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I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

733 pointsby hispanicover 6 years ago

68 comments

iandanforthover 6 years ago
The lede here is somewhat burried:<p>&quot;From what I’ve since learned, if a card in your Google Pay is stolen, or someone uses your Payments account fraudulently, or anything happens that leads to a security flag being raised, it can lead to your Google Payments account being frozen.<p>...<p>If you can’t use Google Payments, you can’t pay for Google Fi<p>This, fundamentally, is why I can’t suggest anyone use Project Fi anymore.<p>...<p>Getting this fixed is actually impossible, and I say that as someone who really, truly, loves solving problems and has made a living off getting phone agents to want to help me.<p>We have submitted copies of his ID four times, my ID twice, multiple photos of credit cards, and various credit card statements. We’ve talked to agents and supervisors at Google Payments and Google Fi. No one is empowered to do anything, and even a well-intentioned agent doesn’t get the same answer from the “security department” twice.<p>I’ve since found hundreds of comments and Reddit threads from people having similar experiences, with almost zero positive conclusions.<p>The only suggestion of a solution we’ve been given is that he abandon both his email address and phone number of the past twenty years and start fresh.&quot;
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jessriedelover 6 years ago
&gt; Google Fi won’t restore service or allow your number to be ported out until the bill is paid, so around and around we go.<p>I&#x27;m surprised this is legal. Number portability isn&#x27;t something phone companies offer out of the kindness of their heart; it&#x27;s required by law. Does the law really allow them to hold the number hostage as part of a payment dispute?<p>EDIT: Nope, this is illegal:<p>&gt; Once you request service from a new company, your old company cannot refuse to port your number, even if you owe money for an outstanding balance or termination fee<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fcc.gov&#x2F;consumers&#x2F;guides&#x2F;porting-keeping-your-phone-number-when-you-change-providers" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fcc.gov&#x2F;consumers&#x2F;guides&#x2F;porting-keeping-your-ph...</a><p>I looks like the OP should file a complaint (and if necessary sue?) over this point.<p>Indeed, this is so clear cut it makes me doubt the OP&#x27;s story. Does Google Fi say they do this anywhere?
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rroblakover 6 years ago
Google is, fundamentally, an engineering company. Despite their size and breadth, they still don&#x27;t understand customer support. Their approach is to use software to solve problems, and they insist on doing so even when it&#x27;s clear that software isn&#x27;t up to the task.<p>Unfortunately, customer support is a hard problem. Despite all of the advances in NLP, I still abhor automated customer support systems when I have a complex issue. Just let me talk to a human.<p>Google long ago ran the numbers on providing human customer support and realized it&#x27;s not the sort of ultra-scalable business function that they like to invest in. Rather, they&#x27;d like to believe that they can build software systems that don&#x27;t require human customer support. As an end user, this feels like too much hubris and not enough empathy. It may work from the perspective of a product manager looking at percentages on a dashboard, but it sucks as someone in the real world trying to get something done with one of their products that&#x27;s not functioning as it should.<p>I use the full suite of Google Products, including Project&#x2F;Google Fi. This article describes one of my nightmares— getting locked out of my Google account. I&#x27;m fortunate that I have good friends that work at Google that could help out in such a worst-case scenario. This blogger is fortunate, too. Undoubtedly, some Googler will read this post and help them out.<p>But the average person isn&#x27;t so lucky. If you&#x27;re Jane or Joe Schmoe in Middle America, you&#x27;re going to be screwed when your Google account goes haywire. I&#x27;ve had friends whose Google accounts have gotten into weird states that prevented them from using Google services for no obvious reason. I suspect this is due to an unfortunate consequence of Conway&#x27;s Law [1] at work in Google&#x27;s identity implementation.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Conway%27s_law" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Conway%27s_law</a>
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dstaleyover 6 years ago
Stories like this make me incredibly wary about the future of my Google account. I&#x27;ve been using it for almost twelve years. It has a copy of every photo&#x2F;video I&#x27;ve taken for almost eight years. It&#x27;s what I use to download apps, listen to music, and pay for things, and get around. I&#x27;d be absolutely devastated if I suddenly lost it. I&#x27;ve been planning for a while now a sort of contingency plan where I regularly backup my emails and photos, but from what I&#x27;ve read even that&#x27;s difficult to do.
