I found myself in a similar situation a couple months ago. An android App falsely charged me on the Play store. After trying to contact Google for multiple weeks I gave up and disputed the charge on my credit card. This resulted in Google coming after me for 8.99$ and threatening me to close all my Google accounts including gmail, calendar, photos, drive and everything I rely daily in Google.
That was a wake-up call for me. I decided to move everything OUT of Google. That company got too much power, it should worry way more people.
However, I was scared for my Google account so just ended up dropping it. Ridiculous.
I'm curious to know how this happened. Would you mind sharing more info?
As I understand it, the only way for an app to 'charge you on the play store' is to:
1) Be a paid app (in which case you pay before the app starts installing), or
2) via in-app purchases, which are handled by the app initiating the IAP, and then Play services taking over to ask for confirmation.
In either case, the transaction is only confirmed by a user action (tapping a button) with the app having no control.
Sure, it's possible for an Android app to trick you, by covering everything apart from the button with something fake, but I'd be surprised if such an app found its way into the Play Store.
After using the app for a couple of days and restarting the phone, the app seemed to hit a bug and behave like if I didn't buy the subscription, prompting me to buy another subscription which I did thinking that this would unblock the backend and somehow merge with the fact that I already had a subscription.
Unfortunately, Google Play charged me again for a subscription I already had. Both the app creator AND Google Play were difficult to join. The App creators never replied to any of my emails. Google Play got an automated support website that decided that "I was not eligible for a refund" and there was nothing I could do about it. It also seems to be impossible to contact a real human being to explain the situation.
Have you been successful in it? Any guidelines / tips? How hard is it?
It really is a suite that can combat Google's suite — and you can truly own it. Other than that, DDG for search, and your own domain for email (so that you could transfer it between different hostings if necessary).
I do have a Google account, but I use it for precisely two purposes: Google Play (my phone wouldn't work without one) and YouTube subscriptions (I can use an RSS reader for this, but it's a bit inconvenient). You can create a Google account without creating a Gmail account.
[0] I use fastmail + custom domain, which works great, but you have to guard the domain very closely.
The only thing I haven't managed to find a even close to decent alternative it's photos. Google Photos is just simply too good. I would be even willing to pay but really, all the other apps struggle to get sync right or have some other crappy stuff that makes them barely usable.
- Bought a new domain name and moved my mails in fastmail. I have been super happy with it so far.
- My Gmail address is now only for spam or very low importance emails.
- All my Pixel pictures are still uploaded to Google Photos, but I backup everything once a month or so.
- I don't use Google Drive for anything anymore. I have an Evernote account and a Dropbox account.
- Completely switchecd to DDG and Firefox.
- I'm still using my Pixel2 as of now but my next upgrade will be an IPhone, or a rooted Google-Independent Android phone.
- Use Yandex Maps instead of Google Maps. It's very accurate and navigation is smooth. Way better than Gmaps imo.
- Use Office 365 instead of Google Docs.
- You can use One Drive for cloud storage or buy a cheap VPS.
This may happen only if you manage to get it to the front page of HN or have many Twitter followers. In most cases you don't stand much chances though.
