1) Has fallen into the same trap of subsidizing expensive phones and phone plans over long periods and other rubbish discount deals for signing up (used to be the much hated contract model earlier with other carriers, but this is not very different) 2) Not a real carrier in a standards compliant way (or at least there is no open reference implementation). Needs play services blobs to do anything intelligent 3) Needs google account 4) Mucks up google voice 5) Not really price competitive for data
The only real thing going for it at the moment is roaming benefits. Once other carriers undercut that, what remains ? It anyway has low name recognition and no retail presence.
If the refund isn’t fast enough it also leads to missed rent and bills, all of which have fees for being late, plus possible debt collector issues as most utility companies will send a single missed bill directly to collections these days.
Not to mention inability to buy food, gas/transport to work, etc.
Just like everyone else that fucks up like this.
It is possible to find checking accounts that will treat negative balances as simple interest-only loans. At least one of the major online banks does this if you set it up that way.
To keep this in perspective, Google Fi costs substantially more than every other phone plan unless you travel internationally on a regular basis.
Google Fi costs me substantially less than any other phone plan (that I'm aware of).
Perhaps if a person used a lot of mobile data (at $10/GB) it would. But I'm on WiFi for the most part with moderate mobile data usage and my bills are usually around $30/month or slightly less. Compared to $70+ GF pays.
I hardly ever use cellular data services (because wi-fi is everywhere).
YMMV on usage patterns, how much you consume data when not connected via wi-fi, etc, but its simply wrong to say that Google Fi costs more than other options.
I love having the service but financially I hope they sort some of this stuff out. It could attract more people, too.
What seems strange to me, (and not judging it's just a little weird) are the amount of people hit up for $900-$1000 phones that are overdrawn or cannot buy gas etc because of this event. And certainly that can be a big surprise charge but you still have to pay the $1000 over time, what's wrong with a $250 phone?
Maybe I'm a cheapo who only buys $250 phones and so doesn't understand how much better the $1000 ones are. But if things are that tight it just doesn't seem like the most logical thing to spend extra money on. Even future money a bit at a time. Probably there are reasons I don't understand.
It might be surprising but unfortunately many people really do live one paycheck at a time and finances are a careful balance of paying bills as they come. In this case, the funds seem to be taken directly from bank accounts so there's no extra credit card protection and it can lead to a cascade of fees for overdrafts, bounced checks and other problems.
Google, because of your ADMITTED MISTAKE, my rent check on Monday is now going to bounce. I very well could get evicted from my house over this. What is your plan to make sure I do not get evicted, or is Google going to pay for a new place for me to rent if this happens?
Shit strip out the what and it could screw over most people who don't have a large savings account (hell I do, but it's not linked to my main account, so I'd get screwed as well and I'm fairly well off).
I'm sorry Johnny but the way you have been acting in this thread really makes me doubt your sincerity, or wonder how damn entitled you are.
This guy took the payment plan according to what he thought was able to pay monthly. And until Google charged him $1000 out of nowhere, that was fine. That's all there is to it.