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sithadminover 6 years ago
I abandoned Fi after a trip to western Europe, where I was billed for 6 GB of usage in a single day on one of my data-only SIM cards, despite that the device the SIM was installed in (a 4G hotspot) registered only 200MB of usage that day.<p>Support was completely unhelpful, and after escalation reported back that the Fi team has zero visibility into chargebacks from their carrier partners and ergo could not diagnose the cause of the usage discrepancy. The lack of accountability on Fi&#x27;s part, in addition to various annoyances (handset tendency to select Sprint coverage despite poor performance; handset tendency to override manual carrier selection to the detriment of service reliability; generally worse reliability and coverage than my previous carrier) led me to move back to Verizon. I pay an arm and a leg for my service, but at least it&#x27;s highly reliable and available.
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aaomidiover 6 years ago
Companies like google shouldn&#x27;t be allowed to just ban someone&#x27;s account and leave it at that. We actually need to regulate how OUR data is handled and managed by companies. Google thinks just because they provide an email service, they own all the emails in their service. This should not be the case and with all our reliance on cloud services, we need to be assured that our accounts are safe and we won&#x27;t be denied access over stuff that isn&#x27;t in our control.
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bufover 6 years ago
I just traveled to Japan, the Phil, Bulgaria, San Francisco, and Boston without having to change sim cards or worry about my data situation. I&#x27;m going to keep it until someone else can do the same at a lower price.
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CPLXover 6 years ago
She should sue Google. Serious response. This kind of thing is bullshit, and she has a legal right to have the number ported, especially if she’s been willing to pay the bill and has not been able to due to Google’s technical problems.<p>File a lawsuit for the value of the time she’s had to spend on it and an order to show cause or temporary restraining order type motion for them to release the number to her.<p>It’s too bad the legal system is so intimidating to people because more people doing this might one day wake companies up a little.<p>Needless to say this doesn’t contradict the advice to not use the service in the first place.
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netinstructionsover 6 years ago
This really hits home. Probably 99.999% of users won&#x27;t have issues with Google&#x27;s products &#x2F; services, but if you&#x27;re one of the unlucky few, you&#x27;re helpless.<p>All you can hope for is to make enough noise on the internet to get a Googler&#x27;s attention. None of the normal escalation channels work.<p>My issues with Project Fi &#x2F; Google Store were not resolved via their online chat, nor their phone support, nor emails to their product support, nor any of my posts on their product support forums, nor any tweets at various Google accounts.<p>Only after a blog post received attention on Reddit did I get a call from head of support who was able to resolve my issue.
AlexB138over 6 years ago
She&#x27;s definitely right that the quality of their support has tanked. I&#x27;ve had significant connection issues where people on other carriers have none and their support personnel sent me useless boilerplate questions after I requested support. They then followed up with a multi-page incoherent trouble shooting doc that seemed aimed at their own engineers. One of the worst support experiences I&#x27;ve had, even from Google.<p>When I first signed up they had fantastic support, now it&#x27;s worse than what I expect from Comcast.
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androver 6 years ago
I had a few unsuccessful back and forths with different Fi agents about an issue, and after a couple of weird remarks, I developed the theory that first level agents get their performance scores penalized every time they escalate an issue. I would have them go through the same script over and over for over an hour, and even sometimes admit that I had an issue, but refuse to press that button. I have no hard evidence, but that was my read from the conversations, and would explain the bad support experience overall.
