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by alvarosm 4935 days ago
That's another of the many virtues of Google Checkout / Wallet... it blocks a ton of transactions based on some dubious anti-fraud checks. I guess regular sellers just move on to a better payment processor but those of us who sell on Google Play are stuck with this joke of a payment processor. Also, Google gets a 30% cut just for exposure at the store and the poor payment processing they do, I mean, support is beyond a joke, it's simply non-existent. Just like when I ordered the Nexus 4 and got in contact to complain about the delays, talking to the "support" staff (when you manage to get an actual human being to reply at all) is like talking to a brick wall with some FAQs stuck to it in post-it notes. I once sent a screenshot to a couple of reporters to show them just how many transactions were automatically cancelled as a side note -we were talking about other Google Play issues- and I guess they didn't even bother to look into the cancelled transactions issues because it looked unreal. I think it got a bit better over time, it's probably 10% cancelled now, but it used to be up to 50% in particularly bad days and maybe 20% average. A total joke.
1 comments
pja 4934 days ago
Nope, it's not Wallet doing the blocking (at least not in my case): it was the banks which had issued the credit cards in question.

I've had it happen before, but that was when I'd bought a small pile of cheap Android Apps & then gone to buy something expensive elsewhere (not via Google Wallet) and those transactions triggered the fraud checks, not entirely unreasonably even if it was a little annoying at the time.

Having my cards blocked because Google is issuing fake test transactions for no good reason whatsoever that I can see is somewhat more annoying however!

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alvarosm 4934 days ago
In the cases I was talking about, it was Google. They don't even attempt to charge the cards until a certain period of time (1 hour or so? more than the 15-minute refund period anyway) has passed, so the cancellations happen before any attempt to charge the card, so it's Google, not the banks.
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pja 4933 days ago
Sure: just to clarify, I was only talking about my specific transaction there.

Clearly, Google can and will manage to make a craptacular mess of handling payments for other people in whatever ingenious ways they can come up with!

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