[ludwigvan]

Sidenote: Google's customer service is absolutely horrible. I was reading the horror stories, but now that I have experienced it personally, it seems worse than I imagined.

Basically, my unit is about to be shipped on Dec 19, and I have been trying to cancel it since last week; but they refuse to cancel it on the grounds that it is only possible to cancel it within 1 hour of purchase.

I am leaving US on Dec 12, and this means the unit is going to get shipped to an address I no longer have access to, and I will have to ask the landlord to do a delivery refusal when the UPS guy appears at the door. I have emailed and called them about 10 times to cancel the order, or change the shipping date or address; and they won't bother to do any of that.

If you have been reading about Google not treating its customers properly on the net, rest assured that the situation is not exaggerated at all; they are very unprofessional.

Anyone have any advice for canceling the order, is it possible at all?

[subsection1h]

    Anyone have any advice for canceling the order, is it possible at all?

Might your landlord allow you to post a sheet a paper to your front door stating that you refuse delivery? This is what I did to refuse delivery of a 16GB Nexus 7 (I found a 32GB Nexus 7 for a little over $200), and it worked. I didn't need to interact with a UPS driver.

That being said, the 16GB Nexus 7 I ordered was delivered to Google on Nov 29 and I still haven't received a refund or been contacted by Google regarding my order.

[ludwigvan]

Thank you, this is what I am going to do, although in my case, the situation is a bit more complex.

The apartment complex I live in receives packages from UPS en masse, and then classifies it according to apartment numbers, so there is a possibility that they might not detect my package before accepting it, but I will ask them to keep an eye on it.

[brandall10]

I know on the xda dev forums plenty of people have complained about it through normal customer service channels (ie. where a person is involved, email/phone). It seems some have found success by logging in to their Google Wallet and canceling that way. Apologies if you've already tried this as it may seem obvious - but there are users claim success in canceling orders locked in a limbo state for weeks and re-ordering and getting a phone from a later allocation.

My theory is not they're trying to be terrible, but that they simply do not have the bandwidth allocated to handle a launch of this size... mistakes du jour.

To Google's credit, it does sound like for those who have received a phone with defects they've been pretty receptive in sending out replacements. I don't know why they have that part of the process covered but not the initial procurement.

I feel blessed my experience wasn't too bad (got a weird shipment notification 6 days before it actually shipped) but the phone itself it mostly spot on.

[pja]

I don't know why they have that part of the process covered but not the initial procurement.

Because the cost to Google if they don't is huge: credit card chargebacks are very expensive for the vendor. Then there's the PR cost of having hacked off customers complaining all over the net about receiving broken goods and being given the run around by Google.

Far better not to ship anything at all than to ship something broken and then refuse (by inaction) to do anything about it.

[mynameishere]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chargeback

Just call the number on the back of your credit card.

[Lewisham]

I'm not sure the credit card will perform a chargeback in this case: it's not that Google is misrepresenting their product or the product isn't being delivered, it's that he's changed his mind.

While Google is being extremely uncooperative, that's not enough to warrant a chargeback.

[Osiris]

Not being issued a refund after returning the device should be grounds for a chargeback. Once you initiate a chargeback the vendors has about 30 days to respond to the chargeback to prove it was a valid charge.

[asdfaoeu]

> I'm not sure the credit card will perform a chargeback in this case: it's not that Google is misrepresenting their product or the product isn't being delivered, it's that he's changed his mind.

It is a valid charge, and I'm sure Google won't be too happy when you cancel it on them.

[rhizome]

Bad customer service all around, then.

[pja]

Go here: http://support.google.com/googleplay/bin/request.py?hl=en-US...

and paste in the order number from your Google Wallet transaction history, which you'll find here:

https://wallet.google.com/manage/#transactions:

Why they don't put a link to cancel the order in the transaction history I've no idea. The one hour thing is to do with the timelag between Google Wallet taking your order and that order being transferred to Google Commerce. This second cancellation method lets you send an order cancellation directly to Google Commerce. Yes, it's ridiculously obtuse.

[ludwigvan]

Thank you, that's what I have been doing, but it doesn't work unfortunately. I get an automated response each time I try that, and when I called them, they said there is nothing they could do, even though the unit has not shipped yet.

"Thanks for contacting Google Play regarding cancellation of your order. All orders are processed directly after your purchase is complete. As a result, this means that there is a very short window of time to cancel an order prior to shipping.

Although we attempted to honor your request, we were unable to cancel your order in this window. "

Whatever that "window" is, it seems longer than 10 days!

[pja]

Well, that sucks. :( If the order hasn't shipped, why on earth can't they cancel it?

Google's incompetence when it comes to shipping physical product demonstrates that they have a lot of learning to do, because right now they're really not very good at it are they?

[sahaskatta]

If you sign up for a UPS MyChoice account. You can pay a one-time $5 fee to have the package redirected to a new address of your choice.

That definitely won't solve the complains you have with Google, but its a solution if you still want the phone.

Also, my experience has actually been fairly good so far. I had purchased a Nexus 7 and about 3-4 months later the screen began separating on the side. I called the support line. They picked up in less than a minute. They sent out a brand new unit and let me continue using mine until the replacement arrives.