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honkycatover 6 years ago
&gt; We have submitted copies of his ID four times, my ID twice, multiple photos of credit cards, and various credit card statements. We’ve talked to agents and supervisors at Google Payments and Google Fi. No one is empowered to do anything, and even a well-intentioned agent doesn’t get the same answer from the “security department” twice.<p>This was my EXACT experience with the google store. And Google Cloud gold level support. And google payments.<p>Google just doesn&#x27;t make good products. I am consistently astounded at how SHITTY the google home is. It STILL can&#x27;t make a to-do list.<p>The Google store sold me a defective pair of headphones. But the defect was due to a design flaw, so the headphones broke AGAIN after they sent me a new one. I then replaced my phone on warranty. Same headphone defect.<p>So I was going through about one pair of headphones a month for four months[0]. I kept doing it because I enjoyed wasting google&#x27;s money and abusing their bureaucracy, but I also REALLY wanted a working pair of headphones. Just a total nightmare. I once lost my tempter at the poor guy on the phone, and his response was: &quot;Don&#x27;t worry about it. You are handling this way better than I would.&quot;<p>0: Sometimes two!
mcraeover 6 years ago
Despite everything else said, I’ve gotta say that there’s no better feeling than touching down in a new place, turning on your phone, and having it <i>just work</i>.<p>No stupid voip apps. No managing prepaid balances. No switching sims. Just direct dial and go.<p>Fi service is incredible for the mobile roaming alone and I’m not quite sure why nobody else can do it. I love it so much and it’s my favorite product. It makes a measurable positive impact in my life.
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drewg123over 6 years ago
I&#x27;m going through something similar with Lyft. I got a new pixel phone, had to re-setup my account in an airport added my cards, and was unable to hail a ride due to some &quot;oops, there was a problem, try again&quot; error with both the cards I entered. That was 9 months ago. To this day, I&#x27;ve been unable to use Lyft, and I can&#x27;t get anybody to really look at the issue.<p>I&#x27;m not sure why they don&#x27;t want to take my money, but for now, I just use Uber. Hopefully they won&#x27;t decide they hate met too.
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devicenullover 6 years ago
I&#x27;ve been trying to get Fi to resolve a billing issue.... I&#x27;m stuck in a loop with support where they keep asking me for a security code, then the next day they&#x27;ll respond back saying it expired and they need another one. The codes only seem to be valid for 30m, so I don&#x27;t have any idea why they keep asking for them...
Sodmanover 6 years ago
Came here to echo the drop in service quality complaint. I joined Fi in the early days. The first time I called in it was about some rather complex (to me) networking issues where the phone was rejecting a WiFi direct connection because it couldn&#x27;t detect internet service on the other side or some such. I could swear I was talking to a network engineer - he was super helpful and very technical. And that was the guy who just picked up the phone, no escalation needed!<p>Fast forward a few years and I had a minor question about a special promo they were running, connected to an offshore support team with broken English and copy&#x2F;paste template responses that may as well have come from a chatbot.
baneover 6 years ago
I can. I don&#x27;t want to take away from Google&#x27;s user hostile practices etc., but Fi is kind of a must have for people who travel overseas frequently but don&#x27;t stay in a particular country long enough to subscribe to the local mobile system.<p>You can almost always find a better local deal that works great if you don&#x27;t move around too much, but Fi is a fantastic &quot;common denominator&quot;. Since I&#x27;ve had it I&#x27;ve traveled to...maybe 15 countries in Europe, Central America and Asia and it&#x27;s worked amazingly well and turned otherwise expensive roaming charges or juggling of sims into normal operations.<p>It has a weird kind of &quot;global citizen&quot; feel to it that I&#x27;ve never felt any other way. Step off the plane, turn your phone off airplane mode and you&#x27;re good to go.<p>Driving across Europe and I received &quot;welcome to &lt;country&gt;&quot; while using Google maps just like driving across the U.S. where it says &quot;welcome to &lt;state&gt;&quot;.<p>It&#x27;s also pretty cheap, even if you blow your usage caps and try to go unlimited (Google will cap the charges at some point).<p>If you stay in one place or travel abroad rarely, I&#x27;d say skip it, you can get a local provider with more service cheaper. But if you might end up in an unknown country and just don&#x27;t want the hassle, it&#x27;s pretty awesome.
ndiscussionover 6 years ago
Google Fi sucks, it&#x27;s way too expensive. The last several years have seen an explosion of MVNOs, mobile virtual network operators. I use Mint Sim and get 3gb LTE&#x2F;month with unlimited talk and text, and unlimited throttled internet after the 3gb, for $15&#x2F;month.
