Hating on Google again

I bought my Handmaid’s Tale on Google books and read it on my MacBook. I couldn’t get Chapter 15 to open. Then I couldn’t get chapter 19 or 20 to open.

I went to the Google Play website that hosts My Books, and found a phone number. I spoke to a woman who had a strong Indian accent who said her name was Amanda. She started by asking for my e-mail address. I gave her my Yahoo address. I had to spell my name a few times. Then she asked for my gmail account. I gave her that and spelled it a few times. Then I told her my problem and she said she does games, not books. She transferred me to “Chris” who also had a strong Indian accent. I had to give him both my e-mail addresses and I spelled my name three times, as he repeatedly read back wrong versions of my name. His chatter was liberally sprinkled with “Thank you so much, you are very patient, thank you so kindly for waiting. I will be able to fix your problem very shortly.” If you’ve seen Slumdog Millionaire and remember the patter of the boys as they show tourists around the Taj Mahal, it was a bit like that. Obsequious, fawning.

After 15 minutes, the upshot was that he’d look into it and send me an e-mail. The e-mail said my file was corrupted and I needed to download a Google app to read the book. The e-mail walked me through 25 steps in order to do this.

So that is how technology makes our lives easier. Kind of like when you text
Pls and your mobile autocorrects to Plus and you have to hit the delete key four times and then type out Please. Note to self: Figure out how to turn off autocorrect.

What Google has managed to do is cut its tax rate to nothing by moving its operations to tax havens while drastically reducing labour costs by moving support functions to places like Mumbai. So we get both crappy customer support and deteriorating schools and streets. We get to pick up the tax bill that the corporations ran out on while also paying for products that don’t work or that we can’t get help understanding. Is it too early in the year to be this grumpy?

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