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Leaving Google Fi

jasonatwood.io

91–100 of 296 posts

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#91
Google Fi on iPhone is pretty meh (if you travel a lot internationally), but there is one reasonable advantage of google fi over a lot of other operators: reasonably secure against malicious number porting. There are better options to protect a number, but nothing as accessible.

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#92
post #44
post #14

Fi's "killer app" is their seamless international experience for U.S. travelers. I travel outside of the U.S. at least twice a year and firing up my phone on the plane and being greeted with a "welcome X country" like I had just traveled between U.S. states is amazing. Down the list is their relatively cheap service for undemanding users (people who use less than a couple GB of data per month). I'm pretty sure I coul…

I had good experiences with it while traveling in china. Other people in my group bought local data sims which were 100 times cheaper than the $10/gb that google fi charges but everything they wanted to use (google search, google maps, facebook) were still blocked by the Great Firewall. Google Fi has built in vpn and didn't have that problem.

HK China Mobile is cheap and also tunnels around GF.

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#93
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is an Android Developer. Getting banned could have career-disrupting or even career-ending repercussions for him. It is not exactly comparable to quitting a video game.

Start building iPhone apps? It’s not as if there aren’t any alternatives.

I'm sure the costs (both direct costs and the opportunity cost) of a career change is orders of magnitude higher than the $70 he is going to get back through the chargeback.

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#94
The writer has more patience than I would, today. Halfway through, I would've switched to talking with communications/utility and consumer regulatory authorities, state attorney general's office, credit card company, etc.

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#95
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…

There is a good chance that Google views the complainant as fraud too... And that's why they can't talk clearly about what's going on. Their records show that first phone as delivered. They think their device has been stolen from them. Then the 'fraudster' tries to get another device sent to them - which is 'returned' under suspicious circumstances. All the delays might be a police investigation they aren't allowed t…

But their records wouldn't show the first phone as delivered. And the second wouldn't show as delivered either if he refused delivery.

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#96
Would love to get that script to track which Mobile Network Code I’m connected to. As soon as the Librem 5 comes out, I'm leaving Fi. I'd like to use which ever network that script indicates, if it supports the phone.

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#97

I had a problem with messages app, not sending messages. 5 calls to support, and they couldn't fix it. They don't have a way to get a hold the messages team to fix it. Simply incredible.

The messages team doesn't want to talk to you. Their app is used by 1.5 Billion people.

If just 0.1% of them had some issue with their app, that would be 1.5 million phone calls.

There are ~3 people working on the messaging app usually. Thats half a million calls each. Thats 52 years to answer all those calls!

The TL;DR is that you will never make a bugfree app, and the remaining bugs will always leave some unhappy customers. At some point the team needs to decide that they need to move on to making new features rather than bugfixing, and that point is well before they start talking to random users on the phone about rare bugs. Sorry - the app isn't for you - go use another app or another phone.

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#98
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…

I had a similar experience with them. When the phone started rebooting constantly, they offered to send me a used phone as a replacement. While I balked, I had little choice. As I was on a business trip, I asked if they could overnight it to me, at my own expense.

The could not.

Never buying another Google product again.

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#99
I admire this man's patience and I would have lost my shi* way earlier. I'd probably have them reported to VISA for charging my card.

Re: Leaving Google Fi

#100
As a counterpoint I have contacted Google Fi support four times and was very happy with the level of service. Though it's possible that all the issues I had was within the scope of the first line of defence, and if you outside of that you get OP's experience.

Disclosure: I work for Google, but honestly I don't think it has particularly biased me to say nice things about Google Fi.

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