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 happen for this kind of thing. They really do. Start with the frontline and work your way up the chain, ordering a frontline employee to commit a crime with a policy document is a crime for all who wrote and approved the document.
If a google customer engaged in fraud of a similar against google there's no doubt google have the option of involving the police and getting a prosecution. A corporation is people who are all responsible for their actions.
My wife and I left fi for exactly the same reason as the blog post. My wife had a problem with her pixel 2, and she was pretty much without a phone for WEEKS. We absolutely adored fi for years before that. We were huge advocates. After we had such a horrible experience being gaslighted, promised, and let down we just fuck this and went to AT&T. It’s not like we love AT&T. In fact, we don’t. But you know what we can do? We can walk our asses in a store in pretty much any city in the country and leave with a phone.
If customer support is important to you, I heartily recommend giving Ting[1] a try. They're a T-Mobile and Sprint MVNO. Every interaction we've had with their customer service has been excellent. Last I called, there was no phone tree, just a person immediately picking up (hopefully it's still like this).
> ordering a frontline employee to commit a crime with a policy document is a crime for all who wrote and approved the document
In reality they never order crimes in writing, though. They say your metrics need to be above a certain level to keep your job, and the only way to boost your metrics is to commit a crime. See: Wells Fargo fake account scandal.
My mom spent the last half-decade of her career (at a hospital) working large amounts of unpaid overtime because her boss made it clear that was the only way to keep her pension.
I found your comment about higher metrics eye-opening. Your mom’s story is heartbreaking to hear. That was such a cruel thing for her boss to force it upon her like that.
Too many people have too much of Google as part of their lives to do more than the OP did and eat the $70 instead of dropping out of Android development.
And that's got to be how Google can, intentionally or not, get away with such blatant fraud, the pool of people able to escalate is kept very small.
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 to talk about.
And finally now the 'fraudster' wants a refund of all moneys paid too! Who are they - they've stolen one phone, tampered with another, and want a full refund to boot!
The timeline is 2 months long... over 1 month between the phone being lost and the new one being returned.
Packages get lost for all kinds of reasons. If you ship things regularly, it happens occasionally. You open a case with Fedex, the driver gets a week to find the package. If he can't, the package is declared lost, and the insurance on the package is paid out.
You're ridiculous if you think Google is calling the police for every lost package. What would they even base a case on? Fedex tracking of a package delivered without a signature? Geez. The cops would just ignore their calls.
nope. Packages delivered without a signature can still be lost and the insurance paid out. How else would they prevent their drivers from stealing packages?
That was my first thought too. It sucks and they're completely in the wrong, but this stone-walling sounds like he has triggered their (completely insane) internal fraud procedure.
Prosecutions need to happen for this kind of thing. They really do. Start with the frontline and work your way up the chain, ordering a frontline employee to commit a crime with a policy document is a crime for all who wrote and approved the document.
If a google customer engaged in fraud of a similar against google there's no doubt google have the option of involving the police and getting a prosecution. A corporation is people who are all responsible for their actions.