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shhunover 6 years ago
I&#x27;m a bit concerned about all the people here that tell they&#x27;ve been using Google services for decades and are afraid to loose their pictures&#x2F;documents&#x2F;etc... I mean how is giving such control over your data to one company a good idea in the first place ? I&#x27;m not saying that in patronizing way, but this should not be considered as normal behavior. I think that Google has already access to way much more data than it should and I really wouldn&#x27;t want to hand them my phone bill. Even if you&#x27;re not concerned about your privacy (and I really think you should), centralizing everything will only make problems worse if something happens with this one service, should it be Google, Apple or anyone else.
sogradyover 6 years ago
I can understand why people criticize it, but I personally like Fi. The multiple carriers give me coverage in areas I don&#x27;t expect it like Maine islands or the Sangre de Cristo foothills, and the price is reasonable if not the lowest available.<p>Additionally, the one time I&#x27;ve had to contact support, I had an email reply in 27 minutes.<p>Throw in perks like the seamless international support (if you travel internationally at all this is tremendous) and the data SIM for an iPad, and I&#x27;ve been pretty happy with the service.<p>That could all change the next time I need support if they&#x27;re still overwhelmed with new users, but so far so good.
drewblaisdellover 6 years ago
Maybe someone on HN will know the answer to this: is it easy to enable&#x2F;disable service with Google Fi? My use case is to use Fi while traveling internationally for a few months out of the year while switching back to my existing plan in the US. I only want to pay for Fi in the months when I&#x27;m out of the country.
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tarikozketover 6 years ago
I switched to Google Fi from Verizon last month. I tested it in the Bay Area, Southern California and Florida. The service quality sucked unimaginably. I literally had to use my iPhone like an antenna in the office in San Francisco to have a phone call. The internet sucked badly as well.<p>I switched back to Verizon and Google Fi made me feel thankful to have Verizon.
exabrialover 6 years ago
Yet another reason why &quot;your phone number is your identity&quot; (aka sms &quot;2fA&quot;) is a horrible horrible horrible idea, especially for payment companies.<p>If you&#x27;re paying your cell bill with your credit card, and your credit card requires sms authentication, you&#x27;ve entered an infinite loop.
roland35over 6 years ago
I am happy with Fi, and have been a customer for 2.5 years so far. There are certainly many use cases in which Fi is way more expensive, but that is the case with any carrier.<p>I think as far as customer support I have had more problems with Verizon than Fi, but your mileage may vary!
ta1234567890over 6 years ago
About a year ago I tried getting Google Fi. Ordered a phone online, paid about $300. Then it never arrived.<p>When I talked to support, first they made me wait for about a week to confirm on their end that the phone was lost. Then their only solution was to process a refund (which took them another week to do), after which I would&#x27;ve had to purchase the same phone again.<p>Talked to a bunch of their support staff to no avail. They just would not send another phone. Seems like completely the opposite of what Amazon would have done (and probably the main reason why I&#x27;m a happy Amazon customer after over a decade, whereas I never looked back after the bad experience with Google Fi).
overtmindover 6 years ago
Anyone notice a theme here?<p>Every failure of google has <i>something</i> to do with the fact that they&#x27;re automating so far that it ends up being downright harmful. Youtube, Google Pay, Google Cloud, etc<p>I&#x27;ve even heard of similar stories about using Google Cloud, where the system can flag your account and basically your entire business is <i>deleted</i> due to an automated process!<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@serverpunch&#x2F;why-you-should-not-use-google-cloud-75ea2aec00de" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@serverpunch&#x2F;why-you-should-not-use-googl...</a><p>Though they seem to have reigned that in a bit here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theregister.co.uk&#x2F;2018&#x2F;07&#x2F;18&#x2F;google_cloud_platform_account_suspensions&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theregister.co.uk&#x2F;2018&#x2F;07&#x2F;18&#x2F;google_cloud_platfo...</a><p>I get the feeling in the short term they&#x27;ll double-down on automation&#x2F;AI until it&#x27;s good enough nobody notices.<p>I wonder if they have a pulse on how their businesses are suffering because of that perception, though. When your company has a stigma of it being nearly impossible to reach a human being to get things done - is it really a surprise that my colleagues and I won&#x27;t recommend google cloud as a service provider?
rmasonover 6 years ago
I&#x27;ve had accounts with Verizon, Sprint and tMobile. On their worst day Google Fi is head and shoulders above them, it&#x27;s not even close. I&#x27;ve used cell phones for thirty years and my time on Fi is the most stress free in all that time.<p>Having said that Google needs to do a better job at customer service. But so do Facebook and Amazon, both of which have caused me major problems.
