[esperent]

Let's not make excuses for Google here. A few months ago I created a Gmail account for a new business - since I hadn't registered the domain yet, I planned on using the Gmail account for a while then switching over to the real email. Over the next few days I signed up for a bunch of other stuff with the account: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. I also registered the real, verifiable business address on Google Maps and requested a postcard verification to that address (which never arrived).

That's literally all I did with the account over a span of two or three days. Then I took a long weekend hiking trip. Came back, the account is permanently locked. No way to contact support. Just a tiny comment box where I could plead my case, which I never got a response to.

I was able to get back control of the FB, IG, Twitter accounts quite easily. It took me weeks of wrangling with Google support to get back control of the Google Maps location, and I was never able to unlock the original account. I had to do this whole messy process (as directed by them) of registering the business on Maps a second time then declaring the old one as a duplicate, then waiting two weeks for Google to process (ignore) that so I could escalate it to real human, then they fixed it but mangled the name which took another week or two to fix.

So yeah, don't use Gmail for anything you care about is my advice.

I can see why my actions on that account could falsely trigger the account to lock, that's not the issue. The issue is that there was literally no way to ever unlock the account once the false trigger happened. All they had to do was require a phone call with a real human in this case. But no, it's Google.

[yial]

I will say from experience with google maps, that if you say the right combination of lawyer, legal, etc etc…not directed at them, but about another entity accidentally in control of your maps location.

They will call you from an overseas number between 8-11pm your local time, or 4am.

If you answer, they can magically fix it in moments.

If you don’t — you may get a call another time… or never… in which case, good luck.

(In short, it’s insanely hard to get anything going wrong with Google fixed. And I am so sorry you had to go through that. I’m terrified of having something like my drive deleted(shared files). But I do pay for space… so perhaps paying makes it less likely?)

[esperent]

Fortunately it was resolved before we actually opened to the public (barely). But at one point I was like, fuck. Google Maps is the main driver of customers to our type of business here, from my research. What if this couldn't be resolved at all and we were stuck unable to control our business on Maps? It would be a huge problem.