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I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

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Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#401

Post by CPLX »

monksy wrote: post #208
CPLX wrote: post #93

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…

> 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)

That scenario is literally the exact opposite scenario described here, where an incredibly wealthy and powerful business titan successfully intimidated and destroyed a much smaller and more poorly funded source of journalism because he felt like it.

That, conceptually, is exactly the opposite of using small claims court to get justice from a giant faceless corporation.

People like Peter Thiel have literally never been intimidated by the legal system. They have the resources to exploit and manipulate the legal system, and then lobby to get the laws changed if it doesn't work out for them the regular way.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#402

Post by theintern »

brewdad wrote: post #217
magduf wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Definitely get a cheap sim card wherever he lands. The EU abolished all roaming charges for data and calls so he'll be able to use whatever data and calls he has in all EU countries.

Some countries have extremely good value pre paid sim cards with 20 gigs of data often coming in under €20 a month.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#403

Post by angry_octet »

dpark wrote: post #350
velosol wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because of Google's use of 'From' and 'Sender' headers in gmail. If you setup an SMTP server to send your emails from for your @example.com address then Google won't mess around and the emails appear to actually come from the email address you want out there, not your @gmail.com.

You can actually set up gmail to send through an external server? I had no idea they’d support that. Running an SMTP server is absolutely not something I’m willing to do, though. Aside from the general setup/maintenance hassle, all the big companies are aggressive at blocking spam and private SMTP servers are just tough to keep unblocked these days (or so I read).

If you have GSuite you can, but I doubt it is possible for individual accounts. [1,2]

You can however send email to google's SMTP server, using an ordinary gmail account [3]. This is how email clients (Eudora, Apple Mail, sendmail) work. The only trick is that they force it to be authenticated and encrypted.

I believe (but have not verified recently) that if you send an email with an email address/domain other than of the authorising account, it will be delivered, even lacking all SPF etc. But, it will block for anything above small quantities of mail, and unless you set up DMARC for your domain, it will still get dropped or marked as spam. [4]

Running an SMTP server for yourself is actually fairly simple (okay, assuming a deep background in linux, but very educational). The real drama is DNS/DMARC/SPF/DKIM and users ruining your reputation.

[1] https://www.datto.com/resource-downloads/SettingUpExternalMa... [2] https://support.google.com/a/answer/178333?hl=en [3] https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-... [4] https://kinsta.com/knowledgebase/free-smtp-server/

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#404

Post by dhimes »

ehsankia wrote: post #369
wpietri wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

it costs $xxK to buy a car. It costs 0$ to use Gmail, Drive, Youtube, etc. These two are not gonna have the same level of customer support. Fi is a paid service, and I do expect it to have a better support (which in my own experience, they do), but to compare Google as a whole to Toyota doesn't seem fair.

Your parent's point though is that with the free offerings, you're not the customer. Google's advertisers are.

With the paid offerings you are the customer and comparing Google's CS to Toyota's or anybody else's is entirely fair.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#406

Post by Mindwipe »

jasondclinton wrote: post #272
Someone1234 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the whole crux of the issue is that any one Googler wouldn't have enough oversight to answer. Google is too complex of an organization, and the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. So issues become lost between CS, security, and accounting. I've seen this from the other side. I've also seen it get mitigated by giving someone (customer service) ownership of the problem, and giving them enough o…

Actually, former Payments Googler here. I have a pretty good idea what could have happened. I will escalate this internally. And no, it shouldn't require a Googler to fix it; something has gone wrong.

There are way too many stories like this around. Something goes wrong a scary amount of the time, and Google just have no useful process. It desperately needs a centralised "customer service" team who have the power to override literally anyone else in Google to sort this shit out.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#407

Post by hogu »

rroblak wrote: post #100

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 comp…

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.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#408

Post by benologist »

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…

It's more specifically a problem with Google as they actually have $106 billion in the bank and choose to write a few algorithms and pretend they've met their obligations to their customers, despite 20+ years of evidence it is insufficient. Some segments of their users like Adsense they have actually been stealing from for all this time via automated accounts bans and balance forfeiture safeguarded by their patently fake support.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#409

Post by lathiat »

angry_octet wrote: post #403
dpark wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can actually set up gmail to send through an external server? I had no idea they’d support that. Running an SMTP server is absolutely not something I’m willing to do, though. Aside from the general setup/maintenance hassle, all the big companies are aggressive at blocking spam and private SMTP servers are just tough to keep unblocked these days (or so I read).

If you have GSuite you can, but I doubt it is possible for individual accounts. [1,2] You can however send email to google's SMTP server, using an ordinary gmail account [3]. This is how email clients (Eudora, Apple Mail, sendmail) work. The only trick is that they force it to be authenticated and encrypted. I believe (but have not verified recently) that if you send an email with an email address/domain other than o…

Last time I tried this they forcibly rewrite the sender as your gmail account.

Re: I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi

#410

Post by pbalau »

theintern wrote: post #402
brewdad wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Definitely get a cheap sim card wherever he lands. The EU abolished all roaming charges for data and calls so he'll be able to use whatever data and calls he has in all EU countries. Some countries have extremely good value pre paid sim cards with 20 gigs of data often coming in under €20 a month.

No roaming charges between members of EU. So, if he lands first in UK, don't buy the sim from there
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