Published 2018-02-26
I'll admit it -- I've been a Google fanboy for a long while. They have really good web-interfaces, they work at providing consistent APIs for their products (I'm lookin' at you, AWS), and their products generally work as-advertised. They even had that motto: "Don't be evil"
My main complaint now is with their utter lack of customer service and support. I had heard anecdotes that they weren't the best about supporting their customers (even when paid for said support). I had experienced some of that "bad support" myself, but I dismissed those reports and my own mistreatment with the assertion that one doesn't need support with good documentation. Well, I was wrong.
Google is a phone service provider. They are registered with the other TelCos as a "prepaid" system, in that you pay ahead for each month of service. They also have a "device protection" plan to permit replacing a broken phone at a reduced cost, available within 30 days of device purchase.
The problem with Google is that, even when you trade in or purchase a new phone, you are still charged for device protection on the old phone. There is no notice that you will continue paying $5 per month ($60/year) on a service that you can't use, nor is there any option to transfer said coverage to your new phone, even if you've been paying on a different device up to this moment. Never mind the cost to the customer is the same (five US dollars), you've been paying on the wrong device, so you don't get device protection.
For what it's worth, I would have shrugged this off if it weren't for the Fi Support team being inconsistent in their own messaging. They can't even agree with themselves!
This is the last straw. Google was supposed to be better. Google was better ten years ago. Since then, they've turned into the worst parts of themselves and pursued a business venture that lags far behind companies that actually want to retain their customers.
Now, I'm migrating my customers and personal hosting to other providers like Azure, moving my phone plans to T-Mobile, and doing my dead-level best to get off Google's products in their entirety (including Gmail and Drive). In a professional context, I'm advocating for using cloud providers like Azure or AWS, mail from Outlook.com, and Office365.
Google, you've failed at being a company we can root for.