The Pixel customers involved in the case bought their phones from Google’s Project Fi mobile carrier. Some buyers then shipped their devices to a New Hampshire-based reseller. The company sold the phones on, creating a profit because there is no sales tax in the state. The reseller split the money made with the customer.
The entire arrangement is shady and explicitly prohibited by Google’s terms of service. The company’s sales agreement states “You may not commercially resell any Device, but you may give the Device as a gift.”
Around 200 members of a money saving site Dan’s Deals have reported having their Google accounts suspended for breaking the term. Google has taken a heavy-handed approach to people reselling Pixels. It is placing total lock-downs on accounts, preventing customers from accessing their emails, documents, calendar appointments and photos.
The move has caused an outcry among affected users. Google’s response to the reselling activity appears to be disproportionately harsh, leaving customers separated from personal data that could have been acquired over years of use. Google has warned users that data stored on its servers could be deleted if the account suspension is not successfully appealed.
“I’m not defending those who violated the terms of the sale, but I do think it is very heavy handed for Google to block access to all of their services for doing so,” Daniel Eleff, owner of Dan’s Deals, said to The Guardian. “Was violating Google’s phone resale policy really worthy of an effective digital death penalty?”
In the face of widespread criticism, Google has since softened and announced it will be restoring affected accounts to their owners. It acknowledged that not all customers were aware of the terms in the first place and admitted it had locked people out of services they rely on. It said it had issued the bans because many of the accounts being used to resell Pixel phones had been set up specifically for the money-making scheme.
“We prohibit the commercial resale of devices purchased through Project Fi or the Google Store so everyone has an equal opportunity to purchase devices at a fair price,” Google said to Eleff in a statement published on The Guardian’s website. “Many of the accounts suspended were created for the sole purpose of this scheme. After investigating the situation, we are restoring access to genuine accounts for customers who are locked out of many Google services they rely on.”
The incident highlights how people are becoming dependent on services that could be removed at a moment’s notice. While the individuals involved had broken Google’s terms of services, the company’s unanticipated response offered no way of relief. There was no warning of the impending account suspension or an option to export data to a third-party platform.
Google customers can export all of their data stored on the company’s servers using its Takeout tool. The websites allows users to create an archive of data from across Google’s services, ranging from bookmarks in Chrome to playlists in YouTube. It can be accessed at takeout.google.com.
