Another Google Customer Service Headache: Dozens Of Calls To Get A Refund On A Defective Pixel Phone
CHICAGO (CBS) -- After the Morning Insiders told you about a family's outrageous battle with Google, we heard from people with similar horror stories around the world, including a customer in Texas who needed to contact the tech giant more than 30 times to get a refund.
Mark Jones read about C.J. Dimayuga's struggle to return a defective Pixel phone -- requiring more than 50 emails and numerous phone calls to clear things up -- on his own Google Pixel phone.
"That's kind of funny, because Google phones have that Google news feed; and they give you stories based on what they see that you're searching, and emails, and things like that," he said. "They actually put the story near the top of my news feed, because they saw that I was emailing about Google customer support."
Jones said he bought a new Pixel 3 phone from Google, and had problems with it right away, so he asked for a refund, but the company initially only wanted to send him a refurbished phone to replace his new one.
"It was brand new when I bought it, and I had the problems right off the bat, so I said, 'No, I want a new phone,'" he said.
Jones said his own exchanges with Google customer service included 37 emails, and several phone calls and Internet chat sessions.
"Sometimes it would seem to go fine, but then they would say … I would not hear anything. They would say, 'We're working on it. We're working on it,' and then they would come back and say, 'I'm sorry, your request to get replacement with a new device is declined.' So I would have to go back and start more negotiations to try to get what I needed."
Between the time he saw Dimayuga's story on Thursday and his interview with CBS 2 on Friday, the company agreed to refund his money for his Pixel 3.
"I got the email from them, agreeing to take a full return and give me my money back for this phone," he said.
CBS 2 had been pressing Google for answers about his own problems with customer service.
"Maybe that did help," Jones said. "It might have. It may have made a difference," he said.
Google did not respond to CBS 2's inquiries seeking an explanation about its customer service.
The Morning Insiders chronicled just how hard it is to deal with actual human beings at Google last week, including tips from a handful of happy customers who swear it's "easy peasy" to get help.
