Google Fi seems to have largely failed in achieving any meaningful goals. It had some promise early on, but its value proposition is pretty thin. Main points against:<p>1) Has fallen into the same trap of subsidizing expensive phones and phone plans over long periods and other rubbish discount deals for signing up (used to be the much hated contract model earlier with other carriers, but this is not very different)
2) Not a real carrier in a standards compliant way (or at least there is no open reference implementation). Needs play services blobs to do anything intelligent
3) Needs google account
4) Mucks up google voice
5) Not really price competitive for data<p>The only real thing going for it at the moment is roaming benefits. Once other carriers undercut that, what remains ? It anyway has low name recognition and no retail presence.
The data’s too expensive on Fi. It’s worth it for roaming but I’m dual-SIMing AT&T in New York because why pay overage rates for basic?<p>I love having the service but financially I hope they sort some of this stuff out. It could attract more people, too.
Lots of angry people in the comments. Apparently it did affect a number of them quite badly.<p>What seems strange to me, (and not judging it's just a little weird) are the amount of people hit up for $900-$1000 phones that are overdrawn or cannot buy gas etc because of this event. And certainly that can be a big surprise charge but you still have to pay the $1000 over time, what's wrong with a $250 phone?<p>Maybe I'm a cheapo who only buys $250 phones and so doesn't understand how much better the $1000 ones are. But if things are that tight it just doesn't seem like the most logical thing to spend extra money on. Even future money a bit at a time. Probably there are reasons I don't understand.