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Leaving Google Fi

jasonatwood.io

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Re: Leaving Google Fi

#3

Post by petee »

Without going into specifics, and for what its worth, I've had some great experiences with their customer service and Its part of the reason I've stuck with them for so long. I doubt that'd be the case if I experience what this guy did though.

While dealing with a fairly technical sms issue, I was pleasantly surprised how far up the food chain I got when the first agents couldn't help me. The biggest speed bump is usually getting through the first round of questions that filter out the kruft and grandma-issues, but I understand the necessity

edit: I realized after I wrote this that most of my experiences were during the Project Fi phase, before it went full Google, so theres that...

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#4

Post by colde »

Even companies that are great at building fantastic products and great technical solutions tends to struggle customer service organisations. It seems they always assume that everything fits in to neat little buckets, and require adherence to them. This is true for both Google and Valve (Steam).

Trusting your customer service teams to have a great degree of autonomy in solving issues can sometimes be really important.

It's a shame you never know whether a company has sucky customer service before you buy their services.

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#8

Post by emptyparadise »

The thing with Google is that things work well 99% of the time for 99% of the people, but if you hit that 1% of 1%, your life will become an absolute nightmare filled with support site loops, chatbots, automated email replies, and months of suffering. If you're lucky, your story will make it to the front page of HN and somehow get resolved immediately.

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#9

Post by AaronFriel »

Google Fi support went down the drain when they expanded. I had a recent experience with my mother's phone being stolen while she was at a hospital, here's the summary after it was confirmed missing and police contacted, with a lot of redundant messages removed.

    1st chat with agent
Me Hi, my mother's phone was stolen, I'm tracking it on find my phone.

Them: Sorry to hear that, we can black list the phone but you must message us from the member's account

(I am the sole payer on the group plan, paid for the phone, etc.)

Me: Okay, fine, I will contact you from chat on her google account

    2nd chat with agent:
Me: Hi, this is [mom]'s son, I am helping her report her phone stolen to blacklist it.

Them: Sorry, we cannot blacklist a phone on a group plan if you are not the primary account holder, please contact us on the primary account.

   3rd chat with agent:
Me: Hi, I'm trying to blacklist a stolen phone, please see [case numbers]

Them: The phone is registered under another Google account

Me: No, see these case numbers, I refuse to end this support until this is dealt with, I am the primary account holder. Let's blacklist this phone so that it cannot be used by another carrier.

Them: Our specialist says the phone must be active on Google Fi to blacklist it.

(The phone's battery has died at this point, 90 miles away from where it was last)

Me: Does that mean it has already been transferred to a different carrier, or is it offline?

Them: The specialist says that the phone must be active on Google Fi

Me: What does that mean? Can you ask the specialist if the battery is dead that means it's not active?

Them: I cannot say.

Me: What is even the point of blacklisting a phone if it doesn't work the moment someone pops the SIM card out or turns the phone off? Nevermind. I would like to escalate to a supervisor.

Them: Okay

    Escalation??
Still haven't gotten anywhere since this Thursday, no one has reached out to me.

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#10

Post by KZeillmann »

It's weird -- I use Google Fi and loved it, and I got great customer service, up until the point I ordered a Pixel 3 through them back in November. I had to contact them so many times to find out why they hadn't shipped yet, and the regular customer support people had no idea what was going on, and when it got escalated to shipping, they also seemed to have no idea but were much less apologetic about it. After a few weeks of not having my phone shipped, I ordered it through the Google Store (with 0% interest financing instead of paying it off through my bill, oh well) and I got it within a week. It's ridiculous. I'd been a loyal customer of Fi for over two years, but that ordeal almost made me want to quit. If I had to go through what this author went through, I would have done the same.
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