TL;DR
Project Fi is still in it’s infancy and support is very limited. It may be a cheap service but you get what you pay for.
I used Project Fi for over a year, with a Pixel phone and recently went through a horror story of a situation. I have a bit of a unique case that most people will never encounter but nonetheless showed the shortcomings of a service still in it’s infancy.
I had my phone stolen from someone who knew what they were doing. I had hoped I’d find the device through the Find My Phone functionality and in that small time frame they either immediately took out the SIM card and put it in a new phone or hacked into the actual device. They must have done a quick search of my phone number online and found my email - to which they changed my password using 2FA. Once I realized my email account had been compromised I tried using my backup email to get access back to my primary account. The primary email was notified of the activity and then they got into that account too.
So now they had sole access to both my phone number and email account.
Once this happens, Project Fi cannot identify you and therefore cannot stop your phone service. This is understandable. The only way they can verify you are who you say you are is to snail mail you a code to the address on file so you can port your number to a different carrier. I agreed to go this route from the start.
Project Fi is reliant on an authentication team which they have no direct contact with (this is the team that signs off on sending the port out code via mail). The Project Fi support team can submit a ticket but cannot actually talk to anyone that is able to help. I called everyday, pleading with them that this was an urgent issue.
After 3 weeks of excuses for why they hadn’t sent out the code yet (all while the hacker had access to anything they wanted - and was free to order electronic hardware from my Fi account - luckily I had cancelled all my cards though so nothing was charged) I started to ask Google employees for help.
Luckily I knew a Google employee that could personally verify my identity and was able to get me access back to my Gmail account. Once that happened, I was able to verify who I was with Project Fi and finally access my account and grab my port out code from the site.
I called Project Fi support to tell them I had access again, to cancel my service, and to not mail out my port out code. They understood and agreed not to mail it out. About 2 hours later I received an email that said they just mailed it out. Not only that, they sent it to the wrong address!
All in all it took 4 weeks to resolve the issue and could have cost $1000s had I not cancelled all my cards as soon as my email was hacked. The real issue with Project Fi is that there are no physical locations and their authentication process does not work. Their support is limited in how much they can do and is distanced from the company itself.
Project Fi is still in it’s infancy and support is very limited. It may be a cheap service but you get what you pay for.
I used Project Fi for over a year, with a Pixel phone and recently went through a horror story of a situation. I have a bit of a unique case that most people will never encounter but nonetheless showed the shortcomings of a service still in it’s infancy.
I had my phone stolen from someone who knew what they were doing. I had hoped I’d find the device through the Find My Phone functionality and in that small time frame they either immediately took out the SIM card and put it in a new phone or hacked into the actual device. They must have done a quick search of my phone number online and found my email - to which they changed my password using 2FA. Once I realized my email account had been compromised I tried using my backup email to get access back to my primary account. The primary email was notified of the activity and then they got into that account too.
So now they had sole access to both my phone number and email account.
Once this happens, Project Fi cannot identify you and therefore cannot stop your phone service. This is understandable. The only way they can verify you are who you say you are is to snail mail you a code to the address on file so you can port your number to a different carrier. I agreed to go this route from the start.
Project Fi is reliant on an authentication team which they have no direct contact with (this is the team that signs off on sending the port out code via mail). The Project Fi support team can submit a ticket but cannot actually talk to anyone that is able to help. I called everyday, pleading with them that this was an urgent issue.
After 3 weeks of excuses for why they hadn’t sent out the code yet (all while the hacker had access to anything they wanted - and was free to order electronic hardware from my Fi account - luckily I had cancelled all my cards though so nothing was charged) I started to ask Google employees for help.
Luckily I knew a Google employee that could personally verify my identity and was able to get me access back to my Gmail account. Once that happened, I was able to verify who I was with Project Fi and finally access my account and grab my port out code from the site.
I called Project Fi support to tell them I had access again, to cancel my service, and to not mail out my port out code. They understood and agreed not to mail it out. About 2 hours later I received an email that said they just mailed it out. Not only that, they sent it to the wrong address!
All in all it took 4 weeks to resolve the issue and could have cost $1000s had I not cancelled all my cards as soon as my email was hacked. The real issue with Project Fi is that there are no physical locations and their authentication process does not work. Their support is limited in how much they can do and is distanced from the company itself.
