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 could just go get a better unlimited plan for slightly more (with more phone choices) tomorrow. But I wouldn't really use the extra service and so I'm happy to get the extra $100/yr or whatever I'm saving.
That being said, I've had extremely mixed support from Fi. The support is responsive, human and polite. But for issues almost exactly like this one, Fi's support staff is entirely unable to cope. In our case, Fedex had even taken a photo of the delivery (which was the wrong house). Fedex needed some kind of shipping code from google to release the photo so we could prove it's not the same house (or at least figure out who had our new phone).
Not a single person at Fi could provide the code to Fedex.
We escalated 3 times and it took about a month to resolve, but in the meanwhile we were charged for a phone we didn't receive, and the clue as to where it went was readily available.
Fi did eventually send us a new phone and everybody was terribly polite, but anybody else would have just noticed the phone hadn't been activated, and sent a new phone immediately (and if the phone were to be activated contact local PD).
It took dozens of chats, emails, calls and so on, and each time the support person on the other end would lose the script and try to resolve our issue with some non-sequitur that wasn't solving the problem.
It's not the worst customer service experience we ever had, but it was down there. The only reason we didn't pull the plug was we were about to travel outside of the U.S. and having service that just "works" was a big part of our planning.
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.
FWIW, the built-in VPN isn't actually what matters for why the internet is unblocked in China when on a foreign SIM. Instead, the way cellular data networks works is such that your traffic is tunneled back to the provider first.
I’m writing this from Australia where I arrived today and my Sprint phone roams for free: I get free texts and slow 2g/3g data(enough for WhatsApp and FaceTime audio calls) as well as $0.25 phone calls.
2 years ago when I was also visiting Australia I was with T-Mobile which offered similar free/low cost roaming.
It’s not ideal, but its an alternative to Google Fi
The difference is in quality. I am also right now in Sydney, on the last day of my week-long business trip, and I have had constant 4G connection with Google Fi. Back when I had T-Mo I needed to find WiFi whenever I needed to download a large attachment, and obviously whenever I wanted to stream videos. Now I don't even ask for the WiFi password. And yes, I'll be watching Game of Thrones this evening using my phone's hotspot which has a US IP, so I can really feel at home.
I'm disappointed to hear that Google's customer service is bad, but when I signed up I wasn't even sure if they had a customer service department. T-Mo's support was OK, but for the past few months I've been living without it just fine.
> 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.
T-Mobile One accounts get this in 120+ countries, works like a charm. But I've done the math and renting a USB hotspot or buying a 1-month SIM works out to be cheaper for my needs, and I can avoid having to confirm my phone has the correct network support in some countries.
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 could just go get a better unlimited plan for slightly more (with more phone choices) tomorrow. But I wouldn't really use the extra service and so I'm happy to get the extra $100/yr or whatever I'm saving.
That being said, I've had extremely mixed support from Fi. The support is responsive, human and polite. But for issues almost exactly like this one, Fi's support staff is entirely unable to cope. In our case, Fedex had even taken a photo of the delivery (which was the wrong house). Fedex needed some kind of shipping code from google to release the photo so we could prove it's not the same house (or at least figure out who had our new phone).
Not a single person at Fi could provide the code to Fedex.
We escalated 3 times and it took about a month to resolve, but in the meanwhile we were charged for a phone we didn't receive, and the clue as to where it went was readily available.
Fi did eventually send us a new phone and everybody was terribly polite, but anybody else would have just noticed the phone hadn't been activated, and sent a new phone immediately (and if the phone were to be activated contact local PD).
It took dozens of chats, emails, calls and so on, and each time the support person on the other end would lose the script and try to resolve our issue with some non-sequitur that wasn't solving the problem.
It's not the worst customer service experience we ever had, but it was down there. The only reason we didn't pull the plug was we were about to travel outside of the U.S. and having service that just "works" was a big part of our planning.