a) hundreds and thousands of horror stories from people saying "I did not get any support from google". You can counter that with "here are people who did get support", but the existence of the thousands of support nightmare stories out there gives you enough evidence to know that this isn't really "supported" in the way you might expect.
b) there are no phone numbers.
https://firebase.google.com/support/ - no phone numbers. That's, of course, not the sole criteria you should use to judge potential support, but... it's google.
It's 2017. We have multiple years of knowing what Google's track record is re: support for paying customers. Outside of large adwords advertisers (where they make a lot of money), it's non-existent from a practical standpoint.
The big problem here is that firebase was fine until google acquired them.
I'm reminded of a time when I had a bad experience at a restaurant. Local place I went to with friends from work. We went... probably 4-5 times per year, and I loved the chicken sandwich they did. Last time I went, it was ... bad. Not what I'd expected at all. It was different.
Server asks "how's everything?". I said I was disappointed that the chicken sandwich had changed - it was not as good as before. Now... I wasn't actually complaining as in "comp the meal", but I was not a satisfied diner.
"Nothing's changed sir".
"um... yeah - this is nowhere near as good as it used to be".
"You're wrong, nothing's changed".
We had a back and forth, and they went back and came out "the cooks say the recipe is exactly the same".
This was getting a bit ridiculous. Manager came over, same exchange. He leaves, the comes back and says "they're right - the recipe is 100% the same. We have changed a few ingredients last month, but it's the same".
Maybe that doesn't actually relate to the google service situation at all now, come to think of it, but I was reminded of that situation when I started typing it :)
Oh yeah - nothing changed from OP's end, except how the new owner (google) decided to start monitoring and accounting for usage. Think of a "$9.99 all you can eat buffet" getting loyal diners, then changing owners, and the new owners giving some people a $95 bill at the end of the meal because they'd decided to also charge for any visits to the salad bar over 2. Most diners would never hit that limit, but a few - loyal diners for years - would have been (rightly) upset at the after-the-fact change.
I know this but to say everyone does or should isn't exactly fair. As well, you assume I am holding the purse strings, that I'm in any way responsible or even have a say in procurement. This may be true in my own business (it is) but not necessarily elsewhere, like my clients (it more often than not isn't) and you'll just have to live with poor decisions made on your behalf.
Also quite often, there's a sunk cost that makes switching that much harder. So no, it's not fair to say "Google has shitty support but that's ok because we all kind of know this." Paying customers can and should complain about this, loudly, shouting it from the roof tops. Ideally they vote with their wallets and just leave Google, but again that's just easier said than done in many cases.
Some semblance of professionalism shouldn't be too much to ask from one of the world's biggest corporations, an ask coming from paying customers no less.
"Ideally they vote with their wallets and just leave Google, but again that's just easier said than done in many cases."
That's the ONLY thing that will ever make this change, but it rarely happens because "sunk cost" rationalizations (and "maybe it'll get better next year!").
Shouting from the rooftops for years has not worked. This is not anywhere near a 'new' problem.
Yes, possibly some people don't know it, and yeah, I totally get that "you'll just have to live with poor decisions made on your behalf.".
I live with poor decisions all the time (mine and others'). But the notion that we can bitch about it on forums, or make 'formal' requests for better support - none of that makes a lick of difference to them (or, demonstrably hasn't for several years). It's "google", so some people will flock to it because of the brand, or because it's not azure, or aws, or whatever. Or to tick the 'cloud' box on their spreadsheet. Or because google gave them thousands in free credits to switch.
"Some semblance of professionalism shouldn't be too much to ask from one of the world's biggest corporations, an ask coming from paying customers no less."
But... it demonstrably is, and has been.
And... you'll get a client who will say "I can't believe this, email someone, get this fixed". At some point you have to push back and say "no, this is simply not fixable, you have to live with XYZ, or pay the cost of moving somewhere else".
An extremely large customer, maybe, possibly, might have a bit of say, perhaps. But even if you're dropping millions with them... for a company that measures revenue in hundreds of millions of dollars per day, you probably won't hold much sway. If you had that sort of budget to spend, and it was that critical, you'd likely be doing enough due diligence that research in to actual support/service levels (vs what the sales contact tells you) would be on the agenda.
Vote with the wallet is the only viable/impactful approach, and people have to be willing to forgo the sunk costs.
And for people that don't know up front - they always had the opportunity to search (google) beforehand. If they choose not to - caveat emptor.
10 years ago, we could possibly be forgiven for choosing google's services (GAE, etc) because there wasn't as much of a track record to look at re: support, etc. There's no good excuse for starting a project today on google compute and claiming ignorance of their support levels.
