Google Customer Service

I use several Google accounts to gather and share specific chunks of info with the people I work with. I understand that in the war against spam, Google must not like those who create hundreds of accounts, and start blasting emails through some clever duct-taped smtp engineering. I operate several Google Accounts simply for the sake of leveraging Google's awesome set of products and sharing it with specific entities.

Last week, I tried to log into one of those account and found out it had been deactivated. I followed links around explaining Google had reasons to believe my account was not in good standing. I was not happy about this so I left a note in a box that says "We read your emails but we never respond". Since Google has the best customer relationship reputation in the West, I thought this account and all the products/content attached to it were gone forever.

Yahoo? aye!

I have just finished a long reading about the Dell Hell case study. I kept jumping from one blue link to the other, to end up reading about the Comcastmustdie.com situation. Pretty baffling...

The Dell Hell happened in mid-2005, and the Comcastmustdie is happening pretty much right now. Public Relations professionals have heard the message and we know things are changing. Or are they?

Until recently (actually until 2 days ago), I haven't been able to connect to my Mybloglog account for almost 9 months. Explanation:

When Yahoo! bought Mybloglog, they requested after a little while that users to the blogging service merge their Mybloglog account with their existing Yahoo! account. I didn't want to merge it with my old Yahoo! account so I created a new one: new username, same password.

At first, I didn't have to remember this username because the cookies were doing the work for me. But when I bought a new computer, the troubles began. I had totally forgotten about the new Yahoo! username I had created just for Mybloglog. I kept trying all my usual usernames combined with all my usual passwords I memo-technically use. Nothing.

It gets problematic because:
1. Concretely, I don't know who I am
2. Yahoo! doesn't know who I am either

Basically, I locked myself out of the system, and left the keys inside. Well guess what, if you think that Dell's services were hell back then, this one is a head-scratcher too: Mybloglog knows who I am (because I initially subscribed with a regularly used email address), but the entry portal to Mybloglog is Yahoo!, and Yahoo! doesn't know who I am.

Have you ever had your internet connection down, call the cable customer service, and have the guy tell you that you need to go on their Website to fix the problem (your internet is down...)?

Well it feels the same here. Yahoo! has set up an automated customer service: the very starting point of this service is to give your username. If you don't know this one, you're out forever. Nobody to talk to. Clueless forums. Nobody to go fetch your Mybloglog personal data and give you your associated Yahoo! username.

This case is pretty unusual (it takes a dummy like me to create an account I forget right away). However, online services often merge into one another. We all juggle with various usernames and passwords. The hacker paranoia is always present. OpenID is still an early-adopter concept. No ID, no getting in, and no caring.

I think we'll be hearing more and more about these types of problems, as the average consumer is getting a knack of nichy online social services.

2 days ago, Google officially surpassed Yahoo!'s traffic. Smile on my face...