Google has made me want to be a German:

Google received an ultimatum Thursday from German consumer organizations that want it to start answering questions from its users via email.

The Federation of German Consumer Organisations (VZBV) has asked Google to sign an undertaking that it will provide customer service by responding individually to users questions sent by email, said Carola Elbrecht, VZBV’s project manager for consumer rights in the digital world at the VZBV.

Signing such a document would expose Google to fines if it breached the undertaking. On the other hand, said Elbrecht, “If Google does not sign it, we’re going to court.”

Germany’s Telemedia Act requires businesses to provide an email address to allow customers to contact them quickly.

But, said Elbrecht, “It is not enough to just provide an email address that leads into emptiness, you also need to be able to communicate over it.” Responding to users attempting to get their questions answered with automatic replies, as Google does in Germany, is not sufficient, she said.

Seriously, dealing with issues on Blogger, or Gmail, or pretty much any Google product, you have no way of contacting a human being.

Their response is “check out the forums and support pages.”

The forums are where people go when they don’t have the answers, and it’s exceedingly rare when a Google staffer deigns to read and answer a question, and the support pages are frequently incomplete and/or out of date.