can't pay for @gmail.com addresses, or else I absolutely would. If I'm going to make everyone change the e-mail they send me things at, I'm sure as hell going to change it to a non-GMail address now.
    - dkulchenko 14y ago
      Switching to a custom domain is a good idea even if you don't pay for Google Apps. Because if Google kicks you off for whatever reason, you just change your MX record and your email is fine.

alainc 14y ago

Which planet? Planet Google, of course. You're a tool in their shed, not the other way around.

srik 14y ago

Someone must have gotten hold of your email+password combo. Mine got stolen once, Ive no idea how but suddenly all my friends started texting me saying they've been receiving spam mails from my account all of a sudden. Google might be reacting to similar?

anigbrowl 14y ago

On a more general note, on what planet is "you don't get any email for a day and have no recourse, and we won't tell you why, or let you do anything to fix that" an acceptable action? ON a planet where you get high-performance email services for free, apparently. I feel for you, but the lack of personal response (IME) doesn't mean that your communications are being ignored, just your need for a response. This is still far from ideal, but typing out responses take time away from simply fixing problems. If you pay for gmail storage or an apps account, then obviously the above doesn't apply.

gergles 14y ago
I do pay for GMail storage, so the predictable parade of "WHAT DID YOU EXPECT FOR FREE?????" (answer: exactly what was advertised, a working email service) is tiresome -- and besides that, there isn't even a contact form for this issue. There is no way to communicate with anyone or to even raise an alert of "hey, I have a problem". The only way that it is going to get fixed is for someone to manually intervene, and the only way to make that happen is apparently to complain loudly here until a Google employee waves their magic employee wand at my account.
- rbanffy 14y ago
  > exactly what was advertised, a working email service Claiming Gmail (even the free one) doesn't work when, in fact, it experiences seemingly random and very infrequent outages, is disingenuous. It's incredibly hard to make a complex application like Gmail work perfectly all the time for all its users and I'm completely sure they are well within their ToS. Much like we are willing to live with software that has some bugs, we must be willing to live with services that aren't always there. Buses stop, rails need maintenance and your plumbing sometimes fails. Life continues.
  - rory096 14y ago
    To be fair, the OP shouldn't be able to expect a 100% working email service. But to expect that the provider not be actively causing it to fail seems reasonable.

wpietri 14y ago

> on what planet is "you don't get any email for a day and have no recourse, and we won't tell you why, or let you do anything to fix that" an acceptable action? On the planet where you're the product rather than the customer? The financial truth of 99% of their business is that users to the extent that they look at ads. And since ads aren't worth much individually, people must look in large numbers. All the people I know at Google are great folks, and they sincerely want to serve users. But customer service is expensive. So is writing special-purpose code for weird edge cases.

tocomment 14y ago

That's terrible. What are some better options for web-based email?

minikites 14y ago
I like fastmail.fm
- zszugyi 14y ago
  I used to use their free service, but their spam filtering was pretty bad (in 2010-2011).
  - minikites 14y ago
    The free accounts only have basic spam protection, the paid accounts have more advanced spam protection. https://www.fastmail.fm/pages/fastmail/docs/pricingtbl.html https://www.fastmail.fm/pages/fastmail/docs/pricingtbl.html
- rachelbythebay 14y ago
  Don't go there for XMPP (Jabber). They clearly don't care about making it stable. It will disconnect you regularly.

donpdonp 14y ago

I agree its maddening to be locked out of gmail for no specific reason. I imagine the customer to employee ratio is a billion to one, so even if they had a ticket system, it'd be overwhelmed in a short amount of time. What are the chances your account was hacked and is now being used to pump out spam? Turn on two-factor authentication if you haven't already, once you are able to get back in.

gergles 14y ago
So close to zero as to be zero; my password is strong and I use 2FA. My account works on every other Google service but GMail.
mayop100 14y ago
They do have support reps and a ticketing system. You have to pay for them though. I suggest upgrading your account when it comes back online so that you're paying for support.
Karunamon 14y ago
>I imagine the customer to employee ratio is a billion to one, so even if they had a ticket system, it'd be overwhelmed in a short amount of time. If their system is locking out enough people who shouldn't be that they would become overwhelmed, google is doing something very, very wrong.

cletus 14y ago

I'm sorry for the trouble you're having. I have on idea of what's happened and why but thought it timely to point out for the benefit of those reading this thread: I highly suggest you use two-factor authentication with GMail: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/advanced-sign-in-security-for-your.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/advanced-sign-in-secu... Or Jeff Atwood's post on this: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/04/make-your-email-hacker-proof.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/04/make-your-email-hac... Your email is too valuable to be left open to attack, hijacking or theft.

