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Leaving Google Fi

jasonatwood.io

131–140 of 296 posts

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is only one customer at Google, and it is the people buying ads. Astonishingly enough, even at moderate ad volumes there's still no customer service. You have to start spending truly astronomical amounts of money before an actual rep will attempt to help you with essentially any problem. So to Google, "actual customer" means "someone spending six figures per month on advertising on our platform". As far as I am…

I have lots of criticisms of Google, but let's not spread misinformation. GCP does offer paid support options, depending on your business requirements. If it's critical for your business then you can afford to pay a few extra hundred dollars a month

They have it but it’s significantly worse than aws even at the enterprise tier. I don’t feel like I’m treated like a customer, just someone who should feel blessed to be allowed to use their systems. We’ve come across bugs that broke our entire system that they were paged about weeks prior but “nobody important was affected”

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#132
I was limping along on a fading Nexus 5X (goes to sleep for a night, then revives) and refusing to pay the outrageous prices for the Pixels. Huawei has a phone I was eyeing, and I would have dumped Google Fi. But the Pixel 3a came out at exactly the right time, so I am still in the Google fold for this product cycle. But this story cured me of ever buying a phone directly from Google. Just like one shouldn't buy web hosting and domain registration from the same entity, the lesson here is never buy a device directly from Google. The risk is just too great.

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#133
post #54

"At every turn the team was presented with a chance to make things better and every time they blew it." I mean, this is the history of Google in a nutshell. They deserve to be systematically dismantled by Amazon for this alone.

Amazon support has never been anything less than stellar for me. Edit: Someone downvotes my experience? Wut?

> Amazon support has never been anything less than stellar for me.

> Edit: Someone downvotes my experience? Wut?

This conversation is about Google. That's like saying, "Costco has great customer support though," in a conversation about travel agents.

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#134
I've worked with google support before on multiple occasions. For their retail store, fi, and their cloud offering at the $400/mo cloud support contract.

Their support is bad. I would not recommend using any of their products. I would not choose to work there because I cannot imagine it is any better internally.

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#135
post #15

This is fraud. As soon as any rep sees the evidence of the fraud and stonewalls they are engaging in a conspiracy to commit fraud. At that point the law should take over. "The policy says I must break the law" is not a defence. "The fraud was opportunistic rather than pre-meditated" is not a defence. You can't break the law because of a company policy, you're a human you have responsibilities. Prosecutions need to ha…

> ordering a frontline employee to commit a crime with a policy document is a crime for all who wrote and approved the document

In reality they never order crimes in writing, though. They say your metrics need to be above a certain level to keep your job, and the only way to boost your metrics is to commit a crime. See: Wells Fargo fake account scandal.

My mom spent the last half-decade of her career (at a hospital) working large amounts of unpaid overtime because her boss made it clear that was the only way to keep her pension.

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#136

How on earth is google not being sued every day? It seems like once a week there's a new HN post about some kind of massive screwing they deliver to a customer.

I don't want to click far enough into the signup to get to an actual contract, but I'd be extremely surprised if it didn't have an arbitration clause as requirement. For some things you can opt out of arbitration, but not for others. The online fi related contract (which I obviously not the actual carrier contract) I found is: https://fi.google.com/about/device-protection-terms/ which indeed has a mandatory arbitrati…

Arbitration is void in Europe. That's 500 million people who can sue them.

However, given that it takes years for any case to settle, if you could even find how to start the process in the first place, that ain't happening.

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're lucky... Some collections agencies are far more rigorous... They'll come to your house every day at awkward times. They'll ring your grandma and try to tell all your friends you're in debt, etc. If they finally get paid, it won't be $600 - it'll be $600 + $1500 of interest at 55% APR and $1200 of fees for letters, visits, phone calls etc.

Under the FDCPA you have the right to demand no contact with you, your workplace, or your family members. If they willfully violate this non-contact demand, they can be on the hook for $1,000 in statutory damages. They can also be on the hook for disruption they caused at a work-place, or emotional of physical distress. https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/damages-fdcpa-violat... If a debt-collector is getting ove…

Wondering what's the equivalent in the UK.

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#138
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the accounts of any business you work for or ever work for in the future!

I would consider that to be a good thing. Every business who uses Google services should stop doing it right away.

Your current company using gmail for business might beg to differ.

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to click far enough into the signup to get to an actual contract, but I'd be extremely surprised if it didn't have an arbitration clause as requirement. For some things you can opt out of arbitration, but not for others. The online fi related contract (which I obviously not the actual carrier contract) I found is: https://fi.google.com/about/device-protection-terms/ which indeed has a mandatory arbitrati…

Arbitration is void in Europe. That's 500 million people who can sue them. However, given that it takes years for any case to settle, if you could even find how to start the process in the first place, that ain't happening.

Isn't project fi exclusively a US thing? Why wouldn't google just get it thrown out due to lack of jurisdiction when sued in Europe?

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#140
post #48

This is the difference between Google and Amazon. People have lots of criticism of Amazon, some I even agree with, but working here[0] one of my favorite little cultural things is that customers can and do email Jeff when stupid things happen. And Jeff reads them. Every now and then he'll forward one of them to a senior VP with a simple "?" added to it.[1] That question mark indicates two things: that you have 24 hou…

As a seller at Amazon marketplace my wife goes through at least one situation similar this every month. 4 times of 5 Amazon "by mistake" is suddenly charging her for something (tiny amounts) only to refund it all later.
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