
Known Issue: Charged full price of Fi device after financing - danepowell
https://support.google.com/fi/thread/5490725
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bubblethink
Google Fi seems to have largely failed in achieving any meaningful goals. It
had some promise early on, but its value proposition is pretty thin. Main
points against:

1) Has fallen into the same trap of subsidizing expensive phones and phone
plans over long periods and other rubbish discount deals for signing up (used
to be the much hated contract model earlier with other carriers, but this is
not very different) 2) Not a real carrier in a standards compliant way (or at
least there is no open reference implementation). Needs play services blobs to
do anything intelligent 3) Needs google account 4) Mucks up google voice 5)
Not really price competitive for data

The only real thing going for it at the moment is roaming benefits. Once other
carriers undercut that, what remains ? It anyway has low name recognition and
no retail presence.

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RL_Quine
It works for me quite well, but that’s because I’m almost always roaming. The
experience of being able to have a pocket full of data SIMs at no code is
great. Mostly I never see it, or think about it, it just works. Though
honestly I’m sort of concerned for when it suddenly doesn’t.

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billh
The same-rate international data is what keeps me on Fi. It's great not to
have to worry about taking it in the shorts by the phone company when
traveling somewhere. A friend of mine has one of the majors as his carrier and
they were charging him $10/day for data in Europe, in 2019 that's just insane.

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King-Aaron
This could easily cripple people on low incomes. Not good enough for a company
the size of Google.

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Alex3917
> This could easily cripple people on low incomes.

To keep this in perspective, Google Fi costs substantially more than every
other phone plan unless you travel internationally on a regular basis.

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ahelwer
I pay around $35/month, is that substantially more than every other phone
plan? I am planning to switch off in the future though, for whatever privacy
gains are possible through avoiding Google.

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xeroaura
That sounds like 1.5GB of data/month? You can probably beat that with a MVNO,
but not any of the main US carriers. Extreme example being like mint mobile
which does bulk purchases (3,6,12months) and goes down as cheap as $15/month
for 3GB of LTE.

If you have Comcast home internet, you might be able to use Xfinity Mobile
(only BYOP for iPhone atm but they do have a few $100 backs for some phones on
their site). It costs $0 for calling/text and $12/gig.

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Alex3917
T-mobile is $40 per month with unlimited data, and $30 per month if you have
4+ lines.

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Johnny555
The only single line unlimited plan I see at T-Mobile is $70/month.

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lostmsu
You can easily find 3 other people.

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benguild
The data’s too expensive on Fi. It’s worth it for roaming but I’m dual-SIMing
AT&T in New York because why pay overage rates for basic?

I love having the service but financially I hope they sort some of this stuff
out. It could attract more people, too.

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mythrwy
Lots of angry people in the comments. Apparently it did affect a number of
them quite badly.

What seems strange to me, (and not judging it's just a little weird) are the
amount of people hit up for $900-$1000 phones that are overdrawn or cannot buy
gas etc because of this event. And certainly that can be a big surprise charge
but you still have to pay the $1000 over time, what's wrong with a $250 phone?

Maybe I'm a cheapo who only buys $250 phones and so doesn't understand how
much better the $1000 ones are. But if things are that tight it just doesn't
seem like the most logical thing to spend extra money on. Even future money a
bit at a time. Probably there are reasons I don't understand.

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Johnny555
Not sure why you got downvoted so much, you make a valid point, like maybe
this guy shouldn't have bought a thousand dollar phone:

 _Google, because of your ADMITTED MISTAKE, my rent check on Monday is now
going to bounce. I very well could get evicted from my house over this. What
is your plan to make sure I do not get evicted, or is Google going to pay for
a new place for me to rent if this happens?_

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jplayer01
I’m not sure what any of this has to do with Google charging the full amount
despite these people being on payment plans. It wouldn't be acceptable for any
other provider to do this and it isn't acceptable for Google. The state of
these peoples' finances makes this worse, and doesn't absolve Google. It's
incredible the mental gymnastics well-off people will do to shift the blame to
the poor instead of the weak, vulnerable billion dollar enterprises that fuck
up.

This guy took the payment plan according to what he thought was able to pay
monthly. And until Google charged him $1000 out of nowhere, that was fine.
That's all there is to it.

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Johnny555
I agree that Google screwed up big time but if you let the cost of your phone
get you evicted (even if unexpected), you've made a bad financial decision.

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imtringued
You keep talking about getting kicked out by the landlord which no one here
even mentioned except you in the entire HN thread. "The cost of the phone"
leads to additional late fees and in some rare cases to debt collectors
harassing you. Suddenly a small $1000 charge that you can pay off next month
turns into $1200 and you might pay additional fees to the debt collectors even
if their claim is invalid just to get them off your back. Google could also
just refuse to hand out refunds at all because they got your money and their
law department is bigger than whatever defense you can get and you will lose
more money in legal fees than you could possibly recover. Bonus points if they
keep charging the monthly payments despite you paying the full price.
(congratulations your $1000 phone is now $2000, "plan" better next time)

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Johnny555
I posted an actual quote from someone claiming that this could lead to
eviction from someone that posted on the Google blog page, I didn't make it up
out of thin air.

Google should refund all direct costs (NSF fees, etc) but they shouldn't be
responsible for rehousing someone that was evicted.

