In the past few posts I’ve been saying how Google is turning un-cool everday and I’m very sorry to say this post will be one of them as well. The Register recently posted an article on some problems store-buyers have recently been facing with the store. We know it sucks already, the UI, the process, the format, everything, but this article is just what they needed to make it suck even more.
Many people bought Charlie Rose segments, for example, only to receive an e-mail saying that Google would eventually tell them how to download the video. Such an e-mail never arrived, but the payment for it went to Google.
Now, we get this.
“You may have noticed some problems with some of the video(s) that you downloaded and we have issued you a full refund for these purchases,” Google wrote in a customer service e-mail. “Rest assured, the affected video files have been replaced and are now available on Google Video. In addition to the refund, the episode that you purchased are available for re-download at no charge.”
And, in fact, our refund has arrived, although without interest.
Oh, god, what were they thinking? Not only do they release a bad product in a miserably failed attempt to get the world to use their format, but, they have problems — which, if I were one of their customers who bought Charlie Rose segments and this happened to me — I know I’d be pissed off. On top of that, not that its worse already, it seems they like their AdWords-made dollars so much that they aren’t willing to give a penny or even a few cents of interest. And guess who has the slogan, “don’t be evil?”
It’s not that I have anything personal against them, infact when people say “Google’s software UIs suck,” in a way I defend Google because I don’t think the UI is bad, but the Video Store was truly a bad bad move and it’s getting worse each day. I guess the Google execs don’t give a damn about all this. They’re billionaires as it is and they’re probably thinking of selling their rest of the shares anyway (which would be the smart thing to do at this point in time, seriously).
