"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.
...
If you can’t use Google Payments, you can’t pay for Google Fi
This, fundamentally, is why I can’t suggest anyone use Project Fi anymore.
...
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.
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.
I’ve since found hundreds of comments and Reddit threads from people having similar experiences, with almost zero positive conclusions.
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."
I made an in app purchase (with a YC company nonetheless) and the company gave a limited period to cancel the service for a full refund. I cancelled the service within the deadline, and didn’t get a refund. I requested the refund from the YC company who said “they can’t” refund and I have to ask Apple. So I asked Apple for the refund included the YC company policy/purchase date/cancellation email and Apple told me I had to be refunded by the YC company.
With no recourse I did a chargeback and Apple blacklisted my debit card which basically bricked my ability to use my phone.
All these tech companies have their heads so far up their asses when it comes to cost cutting/customer service, it’s no wonder services like Twitter/FB serve as public shaming, complaint tools to access the otherwise inaccessible tech elite.
A somewhat similar situation happened to me in that my Google payments account was frozen, supposely due to fraud. This caused me to be unable to buy a new project fi compatible phone or do any other payments, except... My monthly Fi bills continued to be processed as usual. I tried escalating with Fi support and filing a BBB complaint (which at least got looked at, but did not resolve my account standing). Finally, I contacted a Googler that commented here on HN and luckily they were sympathetic and fixed the issue. If I hadn't have been able to get my account in good standing and I was forced to start over with a new Google account, I would have switched to an iPhone. Sometimes I wonder if I should have switched anyway.
Pre-Google-Fi and into Google Fi, I considered the various "un-appeal-able" account scenarios with Google products, including how they sometimes tied back to loss of access to other Google products including one's Gmail account and basically any access to the baseline Google account at all.
When I signed up for my first Android phone, I created a new Gmail address for it.
When I decided to give Fi a ago -- and get a discount on a Nexus 5x -- I looked at how Fi commandeered any already-connected Google Voice number -- in a one-way process, by the way -- and used a Gmail account that did not have Google Voice set up. And kept my other number active on another carrier, by the way -- I wasn't porting it.
Fi can be pretty good, when it works. Google account management, on the other hand, remains a minefield of irreversible pitfalls.
I might suggest to Google, that they try re-introducing some orthogonality into their accounting structures. But, I'm tired of suggesting things to Google; they've had more than enough time to get -- or buy -- a clue.
One thing I can suggest; if you're deep into google products, you should be paying the $5/month for a G-Suite account with your own domain. You get access to better business-class support. Fi is now also supported on G-Suite accounts.
It's a no-brainer. It sucks that their personal account support is so bad, but there is a solution.
> 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."
I believe that being able to port your number is a legal requirement. It's unlikely a poorly designed billing system is a permanent exception to this.
I wonder how it really works. My first thought is to have a dedicated credit card used only to pay for my google services, kept in a drawer at home (and not uses for any other online service) and therefore unlikely (less likely?) to be used fraudulently. But I have three cards known to Google Payments. If any one of them has an issue would Google lock my account? I hope not.
> 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.
I'm surprised this is legal. Number portability isn't something phone companies offer out of the kindness of their heart; it's required by law. Does the law really allow them to hold the number hostage as part of a payment dispute?
EDIT: Nope, this is illegal:
> 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
This Reddit thread concluded that because a T-mobile account was suspended for non-payment and the number is unportable while suspended that the customer was out of luck.
I don't see how that matters legally. The FCC requirement doesn't make portability conditional on some account status defined by the carrier. But IANAL.
Google is, fundamentally, an engineering company. Despite their size and breadth, they still don't understand customer support. Their approach is to use software to solve problems, and they insist on doing so even when it's clear that software isn't up to the task.
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.
Google long ago ran the numbers on providing human customer support and realized it's not the sort of ultra-scalable business function that they like to invest in. Rather, they'd like to believe that they can build software systems that don'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's not functioning as it should.
I use the full suite of Google Products, including Project/Google Fi. This article describes one of my nightmares— getting locked out of my Google account. I'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.
