You canceled what service?

[u/oliverfromwork]

A few years ago I was working at a computer repair shop and this 80 year old lady came in to get her "email fixed". She ran some kind of business and suddenly her outlook stopped updating, she had a custom domain and everything. Immediately we though "oh no she canceled her custom domain".

We asked her if she canceled her email service. She said no, but she did say she canceled a bill the previous month but did not know what it was for, she thought it was a phone bill or something. We were pretty sure she canceled her custom domain service, she wasn't giving us much to work with. But she did have an assistant who basically ran the business from Pennsylvania.

It took a long time to get them to tell us what is happening with the account. We had to get the account credentials from the assistant. Turns out the email was set up a long time ago, back in the 90s or something. Long story short, the email provider she used (don't remember its name) subcontracted out the email hosting service to Intermedia. Then Intermedia sub-subcontracted Godaddy to do the actual email hosting. So as it turns out, she did cancel her custom domain. We just had to go through three layers of subcontractors to figure out what actually happened.

In the end we got her assistant to buy the domain on Google's domain service. Then we did the basic configuration and set up her outlook to sync to that.

[u/Ska82]

stupid question: why are there subcontractors for email hosting?

[u/oliverfromwork → u/Ska82]

IDK, it was set up in the 90s or something. It was probably during a time when the hardware for hosting email was really expensive.

[u/Ska82 → u/oliverfromwork]

i get why u rent email hosting. but why subcontractors? like would intermedia be able to give a better rate than godaddy to the lady?

[u/NotYourNanny → u/Ska82]

The intermedia was a reseller. It's common. We do it with Gmail now. It doesn't cost less than direct, but it costs the same. They get volume discount from Google, and that's their profit. We do it because we get more accessible support from people who generally know more than the front line support people at Google (who are reading from a script that probably isn't in their first language).

It's a common arrangement in internet/tech, and in many, many other industries. In physical goods, it's called a wholesaler.

[u/northrupthebandgeek → u/NotYourNanny]

the front line support people at Google

Google has front line support people‽

[u/NotYourNanny → u/northrupthebandgeek]

I guess. I dunno, we deal with them through a reseller.

[u/blind_ninja_guy → u/northrupthebandgeek]

If you have a business, absolutely.

[u/Chansharp → u/northrupthebandgeek]

Yes, at least with my Pixel phone issues contacting Google Fi support

Ide assume they also have some level of support for their other offerings