Ok, I've missed your point now – what are you actually trying to say? That Google being unprofessional and delivering on the whole sub-par services is OK because a lot (but not all) people already know this, and so really paying customers should just suck it up or go elsewhere, regardless of whether or not they even can in the first place?
If I've misrepresented what you're trying to say here please do correct me, because I clearly don't get it. If I haven't, I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree – I think customers should shout from the rooftops till they're blue if they want to, even if it seems to lead nowhere.
But to avoid it, you generally do research ahead of time. And/or be willing to actually walk away from your 'investment' on their platform and start again somewhere else.
In the OP case, they didn't sign up with google in the first place. It's doubly shitty for them, because they didn't ask for this, and could not have known in advance that google would end up being the support provider. Similar to when I refinanced a house, and 6 month later, my 'servicer' sold my loan to someone else with much crappier service (charge me $3/month to take an electronic payment from me? I wouldn't have chosen this as a service option).
Yes, paying customers should go elsewhere. Complaining about it to google directly and indirectly for a decade has not noticeable improved their support for their cloud offerings.
Suck it up or go elsewhere. You can keep registering complaints with them, or organize digital protests, or whatever, but to get better service, you will likely have to go somewhere else.
"I think customers should shout from the rooftops till they're blue if they want to, even if it seems to lead nowhere". Of course they can. They just need to realize it will not change the quality of support. Someone earlier (you?) said to 'vote with your wallet'. Shouting from the digital rooftops about how crappy service X is, but continuing to pay them, is a waste of time at best, and enabling at worst. Leaving for another service is voting with your wallet/budget, and it needs to happen.
Sure but voting with your wallet isn't, as mentioned previously, always an option for various reasons. Shouting from the roof tops is little recourse, I agree, but if nothing else it can be cathartic. I don't think that should be discouraged.
"as mentioned previously, always an option for various reasons. "
In the very short term, agreed - it doesn't do much good. But shouting from the rooftops internally (at client, management, stakeholders, etc) may do more good in the medium term.
So, you agree that Google's service is appalling, but claim that it is not appalling because the degree of appal has not changed over time? I cannot follow this logic.
Nothing you've said makes that any more acceptable. I don't care if we "know going in"; it's still unacceptable, and they should be investigated for it.
totally agreed that it wasn't google. people signed up for firebase and expected whatever level of service they had with firebase to continue. google acquiring them, then changing things for the worse for existing customers with little-to-no documentation/warning/etc - it's inexcusable. but people will stay with them because "we're already here", and they'll continue the abusive cycle for years.
And yes, on the comic - ok, not everyone "knows" everything up front. But... you have search engines (google, even!) to do actual research beforehand.
I see small business folks and small consultancies do far more research on comparing various $7/month hosting plans via hosting review sites than I see people researching their decisions to use AWS vs Google vs Azure.
You know this by
a) hundreds and thousands of horror stories from people saying "I did not get any support from google". You can counter that with "here are people who did get support", but the existence of the thousands of support nightmare stories out there gives you enough evidence to know that this isn't really "supported" in the way you might expect.
b) there are no phone numbers. https://firebase.google.com/support/ - no phone numbers. That's, of course, not the sole criteria you should use to judge potential support, but... it's google.
It's 2017. We have multiple years of knowing what Google's track record is re: support for paying customers. Outside of large adwords advertisers (where they make a lot of money), it's non-existent from a practical standpoint.
The big problem here is that firebase was fine until google acquired them.
I'm reminded of a time when I had a bad experience at a restaurant. Local place I went to with friends from work. We went... probably 4-5 times per year, and I loved the chicken sandwich they did. Last time I went, it was ... bad. Not what I'd expected at all. It was different.
Server asks "how's everything?". I said I was disappointed that the chicken sandwich had changed - it was not as good as before. Now... I wasn't actually complaining as in "comp the meal", but I was not a satisfied diner.
"Nothing's changed sir".
"um... yeah - this is nowhere near as good as it used to be".
"You're wrong, nothing's changed".
We had a back and forth, and they went back and came out "the cooks say the recipe is exactly the same".
This was getting a bit ridiculous. Manager came over, same exchange. He leaves, the comes back and says "they're right - the recipe is 100% the same. We have changed a few ingredients last month, but it's the same".
Maybe that doesn't actually relate to the google service situation at all now, come to think of it, but I was reminded of that situation when I started typing it :)
Oh yeah - nothing changed from OP's end, except how the new owner (google) decided to start monitoring and accounting for usage. Think of a "$9.99 all you can eat buffet" getting loyal diners, then changing owners, and the new owners giving some people a $95 bill at the end of the meal because they'd decided to also charge for any visits to the salad bar over 2. Most diners would never hit that limit, but a few - loyal diners for years - would have been (rightly) upset at the after-the-fact change.