Discussion - This Google Fi customer support horror story is the ultimate cautionary tale

Still not as evil as Verizon

Or T-Mobile.

I am in the middle of a customer service nightmare with Google fi myself. I'm trying to port my number out to Spectrum and literally have spent days trying to get beyond Google Fi's first level of support. The poster is mirroring my experience. I have contacted Google Fi numerous times just to be met with long periods of hold time (while the agent was supposedly speaking with their "specialists") to then be directed to take the same troubleshooting steps I had previously taken numerous times before. The issue with the number port is my number is somehow locked by T-Mobile or Metro interchangeably which it shouldn't be, I've been a customer of Google Fi's for over a year at this point. Repeatedly customer care at Google Fi would tell me they were going to escalate and I never received the email. Even more frustrating is when I've done all the legwork by calling the other cell phone companies that seem to be holding my number to figure out why they have a lock on my phone number, T mobile and Metro would tell me that they weren't holding my number and that this is Google Fi's issue. I can tell you that having made those phone calls magnified the issue with Google Fi customer support. When I called the other companies, even though I wasn't their customer, I was immediately escalated to porting specialists. My own company Google Fi still had me stuck in the first tier level customer support and I even had one Google Fi agent tell me that they didn't have a specialist team for porting numbers! Basically, the Google agent was trying to keep me at her desk in limbo. The only way I found relief was filing a complaint on the FCC website and sending feedback through Google Fi. My issue is still not solved and what's frustrating is that I will have to continue to pay Google Fi to hold my number so my number doesn't get released until this technical porting issue can be figured out. I had been generally happy with Google Fi's service The only reason I have decided to leave Google Fi is because I have the generous offer of having my phone bill paid by a family member. I'm going to leave this comment now because I just received a notification from Google Fi that my service is canceled. I am really hoping that this means my number was ported successfully but I'm scared to death that they just stopped my service without porting the number which I need to keep for my business.

Update on this post I received the notification that my account was canceled no way to call anyone at Fi because I now have no service on my phone. Google Fi says to contact them In the formed response email I received after they canceled my account. Their response states that if I have questions I should reach out to Google Fi but when I go into the Google Fi app I am told that there's already an open ticket and there's no way for me to move past that!

Pretty much this: Yes: Good service means helping customers through errors. This is what creates loyal customers.

Wow, almost exactly the same experience here!

I bought a flagship phone from the Google store, based on the $300 discount + $43 monthly credits (for 24 months on their Premium Unlimited account) offered in their all-too frequent marketing spam. However, their system misrecognized me as an existing customer (which I was not) and refused to the honor their promotion.

Despite multiple emails and several hours over various phone calls - I was directed in circles, from one customer service rep to another. It seems that the customer service is all off-shore, with almost comical inability to understand the problem (perhaps due to English competency). All agreed that they "understood my frustration" and would "personally watch my case", but no actual action ensued other than "escalating to the promotions department". The promotions department had no way to reach them except by email, which either got no response or went in a circle (not understanding the problem, or requesting the same information all over again).

This ends up leading to a situation where customers are subject to a giant, faceless company which offers promotions it is unwilling to honor (or systematically designs a system where the poor customer service effectively evades correction of errors on its part). Or maybe they are brilliant to have you match wits with their pleasantly incompetent chatbots or ESL-customer service reps until you either stroke out, or throw your hands up in exasperation and move on...

Ultimately, this results in a "bait-and-switch" scenario for consumers.