It's so absurd that we used to complain about customer service from phone companies etc. and fled them for tech companies whose business models are defined by being scaled so high that customer service is impossible for them to offer.
And millions of people decided to make a company with no customer service their primary phone provider because it is free. Free comes with tradeoffs.
It's not free. It's no cost, but it's not free.
Considering the costs involved in a project the size of Google Voice, providing customer service isn't going to change the economics enough to make it unprofitable.
The complaint was about a corporation not holding up its promises to customers or looking to defraud them of pennies, dollars or in this case access.
The issue isn't phone companies vs tech companies. It was always about support and the belief that tech companies would be transparent, supportive, fast, 'user-first'.
Governments, bodies outside of corporations are the only thing that can hold corporations to task. We've been very busy de-toothing them.
I don't know, after getting screwed by AT&T who kept sending me bill after bill long after I had left, and dealing with their could-not-care-less human customer service, I think I'd have a really hard time deciding which I'd prefer. I think the evilness level is going to be very dependent on each situation.
I've never had a bad customer service experience with a phone company, cable company, etc. I believe others have, but I'd rather take my chances not being an outlier customer service anecdote with them than rely on Google where customer service isn't an option period.