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xibalbaover 6 years ago
I have had a similar recent experience with Fi after having used their service for three years now, and I would also no longer recommend Fi. This is very disappointing because Fi&#x27;s customer service was once <i>fantastic</i>.<p>I had many time consuming and useless interactions via phone, chat, and email with Fi&#x27;s support reps over the course of a month to solve a simple issue. After growing increasingly frustrated, I requested that the issue be escalated to an employee with actual sway, but the reps refused to escalate it beyond one level up to a &quot;specialist&quot; who was of no help. I finally tracked down on LinkedIn a Fi higher up who works at the mothership in Mountain View (all contacts thus far were with what was clearly an offshore team). I DM&#x27;ed them directly via LinkedIn to explain my issue. This action resulted in a complete resolution of my problem within 5 days. This <i>absolutely</i> shouldn&#x27;t be necessary to address what was a very straightforward problem, and does not augur well for Fi&#x27;s future.
tinyhouseover 6 years ago
I can relate. We have two Fi phones and there are bunch of problems: 1. If you use the max 10G every month it&#x27;s pretty expensive. 2. Support is indeed bad. I once contacted them via the app and was told someone will reach out to me within 24 hours. No one did. 3. There are technical problems such as people calling me when I&#x27;m on wifi and they cannot hear me when I answer and instead go directly to voice mail. I was told to clear the cache but it&#x27;s not always helpful.<p>Things I like about Fi: 1. It&#x27;s really nice that it works pretty much in every country. I travel often and it&#x27;s supper convenient. (it&#x27;s more expensive than getting a local sim in many countries but more convenient). 2. I don&#x27;t need to listen to messages since they get transcribed automatically. (I&#x27;m assuming this is not a Fi only thing)<p>So overall the main differentiation for me is the travel part. For people who don&#x27;t travel out of the country the Fi doesn&#x27;t provide anything special.
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antichaosover 6 years ago
Google Fi&#x27;s international data service used to be great. Now it&#x27;s completely dysfunctional in countries such as Croatia, China, etc, and very spotty in Austria, Iceland, Philippines, Ecuador, northern Japan etc. I can no longer rely on Fi when I travel abroad.
throw7over 6 years ago
I think this is a very good example of PRIVATE vs. GOVERNMENT.<p>Google has set up a service that is usable&#x2F;payable by their own rules.<p>This is something we (U.S.) take as verboten as a private business. They can discriminate on any reason except as dictated as against governance(race&#x2F;age&#x2F;religion&#x2F;etc).<p>If you&#x27;ve been detected by google as &quot;fraudulent&quot; by google, then there is zero recourse for you. Goodbye to your google account.<p>If the U.S. government is not going to do anything about this (it has not shown any interest in this type of problem) then YOU need to be proactive. Be ready to change services to the private businesses that you interact with AND&#x2F;OR speak with your representatives of your government.
BuffaloBagelover 6 years ago
US citizen here. I was in Mozambique, England, Romania and Denmark with my Fi phone in 2017. Despite being listed as a country Fi covered, I could never get service in Mozambique (Beria), despite spending a few hours with several courteous Google Fi customer support people. My experience in the European countries was satisfactory. I don&#x27;t recall any issues and it was nice to have my US phone number just work in those places.<p>An earlier trip in 2016 to Tajikistan in central Asia with my Fi phone required purchasing a local SIM card.<p>I&#x27;ve since given up on Google Fi and switched my number back to Verizon and have been happily using a $200 Moto G5 Plus purchased through Amazon.