patio11 14y ago
cough If any Googlers are reading this, Google often phrases error messages more like that quote ("Us us us us us us, ergo, you don't get what you need") instead of like cletus did ("You you you, you you you, ergo, we're going to take this action on your behalf".). Dale Carnegie, Cletus, and every sane copywriter on the planet strongly suggest rewriting that prompt and related ones. After taking baby steps like sounding like one cares more major interventions like actually caring may be called for. (I enormously respect the Googlers who I know that that line will discomfit but this is criticism that you guys have gone out of your way for years to earn.)
- deleted 14y ago
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- deleted 14y ago
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OzzyB 14y ago
Really? It is now a suggested policy to use additional authorization flows in order to use this email service? Are we talking about the same email service? You know, the one that's supposed to be so awesome that you'll quickly forget about getting your email the "old fashioned way" by having to mess with those pesky things like setting up a POP/IMAP account on your host provider? Talk about things coming full circle. [Addendum} No, haven't had my email hacked. I guess I was a little blow-hardy, thanks for responses :)

debacle 14y ago

Here's a serious question - how much would you pay per annum to be able to talk to someone when you have an email problem?

gergles 14y ago
$50, the same they charge Apps users. You can't buy support for @gmail.com accounts.
- bdb 14y ago
  Forward your email to an Apps account, then set up your @gmail.com address as an alias. Works great and you get support. Gmail is smart enough to set the outbound email address properly for any replies.
eli 14y ago
I don't know, but I'd be willing to pay a fair bit per incident. I suspect it would be well in excess of what it would cost to provide such support.
- debacle 14y ago
  I think that model creates a moral hazard considering that in this instance the account was locked down by Google.
  - eli 14y ago
    Yup, it's perhaps a tough PR sell because it create the potential for misaligned incentives, but I don't think it is a totally crazy idea. I'm pretty sure Microsoft waives the fee for their paid TechNet support if the problem was due to a legitimate bug or problem on their end.
    - debacle 14y ago
      Microsoft probably has a much higher ARPU than Google does.

amalag 14y ago

So much of my life is on Gmail, I HAD to setup two factor authentication, and it was easy.

sjs382 14y ago
OP claims to have 2FA set up. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4014014 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4014014

alaskamiller 14y ago

There's actually a big support team for Gmail. For enterprise customers. Here are instructions: http://gmailaccountrecovery.blogspot.com/ http://gmailaccountrecovery.blogspot.com/

dsl 14y ago
gmailaccountrecovery.blogspot.com appears to be unrelated/unaffilated with Google. The bottom of the page says "(c) 2012 Brett K. Carver". Also, blogspot?
- snowwrestler 14y ago
  Google owns Blogger and hosts all their official blogs there. Example: http://analytics.blogspot.com/ http://analytics.blogspot.com/ That does not prove gmailaccountrecovery.blogspot.com is an official blog though. Edit: for clarity
  - DrJokepu 14y ago
    The site you've linked doesn't have any Google branding. Moreover, none of the real Google blogs have adverts on them. In addition, the visual design of the page looks rather unprofessional. It's very unlikely that this site is affiliated with Google.
    - stfu 14y ago
      Plus there is some other hint: " This page is not sponsored by or affiliated with Google."
    - snowwrestler 14y ago
      Agreed on all that; my post was just addressing the last question.
- zacharycohn 14y ago
  Blogspot is owned by google.

deleted 14y ago

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robomartin 14y ago

This is a general problem with Google and their customer-no-service attitude. It's just deplorable. It really is. You have to wonder: What is it going to take for them to give a shit and actually do something about it? Very soon the word gets out that HN is where you can get your Google bullshit problems fixed and we'll be treated to pages-upon-pages of people with Google problems. The general issue is that of account suspension or closings without any recourse. It seems that the most damage is being done in the AdSense/AdWords ecosystem. I've said this before, with the introduction of services like Google Drive, one has to really think hard before jumping in with both feet. If you have your email, documents, advertising, revenue generation, file storage and other important services with Google you might be risking a lot. At the present time you have to assume that all of those services could evaporate and go "poof" overnight and you'll never know why. That's why I don't use any of them. I have better things to do with my life than to have a heart-attack because a Google algo decided to shut-down my business and cut me off from all of my data. Seriously, Google, Larry, Sergey, this is embarrassing (and evil).

