Google is absolutely notorious for freezing accounts with zero warning, zero explanation and zero recourse.
I personally experienced this while working for a charity that used Google workspace. After 8 years they suddenly froze the account. The freeze lasted 32 days. During this period they could not operate and Google was completely unresponsive for the first 2 weeks. Google then started demanding various forms of proof of incorporation, various employee government ID's, things like that. We provided all this information. After another week of silence they started asking for ID's of people that did not even work there. We told them we could not provide this information, because of that. Silence. Finally at week 4 we got a call from someone in India that told us there was nothing they could do and the response team would continue to investigate. We are not allowed any contact with the investigation team. Then 32 days after being locked out,the account was silently unlocked again with no explanation.
I cannot discourage people from using any google product for their business any more strongly than this story. They are a terrible company and do not care at all about their customers. They are too big to fail so they just stomp all over you.
Remember google has no way to contact them other than an email form. Which we filled out 2-5 per DAY, which went mostly un-responded to. In the painfully rare case that you do get someone one the phone they will just be someone in India that tells you sorry, nothing we can do.
I was about a week from launching a react native app on iOS/Android, so decided to go through all the administrative motions to get things going in case there were any delays in getting that moving.
Google Developer account cost me $25. A few days go by and I get an e-mail asking for identification documents and a bill that shows that I live at the place I'm at. I send my passport and utility bill with my name on it, those get rejected with absolutely 0 reason the next day.
Zero explanation. I raised about 8 different support tickets and DMed several people on twitter and linkedin that worked for google and emailed a few higher up people.
At one point I got some communication from a completely different department that wasn't accessible to the support lines publicly available, and it looked like they were going to help me.
But in the end nothing.
This was a copy/paste response I saw for every support ticket:
Thanks for contacting the Google Play team.
As much as I'd like to help, I’m not able to provide any more information. Unfortunately, we are unable to verify the documents you provided and are unable to grant your appeal.
If you are located in the EU, you may have additional redress options. Learn more about those potential options in the EU Out-of-Court Dispute Resolution Help Center. Routing ID: ZLFS
Thanks again for your understanding.
My final response after a week of relentless effort:
I'll concede in understanding that:
No one has actually looked at my documents
No one wants to give me a reason why you won't help me
No one on your entire support team is capable of performing basic customer support tasks.
Thanks for treating me like some untouchable beggar when you were the ones that stole $25 from me.
Apple/iOS cost me $100 and my developer account was verified within two days with zero hassle.
If you have a business on there sure take out will save the data. How are you going to restructure your entire business on a new platform that you now have to evaluate and purchase under duress. Not even including retraining everyone.
There have been studies about what happens to business when this happens. They go out of business nearly without exception.
I personally experienced this while working for a charity that used Google workspace. After 8 years they suddenly froze the account. The freeze lasted 32 days. During this period they could not operate and Google was completely unresponsive for the first 2 weeks. Google then started demanding various forms of proof of incorporation, various employee government ID's, things like that. We provided all this information. After another week of silence they started asking for ID's of people that did not even work there. We told them we could not provide this information, because of that. Silence. Finally at week 4 we got a call from someone in India that told us there was nothing they could do and the response team would continue to investigate. We are not allowed any contact with the investigation team. Then 32 days after being locked out,the account was silently unlocked again with no explanation.
I cannot discourage people from using any google product for their business any more strongly than this story. They are a terrible company and do not care at all about their customers. They are too big to fail so they just stomp all over you.
Remember google has no way to contact them other than an email form. Which we filled out 2-5 per DAY, which went mostly un-responded to. In the painfully rare case that you do get someone one the phone they will just be someone in India that tells you sorry, nothing we can do.