But the average person isn't so lucky. If you're Jane or Joe Schmoe in Middle America, you're going to be screwed when your Google account goes haywire. I'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's Law [1] at work in Google's identity implementation.
I don't think engineering is the problem here. As an example, Toyota, a very engineering-driven company, is also famous for customer focus.
I think the problem is that Google is mostly about selling users' eyeballs to their real customers, advertisers. That's not a business of making individual users happy; it's essentially statistical in nature. With a search engine, if something works for 80 or 90% of people, that's great. If it's bad for the rest, well, tough luck for them. It's very hard to go from that to seeing each individual as valuable and important.
I have friends at Google that are L5. When my AdWords account was suspended (long story but if you Google AdWords banned my hackernoom article explains) one of them tried to file a ticket on my behalf. Went nowhere. As far as I can tell internal actions like that go the same route as tickets that I file as a normal person. So don't let having googler friends give you a false sense of security.
You nailed the issue for me, the problem is that these software approaches to customer service always assume that the service is 100% not the problem and that the customer is the one causing the problem.
> Despite their size and breadth, they still don't understand customer support.
Cue Larry Page's view on customer support circa 2000, and it still makes sense. Leaders fundamentally don't change views like that, and it impacts the organization - look at Zuckerberg's formative views on privacy.
Good engineering, just like good customer service, is super easy if you put integrity first and don't compromise it. Don't grow beyond your capabilities to handle your stuff with integrity, done.
Stories like this make me incredibly wary about the future of my Google account. I've been using it for almost twelve years. It has a copy of every photo/video I've taken for almost eight years. It's what I use to download apps, listen to music, and pay for things, and get around. I'd be absolutely devastated if I suddenly lost it. I've been planning for a while now a sort of contingency plan where I regularly backup my emails and photos, but from what I've read even that's difficult to do.
Every time a comment like this comes up I say the same thing: Your email address is very very valuable and everything in the digital world is tied to it one way or the other. Own the domain so you can port it to another provider. Keep a copy of your emails somewhere - a mail app on your laptop?
If you use drive, sync it fully to a laptop.
It's not just Google, any service - paid or free, can and will shutdown your account. It's something you have to assume will happen to you - not just some random stranger on the internet. I don't know about you but I definitely don't want to deal with losing all my digital documents, pictures and most important all my accounts by losing my email address.
Yes, and you can't trust yahoo mail either. I lost mine about 8 years ago for completely unknown reasons. they just randomly shut it down one day. I was completely appalled and vowed to never ever use another yahoo product as long as i live. I wonder how many other people had a similar experience.
I agree -- this single point of failure is incredibly scary. There must be a legal mechanism established to ensure consumers are protected. This is an inevitable technological cycle within markets:
1) a technology arises
2) usage spreads across consumers
3) consumers become deeply reliant on it
4) megacorps coalesce dominating market power over it
5) consumers demand protections from the government
The easiest way to mirror gmail, i have heard & am using is, to set a filter in gmail, forward every mail received to Hotmail. So, any point, Hotmail inbox is a pretty segregated but exact copy of Gmail
Do you want to keep your photos and videos forever? You have to take your data in your own hands. At the very minimum keep an offline backup of things you care about.
I use a simple getmail[0] script to download all my Gmail automatically, and I use an address on my own domain too. For Google Photos however I haven't found a great backup solution, especially one that can work on Linux/FreeBSD.
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.
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'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's highly reliable and available.
Companies like google shouldn't be allowed to just ban someone'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't be denied access over stuff that isn't in our control.
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'm going to keep it until someone else can do the same at a lower price.
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.
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.
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.
Needless to say this doesn’t contradict the advice to not use the service in the first place.
> 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.
That was Peter Thiel's conclusion after the Gawker ordeal. The reason why Gawker did what it did was that it was very difficult to succeed at suing them, and to survive while doing so. (Gawker would put the person suing them on an attack)
I have no idea what you just said. To understand that I need to see a lawyer, pay hundreds of dollars to be told what my right is, and how I can proceed. Then probably invest thousands of dollars in a lawsuit.
