[apankrat]

GWF is utterly useless for any non-trivial issues.

They have a mob of high-ranking posters upvoting each others' replies, patting each other on the back and ultimately ganging up on anyone who doesn't accept their replies.

We had an issue with a site incorrectly flagged as carrying malware. Submitted multiple review requests through the Webmasters console, all had no effect and produced no replies. Completely baffled by the situation, posted to GWF. GWF top rated reply and their "general consensus" was that we were morons who don't know our way around basic server administration.

A couple of weeks later we discovered that the Webmasters' console was plainly broken in the browser that we used to submit review requests. You'd click on "Submit", it would go "inactive" and the page was reloaded in a bit, but nothing got sent out. Re-submitted the request with a different browser, it worked, issue got resolved in a matter of hours, but the GWF interaction left a very bad aftertaste. F-, won't do it again.

[jacquesm]

GWF is utterly useless, the only reason it is there is to provide the impression of support, not to actually give support. An actual support channel has a means of escalation, all the way to the top if that is what it takes to get a problem resolved. With GWF it's luck of the draw at best, and in most cases just a placebo.

[effingwewt]

I will sound like a broken record but all google products have forums with these issues. You get nothing but cut and paste answers by regular users chasing internet points for validation.

[acje]

You seem to be accusing a social media company of creating YASEC (Yet Another System of Echo Chamber). I do not see the controversy. This is what they normally do to solve their problems. Or are we in some new context of not accepting that any more?