Extremely frustrating issues with the buds/ customer service process

[svenEDGE]

I have had the buds for a little longer than 2 weeks and at first they were working great. They sounded awesome (better than I was expecting given the limited sound isolation), and I was really liking the gestures and direct access to Assistant. About a week ago, they just stopped connecting to my phone. I "forgot" the device and tried the button in the charging case to reconnect them... No luck... I then tried to pair them the old fashion way through the bluetooth menu... Finally! They connected!..... and then disconnect themselves 5 minutes later.... I repeated the same steps with the same results. Not to mention, for the short time that they are connected the touch controls don't work.
I tried looking for a factory reset method in the owner's manual and found nothing. Online? No information there either.

So those are my issues with the buds themselves. Now onto my customer service experience.

I called customer service and talked with a rep who was kind enough to inform me that the factor reset is performed by removing the buds from the case, and then holding the button for 60 seconds. Well after that, the buds connect as they should, without having to mess with the bluetooth menu, but again, they disconnect in 3-5 minutes and the touch controls don't work. Very long story short, I've been told that I would get a call back within 24 hours multiple times and never received a call. Now it's been 5 days since my first conversation and they FINALLY have agreed to replace them. Yes that's right, this whole time they've been "working on a fix" because they were "confused" about the issue I'm having. One problem with their replacement process.... They just want me to buy a new pair and then refund me when I send back the old ones... Well it's currently a 4-5 week waiting period before I get new ones. This is completely ridiculous. Do you think if these were AirPods I had, and I was talking to Apple, I'd be having the same issues? I doubt it.

 

[marcb11]

I have had the buds for a little longer than 2 weeks and at first they were working great. They sounded awesome (better than I was expecting given the limited sound isolation), and I was really liking the gestures and direct access to Assistant. About a week ago, they just stopped connecting to my phone. I "forgot" the device and tried the button in the charging case to reconnect them... No luck... I then tried to pair them the old fashion way through the bluetooth menu... Finally! They connected!..... and then disconnect themselves 5 minutes later.... I repeated the same steps with the same results. Not to mention, for the short time that they are connected the touch controls don't work.
I tried looking for a factory reset method in the owner's manual and found nothing. Online? No information there either.

So those are my issues with the buds themselves. Now onto my customer service experience.

I called customer service and talked with a rep who was kind enough to inform me that the factor reset is performed by removing the buds from the case, and then holding the button for 60 seconds. Well after that, the buds connect as they should, without having to mess with the bluetooth menu, but again, they disconnect in 3-5 minutes and the touch controls don't work. Very long story short, I've been told that I would get a call back within 24 hours multiple times and never received a call. Now it's been 5 days since my first conversation and they FINALLY have agreed to replace them. Yes that's right, this whole time they've been "working on a fix" because they were "confused" about the issue I'm having. One problem with their replacement process.... They just want me to buy a new pair and then refund me when I send back the old ones... Well it's currently a 4-5 week waiting period before I get new ones. This is completely ridiculous. Do you think if these were AirPods I had, and I was talking to Apple, I'd be having the same issues? I doubt it.

Nope Apple customer service is probably the best in the business. Google is good and they do help, but they seem to have the training that most issues are a user issue and not a hardware fault.

I'd bet they are mostly right too, but they could be better on this regard.

I think they will get there.

 

[BootlegSnackz]

Sorry you had this issue. I'll let you know right now that the problem with Google customer service is that it's been outsourced. Never have I had a worse customer experience in my life. My problem was shipping based and one that was only worsened because of a clear culture gap in understanding how to correct shipping issues. I mean maybe they don't have the best training?

I don't want to say that all outsourced customer service is bad, but another issue is that the customer service reps that I interacted with clearly did not care about the customer or the experience and simply quoted policy and kept dishing out company lines as if read from some handbook. I'm downright scared to purchase directly from Google if this is going to continue to be the general experience I hear about. Buyer beware.

To stay on topic I'll say this was probably an issue with that specific piece of hardware and not all pixel buds but the service here is clearly lacking.

 

[bnice]

interesting, my pixelbud stop connecting the other day. Did all the rest and it work for a minute and then disconnected again.