At least that's how I see it. Unless there is an app that you click a button and you sue Google for free that I don't know about.
This really hits home. Probably 99.999% of users won't have issues with Google's products / services, but if you're one of the unlucky few, you're helpless.
All you can hope for is to make enough noise on the internet to get a Googler's attention. None of the normal escalation channels work.
My issues with Project Fi / 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.
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.
She's definitely right that the quality of their support has tanked. I'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've had, even from Google.
When I first signed up they had fantastic support, now it's worse than what I expect from Comcast.
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.
Close, but not quite. Call centers are designed to make the general support (tier 1) agents effectively flesh and blood robots. These are jobs that might start at $10 an hour if you’re lucky, have little training, and typically very high turnover rates. Even if you get a competent/experienced agent who has literally seen your problem a thousand times and knows that step 3 of the script will always fix it, they will be penalized if they skip the first two steps. Likewise, they will be penalized if they transfer you to tier 2 until they get to the step in the script that says, “transfer to tier 2.” It doesn’t matter if you’ve had this exact problem 5 times before and every instance required tier 2. Doesn’t matter if you were just talking to another agent who ran the whole script and screwed up your transfer. The only way you might get lucky is if you’re lucky enough to have some kind of open case or note on the account that instructs them to transfer you directly.
That is interesting, I have never actually called them but have used the chat and email interface a few times with pretty good success. I wonder if there is any difference in how the different communication methods are scored?
I actually had the polar opposite experience. I had a complex support issue with my pixel 3 delivery and I got irritated because support was constantly escalating and shunting to different teams. While it was a bitch to fix the problem and took awhile, to Google's credit they did eventually do so and went the extra mile for me to extend a promotion and honor a referral code which they certainly didn't need to do.
> 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.
This was my EXACT experience with the google store. And Google Cloud gold level support. And google payments.
Google just doesn't make good products. I am consistently astounded at how SHITTY the google home is. It STILL can't make a to-do list.
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.
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'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: "Don't worry about it. You are handling this way better than I would."
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 just work.
No stupid voip apps. No managing prepaid balances. No switching sims. Just direct dial and go.
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.
I'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 "oops, there was a problem, try again" error with both the cards I entered. That was 9 months ago. To this day, I've been unable to use Lyft, and I can't get anybody to really look at the issue.
I'm not sure why they don't want to take my money, but for now, I just use Uber. Hopefully they won't decide they hate met too.
I've been trying to get Fi to resolve a billing issue.... I'm stuck in a loop with support where they keep asking me for a security code, then the next day they'll respond back saying it expired and they need another one. The codes only seem to be valid for 30m, so I don't have any idea why they keep asking for them...
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'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!
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/paste template responses that may as well have come from a chatbot.
I can. I don't want to take away from Google's user hostile practices etc., but Fi is kind of a must have for people who travel overseas frequently but don't stay in a particular country long enough to subscribe to the local mobile system.
You can almost always find a better local deal that works great if you don't move around too much, but Fi is a fantastic "common denominator". Since I've had it I've traveled to...maybe 15 countries in Europe, Central America and Asia and it's worked amazingly well and turned otherwise expensive roaming charges or juggling of sims into normal operations.
It has a weird kind of "global citizen" feel to it that I've never felt any other way. Step off the plane, turn your phone off airplane mode and you're good to go.
Driving across Europe and I received "welcome to <country>" while using Google maps just like driving across the U.S. where it says "welcome to <state>".
It's also pretty cheap, even if you blow your usage caps and try to go unlimited (Google will cap the charges at some point).
If you stay in one place or travel abroad rarely, I'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't want the hassle, it's pretty awesome.
Google Fi sucks, it'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/month with unlimited talk and text, and unlimited throttled internet after the 3gb, for $15/month.
I'm a bit concerned about all the people here that tell
they've been using Google services for decades and are afraid
to loose their pictures/documents/etc...
I mean how is giving such control over your data to one company
a good idea in the first place ?
