Google Fiber Was Doomed from the Start
I live in Austin and the rollout in my neighborhood has been a debacle.  Dumpster fire from the get go.  I can only imagine the mountain of money Google has dumped into Google Fiber at this point.<p>They started work back in August, marking gas and water pipes.  8 months later (today), I&#x27;d say less than 50% of the homes have service hooked up...  they still have holes in some people&#x27;s yards, clear evidence of broken sprinkler lines, and they still have a lot of cleanup left to do.<p>Every step has been painful.  As a homeowner, Google is really miserable to deal with -- opting to punt the responsibility for managing the project to various contractors at each stage.  Nobody from Google actually ever replies to issues.  Nobody from Google ever actually walks the neighborhood to make sure the job is done correctly.<p>Round 1... first dig... they went through and dug holes for boxes in our yards.  Destroyed a lot of sprinklers.  Left it sit in my yard for a month with a big sheet of plywood over the hold... and no movement.  Killed large areas of my lawn and flower beds not being able to water them.<p>Round 2... digging in the street... they dug a small channel in the street, and managed to cut a number of my neighbors water lines or water return lines.  For a week some people had to stay in hotels because they had no water &#x2F; no drainage in their homes.  I was lucky, this didn&#x27;t happen to me but did happen to my next door neighbor.<p>Round 3... putting the box in the front lawn... It was clear the work was being done by the lowest bidder.  Boxes put in crooked, not flush with the lawn, so you couldn&#x27;t drive a lawn mower over them after.  They sent a repair crew around to fix lawns up... they used the wrong grass types, and they put sprinklers back random places... for me they broke 2 sprinklers heads but only put one back... and put it back so it could only really water my driveway.  Also they &quot;fixed&quot; the sprinklers with electrical tape joining the PVC and it just broke the moment you turned the system on... more signs they were just using the lowest bidders for the work.  Cost me an entire weekend to fix it all up again.  (Still my lawn has the wrong grass growing in, looks like shit...)<p>Round 4... the line from the box to the house... another lowest bidder job.  The guy putting it in put in hated sprinklers.  That&#x27;s the only explanation.  He broke out 25 feet of line, 5 sprinkler heads -- he had to know he was breaking pipes, if you dig with a shovel you can feel the difference between dirt and digging into a PVC pipe.  He also broke a bunch of pavers and just sort of tossed the pieces next to a tree; would have taken him less energy to lift them up.  Finally, there were some cut pieces of pipe, some wires... broken pavers... he just tossed them into my flower beds.<p>Round 5... installation in the home.  Was probably the least painful, but still far from professional.  Having a contractor wear little boot covers is pretty common... the guy even showed up with them when he first came in, but at some point he just stopped putting them on and tracked mud all over my house.  Then he moved my TV stand and left it in the middle of the room.  (That&#x27;s minor, easy to fix.)<p>So here&#x27;s what happened when you call Google...<p>1) Nothing.  You don&#x27;t hear back, you don&#x27;t get an email.  You&#x27;re like, &quot;Well, I don&#x27;t... they don&#x27;t care... what do I do?&quot;<p>2) Then some random contractor calls you to tell you that they got your message, but it wasn&#x27;t their fault.  They assure you they will talk to the contractor who was responsible and give you his number so you can follow up.  When you call the number they give you, they clearly never followed up as it&#x27;s his first time hearing from you and have you to re-tell &#x2F; re-send the photos to the new guy&#x27;s email.<p>3) Then you get the run around.  &quot;Oh, we&#x27;re sending a crew to fix it all once we are done... may be a few weeks, sit tight.&quot;  You wait... phone tag, and finally you just say, &quot;Fuck it, I guess I&#x27;ll eat the cost of fixing this myself.&quot;  (I was fortunate enough to finally -- after about 30 emails &#x2F; calls with photos of every step -- to get a refund check for the damages to cover my out of pocket expenses.  But when my neighbors asked for the same treatment, they were told, &quot;Sorry it&#x27;s not in our budget to reimburse people who don&#x27;t want to wait for our crews to do the repairs.&quot;)<p>It&#x27;s been such a shit show.<p>And at the end of the day... I haven&#x27;t seen speeds over 420 down, 80 up.  I was getting 290 down from Time Warner.  Can&#x27;t say it&#x27;s a noticeable improvement for anything. Not at all worth the hassle we went through to get this.