Inadequate customer support leaves Nexus One users fuming

Inadequate customer support facilities for Google's much-hyped Nexus One smartphone have resulted in the vendor's online forums being inundated with complaints from customers.

Google is selling its device, which was launched on Tuesday 5 January in the US, directly to end-users, which means that they are turning to the supplier as the first port of call to fix any problems.

But the company is currently only accepting email-based customer queries, which it promises to reply to within one or two days. Many clients are saying that such a timeframe is too long, however, particularly if they are facing technical difficulties that require telephone support.

They are also unhappy at being passed from pillar to post if they approach partners Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer HTC, or mobile carrier T-Mobile, for help. Various complaints indicated that T-Mobile often refers users back to either Google or HTC, while HTC transfers people on to T-Mobile.

According to the IDG News Service, one client called Roland78 was passed backwards and forwards between HTC and T-Mobile four times and ended up spending a total of 90 minutes on the telephone with a range of customer service representatives.

"T-Mobile also said Google hadn't provided them with any support documents for the 'phone. Welcome to direct sales, Google!" he wrote.

Other people have complained about poor 3G performance, but said they were told by HTC customer service staff that NexusOne does not support the technology, although the device itself does.

Some long-term T-Mobile customers were likewise disgruntled that they had to pay more for the phone than new customers, while others were told that they were eligible for subsidies when Google's sales site indicated they were not. Yet more consumers were peeved about the fact that they placed an order but failed to receive confirmation as much as three days later.

Andy Rubin, Google's vice president of engineering, admitted to Digital Daily's John Paczkowski in an interview that: "We have to get better at customer service."

The European version of Nexus One, which is based on the Android open source operating system and will run on Vodafone's mobile network, is due to follow in the second quarter of this year. An enterprise version is also expected to appear at some unspecified time in the future.