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?
Anyone have any advice for canceling the order, is it possible at all?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just call the number on the back of your credit card.
While Google is being extremely uncooperative, that's not enough to warrant a chargeback.
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.
"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!
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.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1962514&...
I got mine before the shipping notification
Why they can't just put the transaction through in the first place & just report back if it fails I've no idea, but thanks to Google I had to phone up the respective banks to get the cards unblocked. Not the best use of anyone's time...
They may be doing it precisely for that purpose.
Risk systems generally working on scoring mechanism, if the £1 transaction was enough to push you over the threshold then your cards may well be on the borderline for "this card might be stolen".
Google might be using it to test if the card is a borderline "stolen card" case because they want to be extra cautious about who they ship phones to.
I've had it happen before, but that was when I'd bought a small pile of cheap Android Apps & then gone to buy something expensive elsewhere (not via Google Wallet) and those transactions triggered the fraud checks, not entirely unreasonably even if it was a little annoying at the time.
Having my cards blocked because Google is issuing fake test transactions for no good reason whatsoever that I can see is somewhat more annoying however!
The reason stores do it this way is because of legal reasons. They can't bill your credit card until it is shipped but yet need to know you have the money before building it.
They can't legally take payment until they actually ship regardless so they're going to have to put the transaction through the card at a later date whatever they do initially.
Nexus 4 was built with a "defective" qualcomm LTE chip that LG was able to pick up for a bargain. hence the great nexus 4 rock bottom price.
Now LG have exhausted their "defective" chip supply, they need to negotiate a new deal with qualcomm/google.
This is based on a random comment i read fsck knows where explaining how high spec, short run, chinese phones come in to being.
When the second batch became available, I ordered one for a friend, still waiting for it to ship. (it said 1-2 weeks so it should ship this coming week)
From everything I've read so far, the Nexus 4 seems like a great phone at an unbelievable price, but Google and LG are really shooting themselves in the foot with customer service, shipping on a frustrating not-on-first-come-first-ordered basis and repeated delays.
I think a lot of customers would've been happier if they sold it through Amazon instead.
Uhm, well, maybe just my paranoia distortion field kicking in, I for one hope I am completely astray on this one.
I am guessing the ones for whom the ordering process failed rant the most :)