Google Fi: Simple Until It's Not

An anonymous reader writes: When Google started Project Fi, one of their big goals was to make cell phone calling simple and predictable. By combining Wi-Fi calling with cellular networks and flat $10/GB pricing, they're trying to put together a service that "just works." But as Dieter Bohn writes, things can get a lot more complicated when you try to integrate it with other Google services, like Voice. He says, "Precisely what happens when you port your number from Voice to Fi (which are kind of the same thing — but not really!) is clear as mud. ... You won't lose your Google Voice number, and it will still do most of the stuff it did before, but you may have to wend your way back to the 2011-era Google Voice site to manage it. Your texts no longer forward via SMS but they're available in the Hangouts App. You can't call people from Google Voice on the web but you can from Hangouts. Oh, and on Android there's a Hangouts dialer app you can use, sometimes, just because."

Comments

It's simple for me!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm using Fi. I can have no phone signal at home which is common and I can make calls through Fi. You don't need hangouts dialer (you need hangouts installed not hangouts dialer), you just use the regular dialer. Text messages and voice work great!

If using the regular phone dialer and text messaging is too difficult for you, then maybe you should not be using a cell service.

Re:Pleasing everyone-never going to happen

[Shadow of Eternity]

It's not zero access to customer services, it's zero customer services period. I recently found out first hand google just plain does not have any form end-user accessible customer service. Even Valve, as astoundingly awful as their customer service is, will still eventually put you in touch with a human being that can look at the situation and fix fuckups.

Google doesn't have that, at all. They have their one or two automated tools and that's it.