I Almost Had a Good Support Experience With Google

"Your battery will fail within weeks"

One day the outer screen on my Pixel 9 Pro Fold stopped responding to touch. Then the battery percentage started showing as "?". From a reddit thread I saw that "this is the step 1 to battery failure. They will repair your phone under warranty. Your battery will fail within weeks". And so I prepared myself for the cursed experience of dealing with Google's support.

Hello, darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again

Things started off strong

Foldables are quite expensive to repair so I braced myself for a big bill:

Huzzah, this issue is so common that Google is replacing the devices at no cost and out of their 1 year warranty . As far as repair location options, I am super lucky to have one of the 9 actual Google branded stores near me, rather than a 3rd party repair center.

That meant I had this option available:

When scheduling the appointment the 3rd party repair locations did not offer same day replacement. ^[1] What's more, the Google store replaced my 9 Pro Fold with a 10 Pro Fold. I can only assume the device failure rate on the 9 is so high that it wasn't worth replacing with another 9 that might fail.

The staff at the Google store was also really wonderful. Such a 180 from the years of dealing with Google's chat support. ^[2] Thank you Timmy, you were really great to work with and I hope the Steam Deck shortage ends so your brother-in-law can finally buy one.

Would you like to sign up for device protection?

Usually I don't do device protection for electronics. ^[3] The math typically does not work in your favor. However, the cost of parts to fix the inner screen on the Pixel 10 Pro Fold is $800.

With Pixel Care+ coverage, the inner screen replacement is not free, but you only have to pay the $99 deductible:

So when Timmy in the store said that as a part of the extended warranty program, you can sign up for the Pixel Care+ warranty ^[4], I decided I would sign up.

However, I have extra authentication enabled on my Google account and couldn't log in in store to do it there. So I said thanks, I'll make sure to do that when I get home and set up my phone. All I had to do was click the offer banner in the My Pixel app.

Google's support, or lack thereof

There was no banner in the My Pixel app, but that is OK because you can also sign up online:

Google's site kept saying my IMEI was not eligible. So I reached out to the Google Store support over chat. No matter how I tried to break down the situation to explain this was a special case, they kept insisting that only newly purchased devices were eligible for Pixel Care+. In the followup NPS email I made sure to say that, no my problem was not solved. I'm certain that form is sent directly into a shredder and no humans review them.

So I made a second appointment to visit the Google store. My good buddy Timmy was there and with some research found that this is a known issue with their system. Under the special warranty program the new devices are eligible for pixel care+, but sometimes the IMEI does not get properly associated with your account so they have to fill out a form for someone to fix it. He got everything set up for me through a special "gUp" page the staff has. I let him know that I'm still rooting for his brother-in-law to get that Steam Deck and thanked him for the help.

The next day I got the email from Google to fix my IMEI. I just needed to get a text code from them to confirm my account. However, no matter how quickly I tried to respond to the email with the code, they kept telling me I had taken too long and the code had expired. They proceeded to tell me to contact the store chat support and then stopped replying to my email messages.

"Please do not worry Matthew"

The store chat support told me that I did not need to do a verification text. The store chat support confirmed for me:

When you receive a replacement through an extended warranty claim, the system often fails to automatically "hand off" the eligibility from your old device to the new one.

When I told the store chat support that yes, that is the problem I'm here for, and I already had a special ticket to cover that, the store chat support told me:

The store chat support told me that:

After reviewing my resources, I would like to inform you that the Pixel Care Plus coverage will reactivate within a few days. Since the device was replaced, the IMEI number will also change.

When I told the store chat support that I never previously had Pixel Care+ and I need to purchase it, the store chat support told me

It typically takes 3 to 5 business days for the following to happen in the background:
IMEI Activation: Your new device’s IMEI must be registered as "Active" in Google’s shipping database.
The system needs to see your old device has been received (or the warehouse has processed the swap) to "unlock" the new IMEI for retail services like insurance.

The Google Store chat support lies.
I needed someone to follow up on that existing ticket so that the IMEI could be manually fixed. No amount of waiting has fixed the code in their system.

Support chats are designed to act this way

In a recent episode of the podcast Complex Systems about support titled Your support rep is also trapped in this call, Des Traynor broke down why support experiences are universally so bad. I now try to reframe all my support experiences in the context of:

• Organizations set up incentives for metrics like ticket closure time, rather than actually helping the customer.
• Tier 1 support is there to get rid of all the confused people asking bad questions, and is tuned for high false positive rates.
• Support staff are underpaid and often use support as a way to get a foot in at a company before moving up. The people that are best at support do not stay in a support role long.

Reminding myself of this does not make me feel better about bad support, but it does make me feel a little sympathetic for the support staff.

Ongoing timeline of issues

I have not resolved this yet. I do not know if I will ever resolve this. All I know is I will need to book yet another Google Store appointment, drive to Newbury Street, get an additional parking ticket, and talk to my good friend Timmy who actually truly tries to help customers despite the system that surrounds all of us trying its best to prevent that.

Feb 9th - Touch started to not function and "?" for battery percentage.
Feb 13th - first Google Store visit. Phone was replaced.
Feb 14th - contacted Google chat support about no Pixel Care+ offer.
Feb 21st - email support thread where they could not verify my device.
??? - Visit the Google Store in Boston again.