Help! My Google Play account is frozen and it won’t refund my $115

Arjun Chhabra’s Google Play account is frozen because the company suspects him of fraudulent activity. Can he recover the $115 he spent?

Q: I purchased $115 in Google Play gift cards to use in their app store. Google keeps flagging my account as fraudulent.

Google asked for a bank statement, credit card statement or cellphone bill dated within the last four months or a photo of the credit or debit card associated with my account. 

I’ve sent the information. Google then sends me a message that everything has been resolved but when I try to log in to use my credits, I can’t.

I’ve updated the address and payment information and name, I’ve reverified all my payment methods multiple times and I am still stuck in the same situation.

  After a month of back-and-forth, I am no closer to getting the credits usable or refunded. Can you help me? – Arjun Chhabra, Burtonsville, Maryland

A: Google shouldn’t have frozen your account since none of your transactions were fraudulent. And once you verified your identity – several times – it should have released your funds.

So what happened? I called Google to find out. A representative explained that Google looks for patterns that suggest fraudulent behavior, such as large or small amounts of money being transferred or a pattern of purchases. Your online behavior triggered one of those fraud detection algorithms. 

“Protecting our users against fraud is a top priority for us,” the representative explained. “When we suspect suspicious activity, we may prevent any further transactions until the issue has been resolved in order to protect the user.”

I can understand disabling your account until you can prove you made the transactions. But how many times do you have to prove it? A look at your paper trail – and by the way, nice job on keeping all your correspondence with Google – shows the company repeatedly asking for your ID and account information. You supplied that information repeatedly.

But what happened next is even more frustrating. Google claimed that it had fixed the problem but hadn’t. I’m not quite sure how that could have happened, but you have it in writing.

A brief, polite email to one of the Google customer service managers I list on my consumer advocacy site might have helped. My Google contact also offered another option.

“We have a team of agents who work to ensure our users’ questions and concerns are handled in a timely manner. Users who believe their issue wasn’t resolved to their satisfaction can request an escalation,” she told me.

After I asked Google to review your case it released the $115 – this time for real.

Christopher Elliott is the founder of Elliott Advocacy (https://elliottadvocacy.org), a nonprofit organization that helps consumers solve their problems. Email him at chris@elliott.org or get help by contacting him at https://elliottadvocacy.org/help/.

  © 2024 Christopher Elliott