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Given Google's reputation for avoiding any type of direct customer support, I'm perplexed as to why they are trying to do this. It's one thing to offer an onli
by ckastner 7y ago
Given Google's reputation for avoiding any type of direct customer support, I'm perplexed as to why they are trying to do this.
It's one thing to offer an online product suite without any support, it's a completely other thing to offer a product that is as heavily regulated as banking services.
They're probably not going to earn any significant amount from providing a checking account. I can only assume that they're after the transaction data itself (looking for patterns, etc.), but I find it hard to believe that the payoff would be large enough to endure the pain that is the current regulatory environment surrounding banking. Especially when you're notorious for avoiding personal interactions.
- dannyr 7y agoI have Google Fi and bought from Google Store. Their customer service has been fantastic. Maybe my experience is one of the few exceptions but I know a bunch of people who also had a great experience with customer support by Google.
- romanovcode 7y agoI just checked what it is. Isn't it a bit expensive? $70/m for a mobile plan seems ridicilous.
- mankyd 7y agoThat's for unlimited data. They offer a prorated, $10/gb plan as well.
- watwatinthewat 7y agoEveryone I know with it does the $20/mo + $10/gb plan. If you don't use more than a gig or two a month, that's close to one of the cheapest plans around. There are some cheaper prepaid plans, though.
- moooo99 7y agoWow, and I thoughtmobile data in Germany was expensive. I pay 8€/m for 4GB. Although the LTE coverage is pretty bad with my provider.
- JCharante 7y agoYeah Data in the US is a bit ridiculous. You can get a GB of data in Vietnam for $0.50. I usually get the 16GB plan but buy it every twenty days.
- moooo99 7y agoYeah I see why prices differ from country to country, but 10$/GB seems ridiculus.
- Someone1234 7y agoUrban parts of the US are subsidizing large rural areas. Almost all plans are 50 state plans, which means you're paying to install and maintain cellphone coverage for mostly corn fields or forests in the middle of nowhere. Check out this map: https://i.redd.it/2b7uoxjoprqz.jpg https://i.redd.it/2b7uoxjoprqz.jpg For costs to come down, you'd need people to adopt single-state or two/three state plans on the East/West coast. But starting such a network would be prohibitively expensive. For example an "only California" plan could likely be very inexpensive and comparable to Europe.
- relaunched 7y agosaid no one that lives in the US, ever! It always blows my mind how that whenever you go anywhere in the world, you can get amazing mobile plans (data and call / sms) for $10-$30 dollars per month.
- jayshua 7y agoProbably has something to do with the size. I'd imagine covering a country like Denmark or Ireland is considerably easier and cheaper for a smaller company then covering the US would be.
- ceejayoz 7y agoThe EU and EAA - with a roughly similar land area and population to the US - has free roaming by law. Your French plan is good in Norway. The US could institute a similar regime that'd permit state/local carriers to exist and compete.
- postsantum 7y agoYou would be surprised to see prices for mobile Internet in Russia
- aliceryhl 7y ago
- jelling 7y agoIt's worth it if you travel internationally as you can just show up in (nearly) any country and not get gouged on data. Also, that price isn't bad for the U.S.
- sulekhaholidays 7y agoyes you are right..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxgfWr9FvyM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxgfWr9FvyM
- delfinom 7y agoWelcome to America, bend over. $70/month is standard totally not collusion pricing for single line plans.
- LandR 7y agoWow, I get unlimited broadband internet for my home, mobile service (unlimited texts, 1000mins, 2GB data) and my landline for less than that!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- metasaval 7y agoI also use Google Fi, albeit the $10/gb plan, so my monthly bill is usually around $50-$60. The real reason I stick with it, even though I could get slightly cheaper plans elsewhere, is for international travel. I don't even travel internationally often at all, and I don't consider myself a foodie or world traveller or anything like that. But work is sending me to Taiwan in a couple weeks and it's nice knowing that I'll be able to land and have the same data and text rates as back home. Same for when I went on a cruise to Mexico with my family earlier this year. We landed, Google Fi sent me a text saying "give us a sec." And then a few minutes later I was online, without me having to do anything. Most cellular companies make you pay out the ass in international roaming costs, or if you have an unlocked phone you can get a local sim. The closest company to match this policy is T-Mobile, but their international data is capped at 256kbps unless you pay more.
