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I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

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Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#191

Post by gambiting »

jlarocco wrote: post #61
zenexer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently had nearly the same exact problem with Microsoft. Security department is a black box—zero communication. A friend working for Microsoft even escalated my case internally at the time, but nobody could do or see anything. My account was eventually unfrozen without so much as an email to notify me, never mind an explanation. The point is, this issue isn’t limited to Google.

Wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft saw how much money Google saves by not having support, and decided to follow their lead. They used to have decent support.

As an Xbox developer, Microsoft support is actually pretty good. They reply to questions pretty quickly and when needed you can even speak directly to the engineers responsible for the parts of the system. But then again, I imagine Xbox development team and their number of customers(developers) is tiny compared to the rest of Microsoft, so they can allow this kind of tight support.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#192

Post by tinyhouse »

bduerst wrote: post #171
tinyhouse wrote: post #112

I can relate. We have two Fi phones and there are bunch of problems: 1. If you use the max 10G every month it'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'm on wifi and they cannot hear me when I answer and instead go directly to voice mail. I was t…

That doesn't sound right, because Fi charges a metered flat rate per data used, there is no "Max 10GB". You may be misunderstanding how Fi data works. Fi's "max" is mostly there because consumers have learned that behavior from other carriers who like to charge overages - Fi refunds the metered data you don't use if you paid for 10 GB, and bills you at the same rate if you go over.

My bad, I meant something else. We have two lines and we pay for 10G max (beyond that it's free but beyond 15G it becomes slower (only data on the account that goes beyond 15G becomes slower)). If we use less than 10G we pay less. What I meant is that for people who reach the cap it gets expensive. There are cheaper unlimited plans with other carriers.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#193

Post by rchaud »

tracker1 wrote: post #120
ronsor wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but it's generally not worth your time or money to do so

But it'd be interesting to see a LOT more small-claims court suits... a million paper cuts to bring some humility and service to the beast.

This won't happen, because Congress has done its best to try to limit action against corporations by trying to define everything under the sun as 'frivolous lawsuits that are clogging up our courts'.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#194

Post by bduerst »

lostmsu wrote: post #140
will_brown wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar problem with Apple. 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/can…

It looks like in this case its the YC company in the wrong. How could they have claimed you could get a refund, and never provided you that? Even if they did not know Apple does not do it, its their claim and so is their responsibility. You could easily sue in a small claims court.

I think the point isn't who is really to blame here, but it's that no matter what cell service or tech you use, there are situations where they will stop service because of payment disputes even if you're in the right.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#195

Post by rchaud »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #168
ronsor wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but it's generally not worth your time or money to do so

True. The demand letter you write prior to filing a lawsuit will usually be enough, though. At some point someone runs the calculation between giving you what you want and fighting a lawsuit in small claims, and decides to give you things instead.

A Chromecast retails for ~$25. Even if the presiding judge decided to award 100x in 'punitive' damages, that's still $2500, which is far less than what it would cost Google to bother addressing the claim in court.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#196

Post by ghazak »

waqf wrote: post #178
clairity wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not an "intelligence" so much as emergent properties of systems. there are fields like system dynamics and macroeconomics that study such things.

Yes — but all "intelligence" is an emergent property of systems. And because the system in this instance is not a human brain, it's non-human intelligence.

It’s not really intelligence, so much as selection pressure in the direction of high margin. Evolution isn’t “intelligence” either, but still leads to interesting or highly honed solutions to problems.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#197

Post by steelframe »

EduardoBautista wrote: post #165
8ytecoder wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ac…

You know, I currently use my own domain for email. Maybe I am paranoid, but I worry about that when I die, my domain will expire, and then someone will register that domain and set up email accounts with it. They would be able to access so many services that I would have left open after my death. I still don't know how to handle this apart from leaving a fund to someone I trust to have my domain renewed for a few mor…

> I worry about that when I die, my domain will expire, and then someone will register that domain and set up email accounts with it.

The good news is that you will be dead, and so you won't be worrying about anything at all.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#198

Post by MrZongle2 »

ronsor wrote: post #40
iandanforth wrote: post #29

The lede here is somewhat burried: "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.…

This is a general issue with google. If their system decides it doesn't like you, then you're out of luck. You'll never get them to fix it.

"You'll never get them to fix it."

And, quite honestly, why would they at this point? They have millions of other customers they can ignore, that are still paying. Where are they going to complain? And how would other users in the same boat find such complaints?

It's certainly not right, but there's no strong incentive for Google to change how they're doing business right now.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#199

Post by aidenn0 »

rmason wrote: post #172

I've had accounts with Verizon, Sprint and tMobile. On their worst day Google Fi is head and shoulders above them, it's not even close. I've used cell phones for thirty years and my time on Fi is the most stress free in all that time. 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.

Sprint support was incompetent, but they were at least as likely to make an error in your favor as not, so you could just call a couple times until you got the result you wanted.

Verizon's support was mediocre, but it idn't take too much persistence to escalate things to someone who could actually make a decision.

The recent stories I've heard of Fi's support make it sound like when something goes wrong, the easiest thing to do is to just open a new gmail account and switch to using that, which is a bit mind boggling.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#200

Post by stephenhuey »

ploxiln wrote: post #130
ronsor wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a general issue with google. If their system decides it doesn't like you, then you're out of luck. You'll never get them to fix it.

This is also a problem with Square, and Stripe, and Paypal ... it's an unsolvable fraud/scammer problem. Basically, if there was customer support that could fix the problem, then skilled scammers can get money and control out of them. They can do it a lot better than you can get your stuff re-enabled, they know just when to say what to whom. Verizon just accepts the inefficiency, and also over-charges random customer…

At the very least, they should figure out how to empower somebody in the support structure. This happened to me with that silly Cash app from Square (the Twitter handle is very cutesy in its interactions with people). It seemed kinda cool in how it let us come up with our own handle for people to send us money for our wedding, but left such a terrible taste in my mouth when everyone told me it wasn't working and Square shut down my account with no explanation. Why do millions of people depend on that? I want options like that to exist, but if I really need to depend on people being able to give me money, I'm just going to tell them to send it via my Chase account since for all its problems, Chase is a mature business. Maybe I'd use an Emoji app from Square just to share some giggles with people, but a money app from Square??? Nope, their brand lost my trust at the worst possible moment.
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