[slabity]

You think that's bad? I had my own Google Workspace account with Google Domains and then foolishly linked my Google Fi cellphone to it.

Trying to get that stuff resolved was such a pain that I eventually had to ask a friend who knew someone that worked at Google for assistance. Their support team had absolutely no public contact info available. I eventually managed to get my data and migrate the services I actually use (Google Fi and Youtube) to a non-workspace account.

The funny thing is that a few months later they tried to send a $60 bill to collections because they reopened the account for 2 days for me to migrate things off. I was originally going to pay it to just get them off my back, but Google's own collections agency wouldn't let me pay through card or check or anything. The only way I could pay was to "Log into your Google Workspace account" which NO LONGER EXISTED.

Now it's just an amusing story about incompetence to look back on, but at the time it was stressful because I almost lost my domains, cell phone number, and email addresses all at once. Now I never trust anything to a single company.

[resize2996]

Somewhere around 2022, someone flipped a switch that changed Google Fi support from best-in-class to 'we're trying to get people to cancel.'

[thecupisblue]

Ironically, I stopped paying for a workspace a few years ago when I shutdown a startup. The workspace got suspended and removed. I am still able to use it across any service requiring a Google account, which makes me think that if I buy a failed startup domain and sign up I could get access to their data.