bmelton 14y ago
Giving away an awesome mail service for free to the world is not evil. Being too busy to support every Tom, Dick and Harry that has problems with it is also not evil. An analogy: "Hey Tom, I'm not using this rake any more. Would you like to have it? I'll give it to you." "Sure Dick. Thanks, this is a very nice rake indeed." The rake breaks. "Hey Dick. The rake doesn't work any more. Come over here and fix it." "Sorry Tom, I can't do that. I'm busy raking my lawn." "I hate you Dick, because you are evil." It's been said numerous times in this thread -- if you want support, you pay for it. If your email account isn't important enough to you to pay for it, then you don't really have much grounds to gripe if it breaks. I don't see how that makes anyone evil.
- Karunamon 14y ago
  > if you want support, you pay for it. That's no excuse to provide a shitty service. For 99% of people GMail is not shitty and is infact quite awesome. That doesn't change the fact that with the amount of people Google has, not having even a queue for people to get minor issues fixed (Freaking MICROSOFT can get this right, for crying out loud!!) is ridiculous.

kyt 14y ago

Someone broke into my gmail account in 2009, changed the password, and I've never gotten it back. I tried to recover it using their standard form, but they ask all sorts of ridiculous questions like the day I started using gmail, the day I started using Google docs, etc.

capo 14y ago

You have my sympathies and all but this is getting annoying, every once in awhile the HN front page gets cluttered with these sorts of posts, wait the day out it’s not that unreasonable. Complaining when not even half way through the designated time period comes across as whining. And for the record you could have gotten human support if you were a paying Apps costumer, for the free stuff you have to deal with automation. It’s just the same thread with the same comments each and every time; “They don’t respect users”, “Their customer support sucks”, this doesn’t elevate the discussion on HN and shows the false sense of entitlement we all have even in regards to the free stuff.

JumpCrisscross 14y ago
I don't mind paying for a premium account with support. But as an individual with a small data footprint I really don't have a need for Google Apps (the OP pays for extra storage which isn't evidently magic enough). If they gave me the option I'd gladly pay for the service (in fact, on some level I'd feel more comfortable).
- capo 14y ago
  My point is that for the price of "free" their support is good enough. Not to mention that they did so to protect your account.
pyre 14y ago
Gmail isn't free. We are paying for it with our eyeballs. Gmail would only be 'free' in the way that you imply if Google was getting nothing in return. Just because money isn't changing hands doesn't mean it's free.
- capo 14y ago
  which means pennies for every hundred user, the support is good enough for ~free.
- statictype 14y ago
  So you've redefined the word free to make it meaningless. Giving a way food to homeless people? You're getting the satisfaction of having done something good in return! That wasn't a free meal!

mmahemoff 14y ago

FWIW and taking the subject a bit too literally, another way is to be active on Google Plus.

slurgfest 14y ago
How do you do that when you are locked out of your Google account?
- mmahemoff 14y ago
  I guess having to switch between my GMail and my Apps account has that one advantage. But fair.

paulhauggis 14y ago

I've noticed this trend with many big companies lately (Amazon, Paypal, and Google). Everything is automated and they give you almost 0 chance of defending yourself. They also don't care because they are de-facto monopolies. Amazon suspended my account 4 months ago. I'm just getting the $5K they owe me in money now. To this day, I still don't know why they suspended me (100% feedback and virtually no problems). They shuffled me around their automated system with the result being that my account stayed suspended. I was also suspended a couple of years ago from Google Adsense due to one of my scripts going awry. I wasn't clicking my ads, but It refreshed a page a bunch of times with Adsense ads on it. If I try to signup with my name, I just never get any response back. This one was definitely my fault. I could just use my LLC, but I got out of that game ages ago.

lopatin 14y ago
PayPal is actually very reasonable when it comes to getting in contact with human operators. I've never had a problem with that. Receiving decent support from them however is a whole other issue.
- mikelward 14y ago
  I tried to change my legal name. Faxed them copies of official documentation twice. Never received a response.
pyre 14y ago
I noticed this recently with CraigsList too. They have a 'contact form' that just sends you an automated email suggesting that you read their FAQ page. Why bother to have a contact form then?
- paulhauggis 14y ago
  Amazon is a little better, but not by much. They send you an automated email, but sign it with a real name. I wonder if they just have a program on the other side that cycles through names.

bifrost 14y ago

This is why you should never use free email for anything you care about, and especially not GMail. I hate to break it to people but the PAID service is not better either, you're just paying for what you used to get for free...

vibrunazo 14y ago

A 2 second google search for "gmail support forum" brought me to: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/gmail http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/gmail Have you tried that? I honestly never have and would love to know if those are actually efficient. If you haven't tried it, please do then report back to us.

