Pixel Phone Owners using eSIM - Get a Backup physical SIM immediately!!!

I was on vacation and my billing cycle ended with Google Fi.  I had changed my subscription plan mid-month so it would upgrade to unlimited data for the next billing month because I would be mostly travelling that month. 

A plan change must initiate an eSIM update and it failed. Not only did my plan upgrade fail to apply, but I could not get any service activated on my phone from Google Fi then.  Hours on chat with Google Fi, numerous emails with screenshots and debug logs back and forth, and resetting my phone twice.  Nothing allowed the Google Fi app to activate my eSIM.

Two weeks later and I returned back to the states and got a new physical SIM for Google Fi and everything works now. Googling, you'll find numerous reports of users with Pixels and eSIMs that stop working. Some blame security patches in Android, some blame the carrier (Google Fi), some blame the Pixel hardware. All I know is you can't trust eSIM and when it's broken, no cell service makes it difficult to do a lot of things. I will never trust eSIM technology again. And I think I may travel with a backup SIM card even. I learned that lesson the hard way.

If you use Google Fi, they'll send you an SIM card for free: https://fi.google.com/order-sim.  Do it now!