
Tell HN: Google Fi horror story - oefrha
Upshot: I don&#x27;t know if mine is an isolated instance, but if you&#x27;re considering or in the process of switching to Google Fi, especially if you want to use it with your iPhone, think twice.<p>TL;DR:<p>The ugly:<p>- My number wasn&#x27;t ported after a week of activation despite calling customer support every day, and I have strong reasons to believe no one gave a damn.<p>- I got sub-2G speeds with their LTE in a fully-covered, densely populated area; never figured out why.<p>- Customer support has absolutely no troubleshooting material for iOS.<p>The bad:<p>- Phone support wait time ranges from 40 min to 60+ min; same for online chat.<p>The good:<p>- You can fill out a form and they&#x27;ll call you back.<p>- Call center reps were polite and friendly (but weren&#x27;t able to help me).<p>- At least no retention BS.<p>The full story is over 2000 characters, so I&#x27;ll put it in a comment &#x2F; comments.
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oefrha
Here's the full story.

I've been using an AT&T MVNO for years (introduced by a friend) and I'm pretty
happy with it (not naming it here so that the piece won't come off as a soft
sell, and that I won't be easily identified). My carrier, however, doesn't
offer any international service, so I'm completely left in the dark when
traveling internationally. When I read the Google Fi announcement, it appeared
that with my data usage pattern, Google Fi would only cost slightly more every
month and would still work outside the U.S., and the $200 credit was
attractive, so I ordered their SIM, which arrived a little more than a week
ago. I was of course vaguely concerned about Google's historic reputation in
the customer support department, but figured that maybe I would get lucky and
never have to deal with them, or maybe Google Fi customer support would be
okay. Boy am I wrong.

Fast forward to when I got the SIM in the mail, I activated the service on my
iPhone (XS Max) and kicked off the number porting process. It smelled slightly
off right off the bat, since although I selected "other" as my carrier, the
Google Fi app insisted on porting my "AT&T" number. Porting failed a few hours
later so I called Google Fi customer support. The customer support
representative asked me about my carrier, and actually called my carrier to
inquire about the porting process. He came back with the information that my
carrier's porting department closes at 6pm EST, so he called me back the next
day to restart the porting process. At that point I was actually pretty
impressed with the customer support. (It was later revealed that I initially
entered a wrong address, since I had moved and hadn't updated my address with
my previous carrier. It was not clear if porting failed due to the wrong
address, or because their automated system couldn't deal with my carrier to
begin with. Anyway, since a human support agent was now involved, the initial
error didn't matter anymore.) I was assured that porting would complete within
48 hours, and my case was closed.

It all went down hill from there. Two separate problems occurred.

First, although the number wasn't ported yet, I was actually able to use
cellular data; the data usage meter started rolling, and I could see my data
bill. Except one problem: although the connection showed up on my phone as
LTE, the actual speed was around 15Kbps tops (according to fast.com). That's
slower than typical 2G, and most websites, as well as apps that require an
Internet connection, ranged from barely usable to completely broken. (It was
actually an eye-opening first hand experience on how bloated the web has
become. HN was still usable, and thank God a couple of sites I run still load
with in 2 seconds. You don't need all the crap to be informative; who would
have guessed.)

I called customer support again, and the rep (a very friendly guy) told me
outright that he didn't have any support material on iOS (I didn't press him
into admitting anything). He tried a bunch of Android troubleshooting
instructions on me and they didn't work. Eventually we concluded that there
was nothing we could do other than waiting for the number to be fully
transferred and hoping the problem would automatically go away. A hypothesis
that remained a hypothesis till the end.

The second problem was that the porting process stalled. Nothing happened
after 48 hours, just a "porting delayed" status and "contact us". So I started
calling them every day. Every time I was told that "a specialist is working on
the case, I've left a message for them, and they will contact you by email
soon; just watch your inbox." Except no email ever came, and I was never
introduced to any "specialist". After another three fruitless days and being
told the exact same thing, I asked the lady on the phone to ask the
"specialist" to email me something, anything; I just needed to know that there
was actually some human being who would give my case some attention once in a
while. The lady promised to do that. Not surprisingly, again no email ever
came. (Note: I'm not saying it must be Google Fi's fault that the porting
process stalled; it could be my previous carrier. I don't know. What I do know
is that I was promised communication from Google Fi, and I didn't receive it,
despite daily calls.) So at this point I was pretty sure the "specialist
working on my case" simply didn't exist. I would hope that passing their
promised 48 hour threshold or calling them daily would elevate my case to some
higher priority, but nope. My best guess is that they had a huge influx of
customers due to the flashy marketing campaign, and didn't have the manpower
to keep up. Nevertheless, I was not happy being (politely) lied to, or staying
in the limbo state forever. Eventually, I called them again to cancel my
service. I'm glad to report that at least there was no BS around canceling.

That's the whole story. YMMV.

~~~
BeeOnRope
I have used Google Fi all over North and some of South America and the speeds
have been reasonable to good. I find support a cut above typical phone company
support, at least in terms of politeness and directness - but that's frankly a
pretty low bar.

~~~
beatgammit
I liked Ting as well as Google Fi. The larger carriers seem to have bad
support, but those two companies have been pleasant to work with.

~~~
oefrha
> The larger carriers seem to have bad support

That's hardly surprising.

Though, in my case, I would prefer insolent customer support that solved my
problem to polite customer support (I did put that under "the good") that
couldn't help.