alanfang 14y ago
The Google support forum is a black hole. At best you'll get a canned copy pasted response from a Google employee that won't help you.

drivebyacct2 14y ago

Are you sure you have 2FA on? Do you have a desktop client that could have been compromised? I'd love a follow-up on how your account got flagged if it wasn't compromised. (Note, I ask because the last time this happened on HN, several people errantly thought they had 2FA turned on when they didn't). (Some days I wonder if I angered a stalker who downvotes everything I post... or if it's some darker HN sign. Sigh)

gergles 14y ago
Yeah, I have no clue how it got flagged. See my update above. And yeah, I had 2FA on -- I was challenged appropriately logging in to GMail even, it was post-login where I got the "you're bad" page.

bobbydavid 14y ago

The vitriol regarding Google's services is unjustified. Gmail is a free service. Google allows you to use it for free, in exchange for being shown ads. You have access to the same infrastructure that paying clients use, and the same uptime, but without paying. You can download all of your data easily, and at any time. Nothing about that is predatory on the free users. What would you say is the appropriate market "price" of 10-hour turnaround on emergency technical help? Having worked at a company that provided optional sub-24-hour response, I can tell you it's usually expensive.

gergles 14y ago
Well, that depends on why I need the "emergency help". If I need it for their problem, then I expect it for free, given that I am already "paying" for the service with my ad views and my personal data. If I need it because I screwed something up, that's a different (and irrelevant) discussion.
antihero 14y ago
Nope. Completely untrue. They benefit from us using their services. We are doing them a favour by choosing them over others - their business is built upon people using their services. If everyone just their our money back (£0) and stopped using Google's services, they wouldn't have a business any more. By using a service such as Gmail, we've trusted them and invested our on-line lives in them in order that they can monetise that usage and grow their business. It is completely unacceptable when that trust is betrayed and they cut you off without recourse.
- bobbydavid 14y ago
  Google definitely benefits from free Gmail users, but that wouldn't be true if every free user got human attention when things went wrong, regardless of who was at fault. I guess I see OP's problem stemming from the existence of bugs/quirks/spam attacks. As a developer, I know these things are simply impossible to prevent with 100% certainty. I don't feel that Google is morally culpable for bugs or spammers, unless they are somehow adding bugs to the point of negligence. In fact, as a developer, the idea of being morally culpable for bugs scares me, since that kind of implies I am doomed to be immoral.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

DanBC 14y ago

> On a more general note, on what planet is "you don't get any email for a day and have no recourse, and we won't tell you why, or let you do anything to fix that" an acceptable action? Serious answer: email is not reliable. There are lots of factors outside your control. Please don't rely on email being available. Unfortunately most providers today are pretty solid most of the time, meaning people put too much trust into their email providers.

gattler 14y ago

Sigh when will people finally wake up and understand that Google, Yahoo or Facebook are Advertising companies. Anything that isn't affecting their really big clients in advertising isn't getting any sophisticated support and even that area of business might be maltreated in respect to professional support. And don't be shortsighted here. IT absolutely -needs- support. So if you really wanted professional support for emailing you have to go to a tech company that doesn't earn a living with selling your Browsing history to other parties or worse. In case of an email product I did not find anything yet that would serve my professional needs. The only really 99% reliable thing yet has been renting a root server (or using my own machine with DynDNS) with a nice swell Postfix/Dovecot install. The Internet was invented as decentralised, if not even distributed technology. Buying in (you buy with your cookies) a centralised technology like FB, Google or Yahoo, even if they are in the cloud or in the edge - it's still one vendor, for me was always against the economical philosophy of the Web. If you don't have the knowledge how to set up a distributed email node (if you allow me calling it that way), I would recommend lavabit.com, they are reliable and non-commercial (However also subject to the patriot act b/c located in the US). And not only the Internet with its industry-raped non-standard HTML language, its ridiculous insufficient Border Gateway Protocol or its patchwork 7bit/8bit e-mail MIME protocols is one heck of an enormously cool hack, also the Web can be nowadays. If you don't get any support from cookie traders like Google or even Ghostery, why don't go self-made and install a distributed Social network like GNUSocial? The Internet used to be a business opportunity for everyone, don't let it get destroyed by monopolies, that block inventions with 15 year-old patents.

antihero 14y ago

I think if I got my account disabled I'd go to their offices and demand an explanation.

niels_olson 14y ago
It's a closed campus. Best of luck with that. In fact, why don't you do a trial run and let us know how it goes?
- antihero 14y ago
  I think they just have normal offices in the UK. Otherwise, dress like a courier.

