I just went through the exact same thing. Here's my story, in bullet-point format:
Part 1 - Verification
- Dec 17, decide it's time to take the plunge, get rid of the ol' iPhone 7 and get the brand new, gorgeous, Pixel 2 XL. But wait, what's this? When I go to purchase, it doesn't allow me to! My all-paid-up credit card (where I want rewards to accumulate) is being denied. Turns out, my Google payments account isn't 'verified'. Whatever.
- Long story short about that story, they STILL have not verified my account nor given me a single detail as to why isn't unverified or what the issue might be. (it has been 5 days)
Part 2 - Give me my damn phone!
- My brother's account is verified and he so generously offered to use his account to purchase my phone (on another one of my credit cards, he's not *that* generous)
- Charge is accepted, I am given a max delivery date of 12/21
- Two days later, I finally get a shipping notification and it says delivery is 12/27
- Using LiveChat, I tried to reason with these Google Customer Service people and got responses like "I really want to help you with this" and "I understand your concern" but no action to supplement their supposed will to help.
- Called one last time to try my luck, and someone was able to help me. They said they would make sure my phone would be there by Friday (today) evening. I was SO pleasantly surprised! They even sent me an OnTrac tracking ID that showed it reaching by 12/21! Woo hoo!
- Then, this morning, I checked OnTrac to see where my package had reached and LO AND BEHOLD, it's not going to be here until 12/27-12/28.
ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS MY PIXEL 2 XL GOSH DAMNIT.
Things I hated about this experience =
I work for arguably one of the best tech companies with a STELLAR customer service team. I would expect the same from a company like Google, but I found them to be at best, sub-par and at worst, deliberately evasive and unhelpful. It is customer service of the early 00's where you weren't given visibility into anything and were told "this is the deal, take it or leave it. We are sorry, even though 'Sorry' probably doesn't help you at all."
When I kicked and screamed enough (and basically said "how are you going to compensate me for this week-long harrowing customer service debacle?") they said they'd give me $50 in Google Play credit. I mean, sure, whatever. Something from the store would probably have left me less angry and more appeased. This was sort of insult-to-injury level. Google has steps it could have taken that would have instantly made me think "Okay, so maybe it is a back-end issue and they really are devoted to their customers having the best experience possible". NOPE.
I'm still not at the point where I will return the phone and never deal with Google again, but I will say, Apple has never done me like this. Shame on you, Google.