- ckastner 7y agoAre those other experiences also with Google Fi, or was it some other product?
- ehsankia 7y agoI got great experience with Google One support. Obviously if you're only using free services and not paying anything, you're not going to get great support.
- postsantum 7y agoMy experience with google support ranges from non-existent to unhelpful garbage
- ehsankia 7y agoWhat products do you pay for? Obviously you're not going to get support for a free service. Google One is a 2$/month subscription that gives you 100GB storage in Drive and Google Support. The support has been instant and quality so far.
- postsantum 7y agoAndroid developer account. I'd expect more than canned bot responses for 30% revenue share
- jjulius 7y agoYours is absolutely an exception. I also have Google Fi, but I had to create a second Google account in order to get it. I had Google Wallet years back. At one point while I was traveling, I lost my debit card and thankfully had my Google Wallet card as a backup. I was able to transfer money to the card from my checking account, though I only moved over what I needed for short periods of time. This resulted in multiple movements of money to my Google account, which in turn resulted in Google flagging this as suspicious and preventing that account from using Google to pay for anything (I couldn't even purchase via the Play Store even if I selected my non-Google debit/credit cards as payment methods). They asked for verification of who I am, and I supplied the correct documents to them multiple times. Each time I was told that those documents did not suffice with no explanation as to why they were not reauthorizing my account nor why the documents I sent them weren't up to their standards. Just "Nope, go away." For some dumb reason I insisted on proceeding with signing up for Fi, and found it super easy to just create a new Google account specifically for that. I've been increasingly uneasy about the longevity of this account because of that experience and realize now that it was probably foolish to migrate my phone service to a company that had already fucked me, but c'est la vie.
- notyourday 7y agoThe measurement of customer service experience is not when someone can follow "if (X) then (Y)" with a customer on a phone. Rather it is when the CS person needs to resolve something that does not have "if (X) then (Y)" step in the manual.
- profmonocle 7y agoMy first thought when I read this was all the horror stories of people's Google accounts being closed for no obvious reason, and with no recourse (other than going viral on social media and hoping a Googler notices.) Imagine that happening with your bank. I'm sure existing banking laws will restrict them from algorithmically banning people like this, but their reputation is bad enough to keep me away. It's the same reason I'll never use Google Domains or Google Fi - my domains and phone number are too important to lose access to.
- ceejayoz 7y ago> Imagine that happening with your bank. This already happens, a lot. Do something that generates a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_activity_report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_activity_report (generally, stuff that looks like money laundering) and your bank will cut you loose, and they aren't legally allowed to disclose why. Running a marijuana dispensary? Forget about a bank account.
- teddyh 7y agoSee also what credit card companies did to Wikileaks; i.e. they simply refused all their cardholders to donate money to Wikileaks.
- globuous 7y agoDid not know that... now i understand bitcoin.
- gamblor956 7y agoBecause of the numerous chargebacks associated with plenty of people using other people's credit cards to make those donations. They weren't taking a political stance. If Wikileaks supporters had used their own credit cards Wikileaks could still take donations by credit card.
- sharpneli 7y agoSure. But with Google you will lose your bank account by making a comment on youtube livestream. It was here on HN few days ago. Streamer asked people to spam the chat just like in twitch, youtubes automated systems banned viewers who obliged locking them out of all google products, gmail etc. Now imagine losing also your banking due to things like that.
- jacques_chester 7y ago> Given Google's reputation for avoiding any type of direct customer support, I'm perplexed as to why they are trying to do this. To reduce the threat of Apple from siphoning folks away from Android and thus disintermediating their advertising business. That's the reason they went into Android and Chrome and half-baked subscription services: to defend the advertising business. Nearly everything Google does out loud that's not GCP is ultimately motivated by the need to defend, sustain or grow the advertising business. The rest of what they do gets a lot of media attention but comes close to being a rounding error by comparison to ... the advertising business.