I'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't want to hand them my phone bill.
Even if you'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.
I can understand why people criticize it, but I personally like Fi. The multiple carriers give me coverage in areas I don't expect it like Maine islands or the Sangre de Cristo foothills, and the price is reasonable if not the lowest available.
Additionally, the one time I've had to contact support, I had an email reply in 27 minutes.
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've been pretty happy with the service.
That could all change the next time I need support if they're still overwhelmed with new users, but so far so good.
[+] [-] iandanforth|7 years ago|reply
"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.
...
If you can’t use Google Payments, you can’t pay for Google Fi
This, fundamentally, is why I can’t suggest anyone use Project Fi anymore.
...
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.
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.
I’ve since found hundreds of comments and Reddit threads from people having similar experiences, with almost zero positive conclusions.
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."
[+] [-] ronsor|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] will_brown|7 years ago|reply
I made an in app purchase (with a YC company nonetheless) and the company gave a limited period to cancel the service for a full refund. I cancelled the service within the deadline, and didn’t get a refund. I requested the refund from the YC company who said “they can’t” refund and I have to ask Apple. So I asked Apple for the refund included the YC company policy/purchase date/cancellation email and Apple told me I had to be refunded by the YC company.
With no recourse I did a chargeback and Apple blacklisted my debit card which basically bricked my ability to use my phone.
All these tech companies have their heads so far up their asses when it comes to cost cutting/customer service, it’s no wonder services like Twitter/FB serve as public shaming, complaint tools to access the otherwise inaccessible tech elite.
[+] [-] jpeeler|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pasbesoin|7 years ago|reply
When I signed up for my first Android phone, I created a new Gmail address for it.
When I decided to give Fi a ago -- and get a discount on a Nexus 5x -- I looked at how Fi commandeered any already-connected Google Voice number -- in a one-way process, by the way -- and used a Gmail account that did not have Google Voice set up. And kept my other number active on another carrier, by the way -- I wasn't porting it.
Fi can be pretty good, when it works. Google account management, on the other hand, remains a minefield of irreversible pitfalls.
I might suggest to Google, that they try re-introducing some orthogonality into their accounting structures. But, I'm tired of suggesting things to Google; they've had more than enough time to get -- or buy -- a clue.
[+] [-] 013a|7 years ago|reply
It's a no-brainer. It sucks that their personal account support is so bad, but there is a solution.
[+] [-] efsavage|7 years ago|reply
I believe that being able to port your number is a legal requirement. It's unlikely a poorly designed billing system is a permanent exception to this.
[+] [-] EpicBlackCrayon|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deburo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imichael|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jessriedel|7 years ago|reply
I'm surprised this is legal. Number portability isn't something phone companies offer out of the kindness of their heart; it's required by law. Does the law really allow them to hold the number hostage as part of a payment dispute?
EDIT: Nope, this is illegal:
> 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
https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/porting-keeping-your-ph...
I looks like the OP should file a complaint (and if necessary sue?) over this point.
Indeed, this is so clear cut it makes me doubt the OP's story. Does Google Fi say they do this anywhere?
[+] [-] wittedhaddock|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jessriedel|7 years ago|reply
https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/4wotw8/tmobile_won...
I don't see how that matters legally. The FCC requirement doesn't make portability conditional on some account status defined by the carrier. But IANAL.
[+] [-] rroblak|7 years ago|reply
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.
Google long ago ran the numbers on providing human customer support and realized it's not the sort of ultra-scalable business function that they like to invest in. Rather, they'd like to believe that they can build software systems that don'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's not functioning as it should.
I use the full suite of Google Products, including Project/Google Fi. This article describes one of my nightmares— getting locked out of my Google account. I'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.
But the average person isn't so lucky. If you're Jane or Joe Schmoe in Middle America, you're going to be screwed when your Google account goes haywire. I'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's Law [1] at work in Google's identity implementation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law
[+] [-] wpietri|7 years ago|reply
I think the problem is that Google is mostly about selling users' eyeballs to their real customers, advertisers. That's not a business of making individual users happy; it's essentially statistical in nature. With a search engine, if something works for 80 or 90% of people, that's great. If it's bad for the rest, well, tough luck for them. It's very hard to go from that to seeing each individual as valuable and important.
