V40 + Google Fi?

[walterkurtz]

fi sucks so far...

i am traveling abroad for months. i wanted to keep the US number i have had for many years without paying verizon several hundred dollars per month. i signed up for google fi after some research most of which suggested porting my number to google voice. i already had a different voice number which i think i have now lost.

i ported the number a week ago online before leaving the US. from the start there were problems with voice mail. when i arrived in london there were problems with data and voice mail. i spent an afternoon on the phone with google support trying to solve both problems...we barely solved one. after numerous failed attempts they finally had me manually select a network in my phone's settings. i worry if it is this difficult to maintain a connection in the london that i am doomed when i get to lisbon.

the voice mail issue was never solved. literally the man i spoke to in india (really google? you're one of the wealthiest american companies and you don't hire americans for support?) gave up. the problem is when someone leaves a VM you will get a text transcript and a notification that looks like its part of the dialer. there, you can listen to the message. and if you do it will tend to vanish as in you can't listen to it again later. when you call the google VM number no matter what you will be told you have no new messages and no saved messages. if you go to the fi website however you can view your saved messages. i missed a call from google support during that first day in london. they left a message. i never heard it. and it doesnt show up in my VM web page. i've begun to wonder now what other messages i am missing.

on top of all that is the battery drain. i could unplug my phone at 100% and go to sleep and have at least 92% charge. now, my phone is at 25% after being unplugged all night from 100%. when i checked the settings 'phone idle' is using 44% of my battery.

here's where i need help please: if/when i decide to abandon the fi ship, what can i do while i am abroad??

1 will canceling fi also cancel my google voice number? they seem to be tied now as in when i log in to voice on my computer it redirects me to fi

2 if they aren't tied can i get a UK carrier's SIM and use google voice via hangouts (never used it) or some other app?

3 can i port my US number to a UK carrier? and make long distance calls back to the US?

i feel helpless and trapped and am so disappointed in fi so far.

thank you!

 

[Rukbat]

literally the man i spoke to in india (really google? you're one of the wealthiest american companies and you don't hire americans for support?)

Aside from a programmer I ended up working with to solve a problem, all the Google customer service and tech support people I've dealt with are Filipinos - and very nice people. (I'm familiar with accents, so I picked that up before I asked for confirmation, but they all speak English better than some teenagers in the US do [mixing tenses, mixing number, mixing subjective-objective, etc.])

on top of all that is the battery drain. i could unplug my phone at 100% and go to sleep and have at least 92% charge. now, my phone is at 25% after being unplugged all night from 100%. when i checked the settings 'phone idle' is using 44% of my battery.

That's a carrier with a weak signal where you are.

here's where i need help please: if/when i decide to abandon the fi ship, what can i do while i am abroad??

1 will canceling fi also cancel my google voice number? they seem to be tied now as in when i log in to voice on my computer it redirects me to fi

2 if they aren't tied can i get a UK carrier's SIM and use google voice via hangouts (never used it) or some other app?

That's exactly what I've been doing for a few years with 2 numbers I didn't want to lose (I've had one since 1971, and I just wanted to keep it). Use Hangouts Dialer on the phone. You can use WiFi or Mobile Data for that.

3 can i port my US number to a UK carrier? and make long distance calls back to the US?

No, numbers in the UK start with +44. Numbers in the US start with +1. We just don't have to dial that if we're in the US. (And you can't call the UK with Google Voice, so you will need a local carrier for local calls.) If you're going to traveling around Europe a bit, you can get a "European" SIM, that covers a few countries. Check the pricing on that, as well as the pricing on local carriers. (But see who's getting strong signals where you're going to be [it's the same there as it is here - a great carrier may have a coverage hole that's an entire neighborhood], and ask them which carrier they're using. Then use that carrier. Same thing in Lisbon if you're not using a European SIM.)

i feel helpless and trapped and am so disappointed in fi so far.

Fi is pretty good for almost all of the US, but not overseas.

 

[walterkurtz]

thank you for this.

i wasn't criticizing the tech support employees as much as google for being an extremely successful american company and not hiring american workers. EDIT but in my experience with tmo and then verizon tech support i always got americans and if they couldn't solve my problem they booted me up the chain. google fi gives you one person in another country who can't help beyond the basics.

i installed hangouts dialer this morning. but how is it different from the built in dialer? it looks the same minus my contacts.

i'm leaving london tomorrow. i have been receiving sporadic notifications that the network i am on has been disconnected or is no longer in service. but my phone continues to work. sometimes i simply restart the phone.

if problems persist into lisbon i'll have to find an alternative to google fi. i think it'll be something like you described with local SIM cards and keeping my american number with google voice.

my battery drain is still awful.

 

[walterkurtz]

srsly?