- belorn 7y agoIt might seem perplexing when imagining a American bank, but from the perspective of Swedish banks, it make perfect sense. Any direct contact with customer is a cost center. Dealing with people, dealing with physical cash, checks, just having a office in city areas. It is all just very expensive. It is much cheaper to just have an online service with online products that get processed without human involvement. The result in Sweden is almost 40% less offices in the last 10 years and only a handful in existence that handle physical cash. Customers are a bit less satisfied but you can't really live in Sweden without having a bank account so what are people really to do but accept the change. Banks profits are up so the trend is likely to continue.
- bluGill 7y agoBanks in the US run back and forth on this, and probably always will. Less locations saves money. However locations mean places where your customers come in and you can sell them "add-on". A lot easier to talk to someone about their car insurance when they are already coming in every week anyway.
- Braggadocious 7y ago1. User/Business Data 2. They have the computing and engineering power to optimize pretty much anything beyond where it is today. 3. User/Business Data
- zer0tonin 7y agoWeren't they already buying the data from mastercard and visa?
- Braggadocious 7y agoMore data is more data.
- jsonne 7y agoMastercard sells your data to advertisers for targeting with programmatic display, video etc. I suspect Google is just trying to do the same thing.
- Accujack 7y ago> I'm perplexed as to why they are trying to do this. Money, as always. >They're probably not going to earn any significant amount from providing a checking account. That depends on specifics of the accounts and how they work. It's possible to make a lot of money off of just temporarily holding someone else's cash. Transfer firms like Moneygram make most of their cash off of interest on other people's money when it's being "sent" from one location to another. >I can only assume that they're after the transaction data itself (looking for patterns, etc.) This is the correct answer. The more data they can aggregate and cross-correlate, the more accurate their derived conclusions about the spending habits, psychology, and behavior of people can be. The more accurate those are, the more control, power, and money Google will have. I'm sure they don't "intend" that it will be used for anything unethical, but presently there are no laws forbidding them from doing anything at all with it as long as it's derived data. The overall effect of them doing this research is similar to a twilight zone plot... imagine a psychologist discovers a principle within the human mind that exists within everyone. When used, this discovery very strongly influences the target to buy whatever is on offer, to the level almost of a compulsion. Use of this knowledge is undetectable, but allows anyone who knows it to sell anything to anyone for any price they choose (within reason). That's what Google is trying to build.
- krustyburger 7y agoAs much as I enjoy Twilight Zone comparisons, it is pretty hyperbolic to claim that Google is working toward the equivalent of mind control rays because they are obsessed with consumer data. People’s lack of openness to advertising attempts is going to continue to be a barrier to ads being perfectly effective, whether or not Google has banking data on top of Gmail data and regardless of how specifically targeted the ads are. People will still have free will (to the extent they ever have) no matter how individually tailored ads get.
- ok_coo 7y agoI used to think to the same thing, that is until I saw the selfish ledger video. Yes, of course we have free will but I have a difficult time trusting a company that would put out something like this. https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-selfish-ledger-video-data-privacy https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-selfish...
- Spooky23 7y agoThey are front-ending the bank. It can drive value on the banking side and make customers stick to the Google service side. Think of things like communications with banks. If you could send me statements or notifications securely to Google Drive or GMail, that saves the bank money and drives value on the Google side. Banks and credit unions do this already. Your average credit union with a few hundred million in deposits is paying a provider to run all of the web and IVR services.
- doctorpangloss 7y agoBecause Apple credit card.
- jiveturkey 7y agoreaction to Apple VISA? maybe android pay will be more valuable with direct checking tie-in.
- awalton 7y ago> I'm perplexed as to why they are trying to do this. ... really? Google is the Consumer Intelligence Agency. All they want is all of your data on how you're spending your money, so they can sell more ads. There's no other lofty goals here but more access to how you and your money moves.