andrewaylettover 6 years ago
For all that &quot;legal tender&quot; as a concept is so often misused, this is actually pretty much the poster-child case where it&#x27;s necessary: you one someone money and they&#x27;re refusing to accept payment. Offer them some legal tender, they&#x27;re required to accept _that_ in payment of your debt.<p>Of course, Google being a tech company that might not motivate them to solve their tech problems so it might not fix their other account issues. But it really should fix the phone company side of the problem, allowing the number to be ported out.<p>Or maybe I&#x27;m overly optimistic.
jayalphaover 6 years ago
I love my Fi. But I did not activate it in the US and activating abroad was not trivial. Their &quot;Service&quot; called this &quot;buyers remorse&quot; since I could still use Wifi. Long story.
bubblethinkover 6 years ago
Isn&#x27;t a more fundamental reason to not use fi is that it&#x27;s not a real phone network ? Nobody other than google can operate a client as intended on the fi network. The network switching stuff isn&#x27;t a standard or open source AFAIK. It&#x27;s not a part of AOSP. Only google&#x27;s licensed devices get that logic as a part of google play services. All other devices will operate in degraded mode where you are basically using a single carrier just like other carriers. So why bother ?
pcpcpcover 6 years ago
Anecdotal evidence, but service was getting worse and worse with google fi (in San Francisco) over the past few months and I just switched to another carrier a few weeks ago. Calls were regularly dropping and data would cut in and out.<p>(I scrolled through the comments and didn&#x27;t see this anywhere else. I think it&#x27;s worth mentioning. I will miss the international coverage and included hotspot... And as someone who is on WiFi most of the time, it was cheaper than any of the major carriers.)
m0zgover 6 years ago
It always seemed like a rip-off to me, given that there existed a $120 per 4 lines T-Mobile plan with _global data_ for free and unlimited domestic data (well, speed is capped after 4GB per line, but still pretty decent). When abroad, data speeds aren&#x27;t going to impress, but it&#x27;s enough for email and maps and it works nearly everywhere. I&#x27;m not associated with T-Mobile and don&#x27;t hold any of their stock. Just a satisfied customer.
TheMagicHorseyover 6 years ago
If you want a cheap, fairly good mobile plan ... try Mint SIM. You can choose Verizon, AT&amp;T, or TMobile networks. You prepay for your plans. A 5GB, unlimited call, unlimited text plan is about $15&#x2F;month. The cheapest I&#x27;ve found.<p>Only downside is my texts don&#x27;t always download when I&#x27;m on Wifi, so sometimes I have to disconnect to download my texts, and then reconnect to wifi. Annoying but not a deal breaker.
ogn3rdover 6 years ago
I quit a couple years ago when my phone left me in a position where I could not get any connectivity from the TMobile or Sprint towers, nor wifi. They tried to use the excuse that it was tower maintenance yet couldn&#x27;t explain why wifi connectivity wouldn&#x27;t work. As someone who is on call 24&#x2F;7&#x2F;365 it was unacceptable and I moved to another provider. Their phone support was absolutely useless.
kuroopover 6 years ago
This post is not surprising to me. Google product support team lacks empathy at a very fundamental level. Last year in middle somehow google&#x27;s system decided to get me locked out of the old gmail account. I have all the phones which have ever been connected to it, and all emails I have had ever connected to it. But no! The only message I have got is, our security team will take 3-5 days to get back to you.
hi41over 6 years ago
I had a lot of issues with getting Google Fi. On Wi-Fi the calls wouldn’t go through. If it did the quality of voice was not good. When receiving calls there was a delay after I accept the call when the caller couldn’t hear me. When my wife was in Manhattan her phone stopped working completely. she had to use the phone of her friend to call me. And we moved from iPhone to android and we hated the experience.
godelskiover 6 years ago
Since switching to Android 9 has anyone else noticed that their data usage went up? Or rather that their phone disconnects from Wifi frequently?
sammycdubsover 6 years ago
FWIW re: cell carriers in the US, I&#x27;ve found prepaid has worked really well for me at a much lower price than even something like Google Fi. I&#x27;ve been using Mint, and I pay $25 a month for a 10GB plan and it&#x27;s worked great so far.<p>I&#x27;ve heard their support isn&#x27;t the best, but fortunately I&#x27;ve not had to deal with them yet.