nilsjuenemann 14y ago

Do you using Chrome with these two extensions? https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mihcahmgecmbnbcchbopgniflfhgnkff https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mihcahmgecmbnbcchb... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ejidjjhkpiempkbhmpbfngldlkglhimk https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ejidjjhkpiempkbhmp... For me these combination made a request loop (response from gmail was 404 and 501) for some circumstances. As a result my account was temporary disabled ...

gergles 14y ago
I do use Chrome, but no GMail related extensions (and specifically not either of those.)

packetslave 14y ago

there should be more details of what they think triggered the algorithm One problem with this approach is that it also provides information to the bad guy, e.g. "here's what you did to get caught, so don't do that next time"

pyre 14y ago

For all of the people railing against Google/Gmail, what do you use that is comparable to Gmail? Do you use Android? How do you use it without a Google account?

CrownStem 14y ago

It amazes me that people rely upon a free Email service for critical personal infrastructure.

dholowiski 14y ago

Depends what service you are talking about. I have a phone# to a helpdesk for Google Adwords. Real live human beings work there. But we pay a buttload of money for that service. Also google apps for business promises 'Around-the-clock phone and priority email support.' I guess you're just getting what you paid for.

Matt_Cutts 14y ago

[redacted], it looks like this issue resolved itself; I'm curious, did you mention your email address anywhere on this page? I didn't see it mentioned. I'm happy to ask people for more details. Normally when you have two-factor authentication on, I wouldn't expect you to see this message. So there might be some improvements we need to make on our side to try to prevent this from happening for other people.

brudgers 14y ago
Matt, I think your message is consistent with the disconnect people feel when experiencing problems with Google services. The root of the issue for the consumer of Google services is not a loss of email access (that's just the sort of technical problem everyone has when dealing with the internet). The issue is that there is no person representing Google who says, "I'm sorry you are experiencing difficulty, let me see what I can do to help you." Google doesn't even go there on their own support forums: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/gmail/%22Account$20Temporarily$20Locked$20Down%22/gmail/U3ql67r2VFo/Ip-Sm-cSxuIJ http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/gmail/%22Ac... There is a meaningful number of posts for the exact issue the OP experienced and what little assistance that Googlers provide is generally of the "you did something wrong" variety rather than "we're working on making it better."
- Matt_Cutts 14y ago
  brudgers, I think the larger mission for Google has to be to drive down the number of people having problems like this. So Google's philosophy (for better or worse) is often to find and fix the root causes of problems. So for an account that was hijacked, we'd prefer to put our resources into finding new ways to prevent and protect against hijacked accounts, rather than putting a ton of people into one-on-one sessions to work with people whose accounts are hijacked. For one thing, the scale of Gmail makes those sort of one-on-one consultations extremely difficult. Imagine if tens of thousands of accounts are hijacked every day. There's not an easy way to interact with all those people, which is why we look for ways to drive down the number of hijacks or provide additional solutions like two-factor authentication or other self-service solutions. In this case, there was a subtle point that I was trying to make, which is that the problem resolved itself even though the original poster never appeared to give his email address. Sometimes these issues are a matter of transient issues like connectivity or data centers where it's just a matter of time for the issue to fix itself.

aliasaria 14y ago

Once while waiting in the lobby of a Google office I could hear the receptionist answering a frustrating call from someone asking for a search result removal request. She had to read from a script because people call so often -- they call reception at any Google-related business asking for help.

kikito 14y ago

Ask for your money back

Cerin 14y ago

Google's response to user complaints is probably the worst aspect of the company, since it's effectively non-existent. Unfortunately, that's what happens when you have millions of users, and only a few thousand employees. Even if everyone at Google responded to user complaints, they probably couldn't get to them all. You're wise to have a backup plan.

Urgo 14y ago

I travel fairly often and most of the time when I travel I remote into my machine back home so I'm many times logged into google services from those two locations, then throw my android phone into the mix as well and my webserver which uses google api's linked to my account as well. All in all I have tons of connections to google at any given time. A few months ago I was flying home from a trip and was using the in flight wifi. As soon as I landed though at my connection city and turned on my phone I quickly noticed things weren't working. I tried logging into services and my account was disabled for some reason. I of course started freaking out since I have so many things linked to this such as my suplemental adsense income. I filled out a form assuming it'd go no where. I wasn't able to accomplish anything before boarding my next flight. Before take off I had the inkling to try the recover password option. To my surprise after doing that and having it txt my phone I was able to change my password and magically my account was unlocked..... Anyway I know the OP already fixed his issue but just wanted to share this story. If you ever get locked out saying your account is disabled try the recover password option as a way to unlock it....