Comment by seankimdesign

5 years ago

I found My old gmail account placed under a flagged status one day. It would not allow me to purchase anything on the play store. Turns out, it was because I used an old Google service called Google Checkout(?) or something more than a decade ago to purchase a few hundred dollars worth of clothes overseas. The clothes were purchased from an H&M equivalent, legally operating stores of course, and no payments were deferred or anything - they just simply said something about my account being associated with possible fraud and disabled all Google Wallet features suddenly many years after, citing my purchase history. Wanting to purchase a $2 game on my phone, I inquired about removing the restrictions placed on my account, but the response I received were quite haphazard and they finally stated that they would not accept anything short of physical copies of my IDs before removing any restrictions. No, fuck off.

I guess it's easier to throw out blocks and bans, placing the burden of proof on their customers rather than to have people looking into why completely innocent accounts were getting flagged in the first place. I've made my peace with it and I'm happy not spending a cent on your damn play store for the rest of my life.