maslamover 6 years ago
I&#x27;ve been a Fi customer for two years. Sometimes it &#x27;just works&#x27; when you travel internationally, which is magical. Most times however it just ok. It was dismal in Pakistan last year. In Netherlands it&#x27;s barely ok. I&#x27;m ditching it in a few days since the Dutch have better, cheaper carriers.
supernova87aover 6 years ago
One of the realizations of operationalizing an algorithm &#x2F; system is that designers &#x2F; programmers rarely think of every way in which human beings do unexpected things with their system. And usually the enthusiasm is never as great to mop up the customer experience problems after the 99% is solved for.
hoguover 6 years ago
Is anyone using GCE? This is making me pretty worried. I&#x27;m operating a jupyter notebook service where every user gets their own volume. If my account was suspended and we no longer have access to user data that would be terrible. We can try backing data out to AWS but the egress fees would add up
TheMagicHorseyover 6 years ago
Holy shit! So Google has turned into the Comcast of 2019.<p>Wow, it took just 19 years to go from the darling of the year 2000 ... DO NO EVIL ... to the WE DONT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT RUINING YOUR DIGITAL LIFE BECAUSE WE HAVE A POLICY AND PROCEDURE.<p>I guess it really is inevitable. You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.
jlmortonover 6 years ago
The service is tremendous, the support is terrible. My experience signing up definitely gave me pause about the service, but I have no complaints since.<p>When I signed up for Fi on Black Friday, taking advantage of a great deal with $200 off the Pixel 3, and $200 in Google Fi credits, I mistakenly used a pre-populated shipping address to my work address in my order. That address was no longer valid, as my company had recently moved.<p>When I got a shipping notification, I realized my mistake. I contacted FedEx to change the shipping address, but Google Fi had placed a restriction on their shipments that didn&#x27;t allow recipients to change the shipping address.<p>So I contacted Google Fi support. After waiting on hold for nearly two hours, I was told that since the product had already shipped, the issue would need to be escalated to their Shipping Specialists, who would contact me. Great.<p>Two days later, the package arrived in my city, and FedEx noted a delivery exception, since the address was not occupied. I called Google Fi support again, and after waiting on hold for an hour, was told the issue had already been escalated.<p>Several days later, after no progress, I chatted with Google Fi support again. No update, no ETA, they simply said the Shipping Specialists would get to it when they can. I contacted them again two days later. Same drill. No update, no ETA, no information, no ability to do anything except tell me to wait.<p>About ten days after I first contacted them, and seven days after the package arrived in my city, FedEx returned the package to the sender. I contacted Google Fi again, and asked if they could send a replacement, now that the original was being returned. No dice. I&#x27;d have to wait for the Shipping Specialists.<p>A few days later, the Shipping Specialists cancelled my order and refunded my payment, without ever talking to me. They advised me that I could place a new order. I replied asking if Google Fi would honor their promotional pricing, since the phone was now $200 more expensive, and the Google Fi credits had dropped from $200 to $100. They said they might, and they would escalate it to a manager if I purchased a new phone, and sent them the order details.<p>So I did. Here was their reply about a week later:<p>&gt; Hi XXXXX,<p>&gt; My name is XXXXX and I&#x27;m a higher level Specialist here with Google Fi. I&#x27;m working directly with our Promotions Team to determine your eligibility for our &quot;Pixel 3 &#x2F; 3 XL $400 Back&quot; promotion that was ongoing from November 22nd @ 11:00 PM PT - November 27th @ 11:59 PM PT.<p>&gt; After thoroughly reviewing your account, we have determined you are ineligible for an exception to this promotion.<p>&gt; Per the promotion terms: &quot;Limited time offer available from 11&#x2F;22&#x2F;18 11:00 PM PT through 11&#x2F;27&#x2F;18 11:59 PM PT, or while supplies last&quot;<p>&gt; Since your original order GS.XXXXXXXX was returned to shipper due to an incorrect shipping address, we are unable to provide an exception.<p>Pretty amazing. I called Google Fi support five times over a 10 day period to try and get the shipping address changed. The original mistake was mine, but no one at Google Fi support was able to do anything about the problem until the phone was returned, and then they made no effort to rectify the situation.<p>With that said, I&#x27;m quite happy with the phone and service - just not the support.
