Google My Business Support Horror Stories

DanLeibson · Mar 17, 2016

In an effort to get Google to improve upon the generally terrible Google My Business support, and provide some catharsis for the community, I thought it would be fun to here what other peoples horror stories are. Someone on my team just had a doozy and is what inspired me to post this thread:

"43 minute call and nothing resolved. Said their team is still working on the merges (its been almost 2 weeks). Supervisor said they would get back to me within 48 hours. Spent 3/4 of that call on hold and they could not give me any reasons why the merge hadn't happened. "

Scott Rawlins · Mar 17, 2016

The only horror stories I have experienced is when I try to let the oversees reps help. They have never been to able to help, even with something as simple as getting an added Suite # to stick in the dash. It's gotten to the point where I simply hang up and try again until I get someone in Ann Arbor. The most I've had to do is 4 times in the span of about 30 minutes.

Sam Austen · Mar 17, 2016

The worst one we get is when we try to add a County with a similar name to the city. For instance Oxford is in Oxfordshire but it can take over an hour for someone at Google to realise that this is the correct, full address.

Linda Buquet · Mar 17, 2016

Haha Dan, you know this thread will get some play!

You guys may know Google reads this forum too. But since we have tons of posts every week, who knows if they'll catch this one.

So after we get a few more replies I'll email the link to my Google contact and I'm sure they'll be interested in the feedback. Maybe you guys could actually drive some change.

JoshuaMackens · Mar 18, 2016

Just posted this on the GMB forum:

First of all, let me say phone support has completely gone down the tube. My average call time with them just to get something done is 25+ minutes. And even then the majority of the time they can't get what you need done.

Here's our business page:

-------------

Here are our duplicates:

-------------

Some of them exist at an old address. Some of them came from goodness knows where. They all have the same phone number, our phone number.

I called into support to be told that they couldn't merge the first duplicate (a verified page) because they didn't have the same name, even though they had the same address and phone. What? It took them close to 15 minutes to come to that resolution.

Then they told me they couldn't delete the unverified pages because they are "shell" pages and they can't delete unverified "shell" pages. They told me I should claim them and then call back in and they could delete them. Even though they couldn't delete/merge the verified page I mentioned at the beginning of the conversation.

I don't think Google phone support is trying to be unhelpful but I can't say it doesn't feel that way.

Support is so bad these days it's not even funny.

Scott Rawlins said:
The only horror stories I have experienced is when I try to let the oversees reps help. They have never been to able to help, even with something as simple as getting an added Suite # to stick in the dash. It's gotten to the point where I simply hang up and try again until I get someone in Ann Arbor. The most I've had to do is 4 times in the span of about 30 minutes.

Scott, has this happened recently for you? I thought Ann Arbor support was dead as all my calls recently have gone straight to overseas.

Sometimes I dream of Ann Arbor support at night...

Scott Rawlins · Mar 18, 2016

Yes, happens a lot. It seems to be a smaller window to get someone in Ann Arbor. Getting the overseas support certainly occurs more now than it did before. And in my experiences with them, they are absolutely no help at all. I know Joy has had some success with G support on Twitter, so that's another option.

JoyHawkins · Mar 18, 2016

I literally never call phone support anymore. It's the worst. I think the horror story that inspired me to stop calling was similar to Dan's. 45 minute calls while I would repeat myself 5 times and spell-out every word and then argue when they would give me advice (like telling me to claim a duplicate in order to get rid of it).

I now only deal with Twitter support and my time per conversation is about 5 minutes and Mike (on Twitter) solves everything I send him b/c he's awesome.

Garrett Sussman · Mar 21, 2016

Interesting Joy. I think it says a lot when a company has much better support via social media channels versus phone support.

I know that social media support is growing and it's something businesses are trying to instill, but it's almost like tech businesses are starting on that side and hoping they don't have to include phone support as a priority.

I wonder if we'll get to a point with ecommerce where phone support isn't even expected from a business. Nah, we'll always need phone support. But I bet it the demand will continue to decrease.

DanLeibson · Apr 4, 2016

Alright, this is a doozy.

We had a client that had a duplicate GMB page in a different bulk account. Anyone who has dealt with getting a verified listing out of a bulk account knows what a huge headache that can be.

Anyway, they sent the arbitration email and the time passed without any response to the email. However, since there was activity in the account we were told they could not release the listing.

So to recap, even if an arbitration email goes unanswered they still may not release a listing from an account. Real top notch product support.

JoyHawkins · Apr 4, 2016

Dan,

That's messed up. So basically an SEO company could maintain ownership over a listing provided they go in and tinker around with the listing every so often? Were you dealing with the same person the whole time on GMB support?

DanLeibson · Apr 4, 2016

It's actually worse, the listing is in a bulk account, which was active. There wasn't any actual activity on the listing itself. This is much more an issue with Google then the agency that has the listing.

If they would tell you who had the listing we could solve it right away as this is for a multi-location brand and I'm sure their legal team has some thoughts on who should control the listing

As for if we talked to the same rep the whole time, I'm told we did despite attempt to escalate to supervisors etc.

JoyHawkins · Apr 4, 2016

Oh, it's a bulk account. Yep that makes sense. They never remove a bulk account in my experience. For the insurance agents we work with they have to contact their corporate office and ask to be removed. Google will never take them off. There was one insurance company in particular that refused to remove their agents even when the agents asked to be removed and there was nothing anyone could do about it (other than a ton of complaining internally).

DanLeibson · Apr 4, 2016

We get things removed from bulk accounts pretty regular. It's a huge pain, but we have never been given a sisyphean task like this before. Total trainwreck.

Tim Colling · Apr 4, 2016

Sometimes it is baffling how complicated they can make things with easy tasks, and then get it wrong anyway, while other times they can fix very complicated problems on the first call.

I think a lot of it boils down the individual support engineer you end up talking to and how well they are trained in (1) how to do things correctly and (2) how to go around the "system" to fix things when doing it "correctly" won't work.

Overall I have to say that I've had more good experiences than bad, to their credit.

Google My Business Support Horror Stories

DanLeibson

Scott Rawlins

Sam Austen

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Linda Buquet

JoshuaMackens

Scott Rawlins

JoyHawkins

Garrett Sussman

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DanLeibson

JoyHawkins

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DanLeibson

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