<story><title>I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi</title><url>https://onemileatatime.com/google-fi-review/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ploxiln</author><text>This is also a problem with Square, and Stripe, and Paypal ... it&amp;#x27;s an unsolvable fraud&amp;#x2F;scammer problem.&lt;p&gt;Basically, if there was customer support that could fix the problem, then skilled scammers can get money and control out of them. They can do it a lot better than you can get your stuff re-enabled, they know just when to say what to whom.&lt;p&gt;Verizon just accepts the inefficiency, and also over-charges random customers, sometimes hands over control of a phone number to a scammer so they can get auth codes over SMS, has clueless support, etc. Google hasn&amp;#x27;t accepted this way of the world yet (but in scaling up the support has necessarily become disempowered).&lt;p&gt;It is very frustrating. It&amp;#x27;s a nature of things going mass-market. Just a few people, everything can be nice. Too many people, scams and fraud become big problems.</text></item><item><author>ronsor</author><text>This is a general issue with google. If their system decides it doesn&amp;#x27;t like you, then you&amp;#x27;re out of luck. You&amp;#x27;ll never get them to fix it.</text></item><item><author>iandanforth</author><text>The lede here is somewhat burried:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;From what I’ve since learned, if a card in your Google Pay is stolen, or someone uses your Payments account fraudulently, or anything happens that leads to a security flag being raised, it can lead to your Google Payments account being frozen.&lt;p&gt;...&lt;p&gt;If you can’t use Google Payments, you can’t pay for Google Fi&lt;p&gt;This, fundamentally, is why I can’t suggest anyone use Project Fi anymore.&lt;p&gt;...&lt;p&gt;Getting this fixed is actually impossible, and I say that as someone who really, truly, loves solving problems and has made a living off getting phone agents to want to help me.&lt;p&gt;We have submitted copies of his ID four times, my ID twice, multiple photos of credit cards, and various credit card statements. We’ve talked to agents and supervisors at Google Payments and Google Fi. No one is empowered to do anything, and even a well-intentioned agent doesn’t get the same answer from the “security department” twice.&lt;p&gt;I’ve since found hundreds of comments and Reddit threads from people having similar experiences, with almost zero positive conclusions.&lt;p&gt;The only suggestion of a solution we’ve been given is that he abandon both his email address and phone number of the past twenty years and start fresh.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gameswithgo</author><text>&amp;gt;it&amp;#x27;s an unsolvable fraud&amp;#x2F;scammer problem.&lt;p&gt;credit card companies and traditional banks and credit unions handle it fine.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Too many people, scams and fraud become big problems.&lt;p&gt;if the solution to fraud is un-fixable account freezes, you have not actually solved anything. It is fraud itself.</text></comment>
<story><title>I Can No Longer Recommend Google Fi</title><url>https://onemileatatime.com/google-fi-review/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ploxiln</author><text>This is also a problem with Square, and Stripe, and Paypal ... it&amp;#x27;s an unsolvable fraud&amp;#x2F;scammer problem.&lt;p&gt;Basically, if there was customer support that could fix the problem, then skilled scammers can get money and control out of them. They can do it a lot better than you can get your stuff re-enabled, they know just when to say what to whom.&lt;p&gt;Verizon just accepts the inefficiency, and also over-charges random customers, sometimes hands over control of a phone number to a scammer so they can get auth codes over SMS, has clueless support, etc. Google hasn&amp;#x27;t accepted this way of the world yet (but in scaling up the support has necessarily become disempowered).&lt;p&gt;It is very frustrating. It&amp;#x27;s a nature of things going mass-market. Just a few people, everything can be nice. Too many people, scams and fraud become big problems.</text></item><item><author>ronsor</author><text>This is a general issue with google. If their system decides it doesn&amp;#x27;t like you, then you&amp;#x27;re out of luck. You&amp;#x27;ll never get them to fix it.</text></item><item><author>iandanforth</author><text>The lede here is somewhat burried:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;From what I’ve since learned, if a card in your Google Pay is stolen, or someone uses your Payments account fraudulently, or anything happens that leads to a security flag being raised, it can lead to your Google Payments account being frozen.&lt;p&gt;...&lt;p&gt;If you can’t use Google Payments, you can’t pay for Google Fi&lt;p&gt;This, fundamentally, is why I can’t suggest anyone use Project Fi anymore.&lt;p&gt;...&lt;p&gt;Getting this fixed is actually impossible, and I say that as someone who really, truly, loves solving problems and has made a living off getting phone agents to want to help me.&lt;p&gt;We have submitted copies of his ID four times, my ID twice, multiple photos of credit cards, and various credit card statements. We’ve talked to agents and supervisors at Google Payments and Google Fi. No one is empowered to do anything, and even a well-intentioned agent doesn’t get the same answer from the “security department” twice.&lt;p&gt;I’ve since found hundreds of comments and Reddit threads from people having similar experiences, with almost zero positive conclusions.&lt;p&gt;The only suggestion of a solution we’ve been given is that he abandon both his email address and phone number of the past twenty years and start fresh.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>njarboe</author><text>It is too bad that I can&amp;#x27;t pay $50 and&amp;#x2F;or go somewhere in person to try and solve serious problems. This would eliminate most scammers and give people a way to get something done when it is really serious. I would guess this is not done because the PR hit for charging to talk to a person would be bigger than just ignoring certain people&amp;#x27;s problems (or companies don&amp;#x27;t want to have divisions that make more money when the rest of the company screws up, but I doubt that).</text></comment>