Google Fi was widely praised for excellent customer service when they first launched, but I think that reputation was lost as they scaled out in the last few years.
Do we live on a different planet? Google Fi is well known to be one of the worst customer services. I used it for a couple of months and most obvious queries are automated. Anything that requires an human barely gets any attention. The subreddit for Google Fi is very telling.
The one time I needed Fi customer service, I only got my issue (which had left my phone unable to make calls) fixed after months by abusing my Google employee privileges and complaining directly to Fi engineers.
EDIT: I absolutely love Fi. I've had no issues except that one time, and it was years ago. I show up in any random foreign country and every just works. My phone bill for me and my wife both is less than $50 a month these days, which I'm pretty sure is less than a lot of people pay for just one line. But I have this nagging fear that one day my account will stop working and I'll have to call up friends who are still Google and see if they can intercede.
I can’t speak to their email or chat support, but I had to call them a few weeks ago and got through to a human nearly immediately with no frustrating phone tree or hold or any issues. Perhaps their support is inconsistent, but I’ve never heard anything but praise about Google Fi customer support. Especially compared to literally any of their competitors.
There were threads on the internet about thousands of people permanently losing their phone numbers to Google Fi, and having no way to get them back, ever. Google didn't do a thing. Automated systems and disempowered minimum wage drones all the way down.
Basic outline was that Google Pay would mark something as suspicious, and refuse to take payments. Payments would stop to Google Fi, resulting in the number / service being frozen. At that point, the whole thing would grind to a halt:
* No way to pay Google
* Overdue payments and accumulating problems
* No way to port number out with overdue account
All based on Google's automated systems falsely triggering suspicious activity detection.
It didn't happen to me, but I would never, ever, ever even consider Google Fi. I have T-Mobile. Not very competent, but I talk to a human being every time, and if there are problems, they escalate to people empowered to fix them.
I think the parent is referring to when it initially rolled out. I was among the first customers when it came out and the customer service was indeed excellent. I was always able to quickly get through to talk to a native English speaker in the US. The support staff were always very knowledgeable and friendly as well.
I didn't last long on the service though. I just couldn't live without my iPhone in those early days of the service.
No idea how things are now.
EDIT:
My bad, I see parent is referring to present day. Experience from the early days still stands though.
I use Fi and the customer service is just OK, but the baseline comparison is Verizon where the customer service was easily reached but worse than terrible. More than once after talking to them I had seemingly compelling arbitrary fees added or removed, and once the caller ID entirely stop functioning on all phones on our family plan based on actions from CSRs.
I had to contact Google Fi recently and was pleasantly surprised with how easy they were to get a hold of when every other service provider is using the pandemic as an excuse to drop their phone support quality or remove it entirely.
Compared to my experience trying to get support from any other utility, from T-Mobile to Comcast to my power company, or any other company no matter how modern (Amazon has been especially bad since the pandemic started, I literally can’t get them on the phone no matter how much I try), Google Fi has been a breath of fresh air.
That being said, it’s only a matter of time before they lose focus and that goes away. If there’s one thing Google does consistently, it’s take something good and abandon it or kill it outright. I have no doubt I will be switching back to a traditional phone carrier eventually, but for now I’m a happy customer.
I've had mixed experiences. Sometimes they fix stuff quickly or are helpful about service changes or questions. Other times it feels like beating your own hand with a hammer.
The worst was when we last switched phones we traded our old phones in. My new phone arrived and my wife's just...didn't.
It took weeks to make them believe we didn't steal her phone for some reason and they wouldn't give us the photo from the Fedex delivery receipt (in case it just went to one of our neighbors). It turns out that yes, it did go to our neighbor's house right when they had moved in and it took a couple months for them to even get to the package. In the meanwhile we escalated, escalated, escalated, and so on for weeks until somebody finally just shipped my wife another phone.
It could have all been solved in maybe 10 seconds with the delivery photo.
Despite that, our phone bill is almost free with all the rebates and data usage refunds and we've traveled all over the planet with the service and it works fantastically.
The Prohject Fi data pricing model made more sense 7 years ago, and with no domestic roaming outside US Cellular, middling customer service and no exclusive phones, consumers are not driven to the service.
Sprint & T-Mobile merging also eliminates the core novelty of the service, leaving you with something worse than Ting or T-Mobile prepaid that permits more domestic roaming.
Edited to make past tense more clear.