This post is not surprising to me. Google product support team lacks empathy at a very fundamental level. Last year in middle somehow google'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.
I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi
211–220 of 464 posts
Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Seems you have to be current on your account to port your number. They aren't, but they also are unable to use Google payments to become current.
I'm not a lawyer yada yada but it says on my dollar bill that it's legal tender for all debts, public and private.
Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi
#213Google 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 comp…
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.
Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi
#214Companies 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 a…
Email is a federated system.
If you don't like how Google handles it, run your own mail server.
Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
>No recourse available. You can sue Google in small claims court for the value of the undelivered Chromecast and for the court fees you spent on suing them.
I would be too scared of Google closing my account as retaliation for this and me losing literally my entire digital life (family photos, my identity that's tied to gmail, etc).
Ever notice how Google Photos always bugs you to clean up your phone of your personal photos and move everything to the Google cloud?
Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi
#216Earlier 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…
I've actually had decent luck getting Stripe to un-blacklist subscribers that they incorrectly identified as fraudsters.
But it takes a ton of back-and-forth with support reps who generally don't even know or believe you that blacklisting exists (sometimes just an email address, not a specific card, was blocked) – and in one case we didn't get a resolution until the customer got the CA Attorney General to write Stripe's general counsel.
Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi
#217I 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 th…
I just went to western Europe (Germany specifically), and spend 15 Euros for phone service there. It's simple: I just bought a SIM card at a shop (O2) and put it in my Verizon phone. I got a prepaid card that had unlimited text/calls (within Germany only), and 3GB of data, which was far more than enough for my 2 weeks there. Cellular service is much cheaper in Europe than in the US, so you might as well take advantag…
My son will be traveling to Europe this summer for a school trip. He'll be spending time in 6 or 7 different countries (UK, France, Germany, Switzerland and a couple more I can't remember right now)
Is there a better option than Fi for this type of trip?
Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi
#218Earlier 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…
PayPal has sales representatives and technical support people and you can actually deal with them, so I am not sure the premise is right...
...but the core problem is this argument is in reverse anyway: if I get banned from Bank of America somehow I don't lose access to the concept of a card that lets me pay for my Verizon account, and in the worst case scenario I can send them a check. I have had serious issues with Verizon paying for my account before (they both claimed I was behind on payments but would not accept money without a PIN number, which I could only get by verifying my address using a post card that would take forever), but it wasn't a catch-22 scenario where I lose my phone number as there is somehow literally no way to pay for their service again.
Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm perplexed. I can see hating them for other reasons, but expensive would not be the word I associate with Google Fi. I pay $22 including taxes/fees per month, but it's probably not a good carrier for people who watch a lot of video on their phones. * they're also probably one of the only honest carriers in terms of taxes/fees. My previous carrier had a much higher tax % which I thought was normal, but now I realiz…
If you use large amounts of mobile data, their plans very quickly become obnoxious (throttled after 15GB) and expensive ($80 plus taxes/fees). Compare that with T-Mobile, who offers $70 a month (including taxes/fees) with throttling at 50GB and 20GB of hotspot data for $15/mo more, or even AT&T or Verizon, and it's more expensive for less service.
I'm not sure how other people use so much data (besides video). I use whatever I want, and rarely go above 500MB ($5). I made sure to do the offline Google Maps (which I want anyways), and avoid streaming video on phone.
Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
It turns out it didn't take computer AI "taking over" to just arbitrarily decide you're out, or wrong, or whatever with no recourse. A company of humans have decided that's ok.
Corporations are the first generation of general AI.
Or the first generation of responsibility laundering.