My phone died. This statement ranks along with “I lost my wallet” and “My sump pump failed” for an indicator that you have a painful, and possibly expensive, few days ahead. So yes, just beyond warranty, my Google Fi sourced Nexus 5x failed. Unrecoverable even after chats with Google’s support team. That puts a man to a decision.
First did I want to continue with the Fi service? Answer: Not really. Fi has some good features, namely a low price that doesn’t really make you buy a set amount of data. You pay up front for a GB/month, then you are charged for over but also credited a certain amount if you don’t use it all. It also moves seamlessly from cell to wi-fi even for calls and texts. And, I am told, it has seamless transition across national boundaries so you don't have to worry about buy international minutes or extreme roaming charges.
But, for me, it’s use of either the Sprint or T-Mobile network based on signal strength was a problem. First, it didn't always switch between the two when it should. I bought a little app that could force it to switch and I often found that I would be sitting there with no bars and have to force a switch to the other service to get a signal. Worse, in a problem that is likely specific to me, I seem to spend my time in places with dicey signals on both those services. A road trip to Northern Michigan could leave me signaless for quite some time, interrupting streaming. And it turns out that at the building I work I would often arrive to no signal at all in the morning only to have it back up to four bars by the end of the work day. Not a big deal because I obviously had wifi there, but it was more evidence of flakiness.
The answer was to switch back to Verizon, it is really the only reliable signal in my circle of operation. The cool thing is you can go with their cheap virtual network Total Wireless. Virtuals use the same towers and have the same coverage as their parents so service is identical, unless the network gets overloaded and they need to de-prioritize signals, and you also lose your roaming agreements. That should be fine I reasoned and it looked like I could get 4 gig data pretty close to the price of Fi. That was when the comedy began.
My first plan is to buy an unlocked high-end Samsung Galaxy S -- mostly for the fabulous camera. I find the lowest price at Walmart and proceed to order one online to pick up after work. Once there I go to the pick-up kiosk, but they have no record of my order. I show them the print out -- they call the manager. Manager says sorry can’t find the order, I say fine, just cancel the online order and I’ll buy one from your current stock. “I can’t cancel that. You’ll have to do it on your phone.” “(deadpan) The phone I am trying to buy?” “Oh, then you’ll have to do it on the website.” Not willing to take the risk of getting double-charged for an expensive phone and having to sort that out, I leave phoneless, cancel the order on the website, and vow never to go back to Walmart.
Next day and I have changed my mind: I don’t need a high end phone, like I’m some kind of billionaire. I settle on a Moto G6 which is about a 1/4 of the price of the Samsung, but still miles ahead of my old Nexus 5x in capability. So now at Target, I pick up the phone and a $1 sim card (which even says “Verizon compatible” on it.) I am now ready to migrate my number to the new phone.
Bless Fi in that they make it very easy for anyone to leave them. You click a couple of buttons on a Google website and it passes you the information you need for your new carrier -- the key being an internal account number. That is, unless the carrier is Total Wireless. It turns out that whatever software Total Wireless uses doesn't know about Fi and doesn't recognize Fi account numbers. No amount of cajoling and sending documentation can convince them that the Fi account number was legitimate. They offer to activate the phone but under a new number. Unacceptable. Frustrated and angry I resign myself to signing up for some ridiculously expensive plan from Verizon proper.
This part actually works out well for me. Verizon is running a promotion where you get 6 GB of data for the price of 3. So for under $50/month I sign up for 6GB. That’s about $20 more than I was paying Fi, but in exchange I get a strong signal and I don’t have to worry about streaming or navigation pushing my data to an extra charge.
Feeling better, I work out all the details with the online rep. She lets me know I’ll be getting a sim in a couple of days. Cool, but could I speed up the process by just stopping by my local Verizon store and getting a sim on the way home? “Sure!” she says the way a salesman always says yes.
First I decide to try the Total Wireless sim I had from my previous attempt since it said “Verizon Compatible” on it. Narrator: It was not Verizon Compatible.
Second thing I do is go the Verizon store down the street and see if they’ll give me a sim. They cannot find a record of me despite the print out of the sales receipt I have from the online sale. They conclude that it’s because they are a franchisee or something, not an actual company store. So they give me directions to the nearest company store.
I drive to the company store where I talk to a confused rep who, with effort, understands what I am trying to accomplish but can’t fathom why I wouldn’t want to wait for the sim they sent. But he sells me sim for a $1 anyway, telling me he’s not confident it will work because of “where I am in the process”. At least he’s honest.
And he’s right, it doesn’t work. I have wasted a couple of days and experienced ongoing frustration by trying to do things as quickly as possible. I end up waiting for “the process” to complete.
In the end I got my sim a couple of days later and was able to get the phone set up. Google actually made that pretty easy. All the photos and contacts transferred transparently. It even tried to reinstall my apps, but for some reason it installed the apps that were on my beat up old tablet not my previous phone, so I had a little work to do there.
Still, the whole fiasco was instructive. It is very easy to see how Amazon is crushing retailers, even those as big as Walmart. The only reason to go brick-and-mortar is because you need a human to make an allowance for what you want. You need an exception that requires special judgement or knowledge. If you are content to follow a process, the human just becomes a button pusher and Amazon’s robots can push buttons a lot better and faster. Literally everyone I encountered in retails stores during this comedy couldn’t step outside the process. Walmart couldn’t cancel and order they lost and found themselves out of my phone purchase. Total Wireless reps had no ability to handle a new situation that their system didn’t support. Verizon can’t fathom that someone might want to stop at one of the multiple Verizon stores they pass on the way home to pick up a sim (and save them the shipping), rather than wait a couple of days for snail mail. If all your brick-and-mortar investment produces is a pack of button pushers, Amazon’s robots will destroy you. They are going to continue to eat your lunch, wear your clothes, and steal your girlfriend.
Naturally, a week later, during Prime Day, the next model up Moto phone was on sale for what I paid for mine. Amazon giveth and Amazon taketh away.