[+] [-] hogu|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kxrm|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r00fus|7 years ago|reply
Cue Larry Page's view on customer support circa 2000, and it still makes sense. Leaders fundamentally don't change views like that, and it impacts the organization - look at Zuckerberg's formative views on privacy.
[+] [-] PavlovsCat|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dstaley|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 8ytecoder|7 years ago|reply
If you use drive, sync it fully to a laptop.
It's not just Google, any service - paid or free, can and will shutdown your account. It's something you have to assume will happen to you - not just some random stranger on the internet. I don't know about you but I definitely don't want to deal with losing all my digital documents, pictures and most important all my accounts by losing my email address.
No one should be complacent about this.
[+] [-] pascalxus|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ndnxhs|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lvs|7 years ago|reply
1) a technology arises
2) usage spreads across consumers
3) consumers become deeply reliant on it
4) megacorps coalesce dominating market power over it
5) consumers demand protections from the government
We have to get to step 5.
[+] [-] davchana|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2Ccltvcm|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dddddaviddddd|7 years ago|reply
[0] http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/
[+] [-] sithadmin|7 years ago|reply
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'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's highly reliable and available.
[+] [-] aaomidi|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buf|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CPLX|7 years ago|reply
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.
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.
Needless to say this doesn’t contradict the advice to not use the service in the first place.
[+] [-] monksy|7 years ago|reply
That was Peter Thiel's conclusion after the Gawker ordeal. The reason why Gawker did what it did was that it was very difficult to succeed at suing them, and to survive while doing so. (Gawker would put the person suing them on an attack)
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] hojjat12000|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] netinstructions|7 years ago|reply
All you can hope for is to make enough noise on the internet to get a Googler's attention. None of the normal escalation channels work.
My issues with Project Fi / 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.
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.
[+] [-] AlexB138|7 years ago|reply
When I first signed up they had fantastic support, now it's worse than what I expect from Comcast.
[+] [-] jahabrewer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andr|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Merad|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roland35|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Thriptic|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] honkycat|7 years ago|reply
This was my EXACT experience with the google store. And Google Cloud gold level support. And google payments.
Google just doesn't make good products. I am consistently astounded at how SHITTY the google home is. It STILL can't make a to-do list.
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.
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'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: "Don't worry about it. You are handling this way better than I would."
0: Sometimes two!
[+] [-] mcrae|7 years ago|reply
No stupid voip apps. No managing prepaid balances. No switching sims. Just direct dial and go.
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.
[+] [-] drewg123|7 years ago|reply
I'm not sure why they don't want to take my money, but for now, I just use Uber. Hopefully they won't decide they hate met too.
[+] [-] devicenull|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sodman|7 years ago|reply
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/paste template responses that may as well have come from a chatbot.
[+] [-] bane|7 years ago|reply
You can almost always find a better local deal that works great if you don't move around too much, but Fi is a fantastic "common denominator". Since I've had it I've traveled to...maybe 15 countries in Europe, Central America and Asia and it's worked amazingly well and turned otherwise expensive roaming charges or juggling of sims into normal operations.
It has a weird kind of "global citizen" feel to it that I've never felt any other way. Step off the plane, turn your phone off airplane mode and you're good to go.
Driving across Europe and I received "welcome to <country>" while using Google maps just like driving across the U.S. where it says "welcome to <state>".
It's also pretty cheap, even if you blow your usage caps and try to go unlimited (Google will cap the charges at some point).
If you stay in one place or travel abroad rarely, I'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't want the hassle, it's pretty awesome.
[+] [-] ndiscussion|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shhun|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sogrady|7 years ago|reply
Additionally, the one time I've had to contact support, I had an email reply in 27 minutes.
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've been pretty happy with the service.
That could all change the next time I need support if they're still overwhelmed with new users, but so far so good.