How I was Mistreated by a G+ Community Manager and Facing Problems with Blogger
9th August - I was approached by G+ Community Manager (Renu Jinturkur, she is a Google employee.) She wanted to feature me on G+ and asked me to organize my stuff into Collections. On 14th August, while I was updating cover photos of G+ Collections, I got '404 Error' multiple times. I kept refreshing thinking it was some internet issue. But within minutes, my Gmail was disabled. For those who don't know the severity of Gmail disabled - you lose access to Gmail, Blogger, Youtube, Google Drive and every service attached to it. To me, a blogger who has spent last 6 years building up her presence, it came as a shock. I lost both personal and professional data. My life came to a standstill! I work as a content writer, social media influencer, and ghostwriter - my Gmail is the only way all agencies and brands contact me. Even for a normal person losing access to your email can disrupt your life as our email addresses are registered everywhere - from government issued identities to electricity bill. I was in a panic state. I filed the appeal with Google to get my account re-enabled. But it takes 5-7 working days for any reply. Still figuring what went wrong, I thought of contacting that G+ Community Manager as I was working on G+ when the problem occurred. I called and she asked me to send her an email. I did right away using my husband's gmail. As she was on leave that day, she said she would look into the matter the next day.
15th August - After several calls and emails, the Community Manager emailed - 'They are working on the issue (can't disclose details).' By that time, she had stopped answering my calls or replying to my voice messages. My condition worsened as people starting pinging me on social media as their emails to my id were bouncing back. My work was getting affected. I missed two deadlines. A day went by and nothing happened. Without divulging details, losing Gmail means I have to start my life from scratch.
On 16th - I emailed her again. Still no reply. By that time, I started looking for alternatives - asked friends for Google contact, contacted Google employees on Linkedin. Everyone replied but they had no solution to my problem. That G+ Community Manager was my best shot - I was told. It was a stressful time for me. I ransacked my brain to think of one reason why my Gmail was disabled. I didn't violate any Google policy. I read the policies again and again to find my mistake. I found none. I don't spam; I credit all the pictures I upload on my blog; I don't plagiarize; I don't misuse Adsense - check my earnings history. I don't indulge in any prohibited activities - porn, drugs, violence, or hate crime. Imagine someone going through all this - losing what she has diligently built over the years, and she doesn't even know what is wrong? I never felt that helpless and miserable my entire life.
17th August - I got my Gmail back. My husband was trying to check my blog and miraculously it opened. He emailed me on my disabled Gmail id and it didn't bounce back. He called and I logged in. But I lost all of my G+ followers - from 3,607 they came down to 15. I don't have the courage to click on the G+ icon to see whether my content is still there. My Blogspot dashboard is acting weird - it is no longer showing me as the author of my blog - posted by 'Unknown' is what the credit looks like. All the corresponding stats are gone. I have no clue what is happening. I can download my blog but it's not uploading. So, I can't take a backup. There was still no response from her. Had it not for my husband who kept checking my blog, I would've never known that my Gmail was re-enabled. I’ve got no response to my Gmail Appeal either. By looking at what all I've lost, I am sure it's a technical issue at their end.
18th August - I was still waiting for a reply for her side. I thought she must be busy or had some personal emergency. How else would you explain such a behavior? Someone who was talking to me on the phone is suddenly not answering at all. But then, around noon, I got an email notification that she was updating G+ group. That moment I felt very bad. Here I was waiting for a reply and going through a mess, and she was not even bothered to reply to my desperately-in-need emails. I'm sorry to say, I was angry that time. I wrote to her again and as we can all expect - there is still no reply.
I am not worried about stats or losing followers. But it pains me to see how this G+ Community Manager behaved. It is unprofessional and unethical. If you are reaching out to bloggers to build your community, show them respect, treat them well. Help them when they are reaching out to you - you are in a position to help. Don't misuse that position. Just because it requires some of your time, doesn't mean you treat normal people at your whims and fancies. Call them as you like and drop them when you feel they are no good. Do your job with some integrity (if not more) and a lot of humanity!
I'm not a celebrated writer. But I am one of those lucky few who get appreciation from so many people out there. And I treasure it. Comments and messages are my rewards for writing every Monday for the last 6 years. All those good people spend their time in reading and commenting on my work. I value it immensely. And now when someone new reads my work, they don't even know my name. I'm 'Unknown' to them.
Please share and tag anyone who can raise this issue at Google. And please share this post, so no blogger who is approached by Google + Community Manager goes through the same ordeal.
BTW, if you are one of those working with her, I have come to know that G+ is not a stable platform. If you run into any issue, she won’t help in any way! And you would lose whatever you have!
And my blogger issue is still unresolved.
P. S. - Screenshots of all the conversations are on the blog. I tried posting it here but was facing problem formatting it.