sbr464over 6 years ago
I’ve tried it and overall found the service spotty in Denver, and typically a notch lower (technical term) on whatever speed compared to Verizon etc, when traveling internationally. I will admit that initial tech support experiences were unsustainably amazing.
b212over 6 years ago
I&#x27;m always amazed how expensive mobile plans in the US are.<p>Google Fi Unlimited + 6 GB of is $80 a month. In Poland you get the same for around $6.5, prepaid.<p>On the other hand AT&amp;T Prepaid $40 Monthly Plan has everything unlimited and 8 GB of data, so why would anyone use Google Fi?
rkagererover 6 years ago
I&#x27;ve had edge case service nightmares with Google as well. Hate to say it but for a company that prides themselves on being smart, sometimes (just like in any other bureaucracy) they come across as really stupid.
saagarjhaover 6 years ago
Just switched to Google Fi, and while I haven&#x27;t had any issues to the extent to which the author did, the I do agree that the support experience is not great. It&#x27;s in line with most Google products.
ryanmercerover 6 years ago
I&#x27;ve been with them for 3 years and change, the entire time it&#x27;s very much been an iffy beta-feeling product. <i>shrugs</i> the price is worth the inconveniences I&#x27;ve experienced.
killjoywashereover 6 years ago
Ah, I live on a small island in the Pacific and just got back from Thailand. Having Google Fi has been an absolute game changer.<p>Would having a back-up payment method set have solved something like this?
camdenlockover 6 years ago
Things like this are why I&#x27;ve recently bailed on my Google account (including my decades-old gmail account). There ARE alternatives out there. I&#x27;ve been enjoying ProtonMail.
skolosover 6 years ago
Throughout years Google showed that if you make any of their products essential for you, there is big chance you are going to be screwed. In the end all they care is web search.
duxupover 6 years ago
I&#x27;d leave Fi, but who am I going to use after that? Verizon, ATT? Granted Fi uses ATT (and roams on Verizon once in a while) but I&#x27;d rather not pay them directly....
eisa01over 6 years ago
The EU should introduce some Digital Consumer Rights to put a stop to these arbitrary black holes you can get into with internet giants.<p>Would surely be a positive measure?
gus_massaover 6 years ago
Just to be sure, the gmail account was also locked?
wittedhaddockover 6 years ago
FWIW I started a Google Fi competitor focused on providing competent service quickly: CommunityPhone.org
8ytecoderover 6 years ago
Well, it will be fixed with the next rewrite of Google Payments&#x2F;Wallet&#x2F;Pay&#x2F;Whatever.
mattfausover 6 years ago
Would adding multiple payment methods to your google payments account mitigate the risk here?
TomMckennyover 6 years ago
Is there some disadvantage to using a dedicated Google account solely for Google Fi?
x0x0over 6 years ago
tl;dr:<p>* all payments through google use google pay<p>* poster&#x27;s husband bought a pixel 3 at the same time there was fraud on their card.<p>* the pixel 3 shipped even though the payment was reversed because of the fraud<p>* google shut down his google pay account hard, and that broke google fi, hangouts, access to his phone number, etc.<p>* google support has been super googley about this (ie foad)<p>* if you ever have fraud problems with google pay, prepare for all google stuff to break with 0 resolution or help<p>* as a side note, poster bought a pixel 3 and they have improved their support from the pixel 2 to be more googley. The phone remains basically broken.
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chisleuover 6 years ago
It routinely cost me so much in data that it was cheaper to get a Verizon unlimited data plan. That was the end of it for me.
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ben509over 6 years ago
Just my luck, I start seeing all the horror stories after I&#x27;ve <i>just</i> signed up for this. Pucker intensifies...
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your-nannyover 6 years ago
on plus side, Google asked the cell companies not to cell Fi customers location data...
pdx_flyerover 6 years ago
A credit card pushing post veiled as a Google Fi review. Awesome.<p>My wife still loves Fi, and I love having a Fi data sim.
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