Google’s dumb Nexus 6p policy

I bought a Nexus 6p on November 27th for $499. It was Black Friday. The holiday offer from Google is for free returns till January 22nd. Now, as of December 16th, they dropped the price of the Nexus 6p to $449, so it is $50 cheaper.

Today, I can return my phone and order a new one of the exact same kind and save $50 in the process. However, Google will end up with a returned phone, which they’ll lose money on. So, I have one of their customer support people call me to see if they can simply issue me a $50 refund because of the price drop. The Google customer support lady on the phone understands the issue, and she even talks to her manager/supervisor (apparently), but they don’t have a way to issue me a refund because of their policy. She recommended me to return the phone for a full refund and buy a new device of the same kind.

Basically, now, because some genius (ahem) at Google’s Hardware/Nexus division was dumb enough to change the price after Black Friday/Cyber Monday, a large number of phones will probably be returned just to get a $50 refund. Google has created extra work for themselves and for their customers, and they will end up losing money to perfectly good working phones that will end up in their “returned” pile.

I used to think Google hires only the smartest people. It’s time to reconsider.