MOD Notice: Category shifted to the relevant section as it affects a section of the blogging community that uses Google's services.
Reason: Formatting issue
When I saw the word 'mistreated', I expected something worse. Being mistreated and dealing with someone who made bloopers are two separate things. Is it really a big deal? You got it back. It's best to create another G account and associate that as admin for your blogger. That's what I did during blogger days and for WP self-hosting. Once blogger had an issue where two days worth of articles disappeared from blogger but they assured to get it back and they did. I am interested in knowing how getting featured on a social media platform created those problems though. Yeah, she should have communicated with you in a better way. Again, if you got it back its all good.
I don't think you understand the plight of someone who was on the verge of losing her hard work. I felt like I was begging this person who stopped replying to my emails and phone calls. I was the same person she was talking to a few days back. And in addition to that, I didn't get everything back. Not as of now. She knew what went wrong and she didn't tell me until I raised this issue in social media. In one email, she even blamed it on me. How would you not consider that as mistreatment? Anyway!
I do understand. If I didn't I wouldn't move this thread to the proper section of the forum. The other main concern I have is how does she have access to your account? At the end of the day, community managers just take care of support forums and official social media groups. Its best if you make this post in official blogger forum as well:
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/blogger
Did she ask for access to your blog? If yes, did you give it to Renu Jinturkur? It just doesn't add up because, in her profile, she claims to be content operations/ online community manager for google "through Vaco SF". So she's either a 3rd party support for Google which I doubt or she works for Vaco SF where she is in charge of putting up content in Google+ groups. Typical 3rd party agency employee's wordplay. You can check if out:
As said above, Vaco SF is a third party agency:
I know her role and about her employment status. I didn't give her access. When my Gmail was disabled and I contacted her, she came to know about my issue a day after but stopped replying to my emails or phone calls. She was happily updating her G+ communities. All I was asking for was a simple reply telling me what went wrong and how long it would take to fix it. She didn't reply to my problem for a week. I lost G+ content, followers and blogger account. I got it back when I raised the issue on social media. My blogger issue is still unresolved. I think when you ask someone to work on a certain project, you should help them when an issue arises from your side. She failed as a professional and as a human being. Who doesn't reply to emails/voice messages where someone is asking for help politely?
I am sorry that hapened to you, Saru. Google is (in)famous for live experimentation and worse, ditching the projects rather unceremoniously. As for support, we are all members of the species called homo sapiens sapiens, although I suspect some of us may be not. What with Android, Google seems to have become the Matrix. It was circa 2009 that I noticed my top two posts were not being displayed by Blogger. I tried to change themes but it didn't correct the glitch. Those posts, now deleted, were crucial for the moments they were published. I tried communicaing with the Big G but I kept running into the same dead end. That is when I realised I was trying to bend the spoon that didn't exist and switched to WP. I have never looked back since. I am glad you have recovered your email, G+ and the blogspot link, even if truncated. I hope you create an email id with an alternate service for backups.
Oh, that was bad. I heard many stories in the past week how bloggers have suffered because of unstable platforms. One Google+ Manager asked a food blogger to delete her Youtube videos and all for the sake of building a clean community. My blogger issue is unresolved. I'm taking backups now. And contemplating of shifting to wordpress.
Thank you for your support.
Wordpress. I have no idea why and how Blogger exists still. Annoying platform with horrible commenting feature. Practically no decent themes... There, I feel better now, after that little rant!
I agree. Wordpress is better. :)
Sorry for your experience but not sure if I understand it fully.
I am also a member of the Create India community that she runs and she does ask people to create collections to share. But are you sure the rest of the things are related? She is surely not a technical person who can handle this. She did not ask for contact details or access to the blog etc from me. Although I use self-hosted WordPress so there is now way Google can infiltrate it.
Actually, she knew what went wrong and instead of replying to my emails, she kept me in the dark. The issue started with G+. I know she is not a technical person but she was my only contact. She was the only one who could get it fixed. And she didn't reply. In spite of multiple emails and voice messages. In fact, in one email she blamed it on me. You can read the whole post and check the screenshots. And in my case, I lost my Gmail and every other service attached to it - drive, blogger, youtube. My blogger issue is still unresolved. :(
Hope this issue is solved seeing the thread created few weeks back.
Wondering, if in case G+ Community Manager approached me or anyone else also (without giving access) can happen the same for the same reason?
Strange! 
I am sorry for your bad experience, once upon a time I had a Youtube Channel with 250+ subscribers, I know this is not a big number but I earned it by making own copyrighted videos, I don't know why Youtube suspenendedmy channel without giving any strike even I didn't get any mail from them, I tried alot , I mailed them but they only said that "Your channel is opening fine we can't find any issue with your channel" after all I had to move on after this incident I don't trust google anymore.
Btw I hope you will get back your all content and posts.
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