So this turned into somewhat of a Kafkaesque nightmare.

5/16: original call. Promised RMA label within 72 hours, i.e. Friday

5/19: promised within 24 hours

5/22 10:30am: I explained my frustration and asked if I could stay on hold until I received the label. The agent confirmed they had all the necessary information already, and after a few minutes came back to say they had spoken with the person who generates the labels and it would be issued within 15 minutes but that they could not wait on hold with me.

5/22 11:30am: I called again, coincidentally got the same agent, and very politely but firmly explained that the call was going to end one of two ways: either I would have an RMA label in my inbox or I was going to rate my experience accordingly. I was on hold a few times, first with them saying the return label generating person claimed to have sent the label, claimed they had sent it again, claimed the return person had sent the label to him and he was now trying to forward it to my email, claimed he had sent it again, none of which resulted in any actual label appearing in my inbox. I was privately giving up hope around this point when he said "ah, I just got a confirmation that the customer's shipping label has been generated" and a second or two later it hit my inbox

I don't *think* there was any bad faith on the part of the 3 agents I spoke with, but either their system is horribly broken or they are lying or being lied to. *Some* of this could be language barrier, but I don't think so -- although the recorded greetings and all 3 agents spoke with distinct Russian or Eastern European accents, their English was of an extremely high level.

I am starting to understand why there is a class action :-/ And while I have the return label and will return the phone for processing, who knows how long that will take, so I'm saying F that and buying a Pixel XL directly from Project Fi. If I get the 6P back while civilization still exists I will try to foist it off on mom or sell it on eBay or something.