A little over a month ago I was ranting and raving about Google’s online services and how tremendous they were for small businesses.

I’d seen quite a bit of press regarding the Google Premier Email Services being a robust alternative to Exchange for the enterprise. Our organization has been evaluating several mail platforms in the last 2 months as our needs have outgrown our simple Sendmail/Dovecot mail stack we deployed in 2004.

I initially had some concerns with hosting our corporate mail platform outside of our facilities, not having access to log files or other critical components to a piece of our infrastructure we rely on for minutely communication with our customer base. But then I took note of some of the enhanced features available for usage under Google Enterprise Email.

The first test, a standard account for freeversing.com. A very simple process, I was up and using Google’s standard (free) edition within a few hours after things had propagated through their systems. I then noticed a concerning feature best explained by pasting the contents of the Google notice:

How are reports of abuse, spam, and technical problems handled?
For your convenience, the Google Team monitors abuse@yourdomain.com and postmaster@yourdomain.com to ensure that we can properly address all reports of spam, abuse, and technical issues. Since abuse and postmaster are reserved aliases, you won’t be able to use them as usernames or nicknames.

It didn’t hurt to try…

Why is this a significant problem for a service provider? Our organization needs to monitor and control our abuse@ and postmaster@ addresses in order to adhere to strict guidelines and standards required of us by our upstream carriers and ARIN. Every IP netblock we control has our abuse@ address designated as the contact point for abuse related items. Not to mention the fact that the default standard address people forward complaints to is abuse@theISP.com.

I couldn’t determine whether or not this feature was optional with the Premier (paid) version of Google Email. With no obvious method of contacting a sales person to ask them this question, I submitted a request for information on their Premier product on Monday morning, March 2nd. I was immediately provided an auto-response via email, with a lengthy dialogue on the various ways to find information for their products. The subject line contained some form of ticket ID which led me to believe (and still does, as of this Thursday morning 3 days later) that a live person would get in contact with me about our interest in paying for their Enterprise product.

Still no word from them as of this morning, I went back to the email and noticed this fine print at the bottom:

2. Partner-assisted Help: If you still have questions after reviewing the information above, we recommend getting in touch with the following partner in order to get an immediate response to all your sales inquiries, as well as to get you set up and deployed with Google Apps:

iYogi is an experienced Google Apps partner, providing high quality assistance to small businesses.

“For a fixed fee of only $59.99, iYogi will customize the installation of Google Apps for your company. You can also get instant support for Google Apps for only $9.99 per incident or sign-up for an annual unlimited support plan for only $49.99 per year.”

Click here for more details, or
call iYogi toll-free at 1.866.242.4705

Fantastic! A partner that Google trusts to assist with product integration and assistance in taking on the enterprise email platform. I quickly hopped onto iYogi’s website and noticed that a live person was ready to take my questions. I wish the following was made up, but it is not.

Please wait. A representative will be with you shortly.
(Name Removed) says:
Hello Thomas. My name is (Name Removed) how can I help you?
Thomas says:
We’re looking at moving our enterprise to google email apps.
Thomas says:
I have a question about the abuse @ alias
Thomas says:
we need to use abuse@ourdomain.com because all of our IP blocks are SWIP’d with ARIN using this email address.
(Name Removed) says:
are you getting any problem with your computer ?
Thomas says:
However Google enterprise seems to not allow this? We don’t want to make the switch if we cannot use this alias
Thomas says:
my computer?
(Name Removed) says:
May I please have your full name and email ID.
Thomas says:
What does my computer have to do with this?
Thomas says:
I am asking you a sales question about your service.
(Name Removed) says:
that’s why i am asking after that our one of expert will call you
(Name Removed) says:
Looks like we can fix your issue. I have some more questions and would like to talk to you. May I please have your phone number where I can call you.
Thomas says:
(Phone Number Removed)
Thomas says:
What do you mean fix my issue?
(Name Removed) says:
May I please have your full name and email ID.
Thomas says:
I don’t have an account with you.
Thomas says:
We’re asking about your google apps integration services.
Thomas says:
My name is Thomas Brenneke, my email is not important in this case.
(Name Removed) says:
our one of expert will call you that’s why mai i know your full name and E-mail ID
Thomas says:
Alright this is obviously not what we’re looking for.
Thomas says:
Please do not have someone call us.
Thomas says:
Bye.

At this point in time it is still unclear as to whether a group categorized as an “Internet Service Provider” will be able to control the abuse@yourdomain.com alias when using the paid version of Google Enterprise Email. This experience is similar to ours with our Adwords account — Google makes it incredibly easy to use the product, but if you ever want to speak to someone about your investment you better expect to wait in line. I’m still waiting. It would seem as though an entity interested in spending $50/seat for a hosted mail solution that is critical to their business operations should be able to offer some level of telephone correspondence. Perhaps I’m missing the big contact us page somewhere, but there’s no obvious place to find one.

Google, and its chosen partners have quite a ways to go in order to retain our business on this front.