Google reverses its ‘digital death sentence’ for Pixel phone resellers
Be careful reselling these things:
Quote:
Google has now lifted a controversial ban which wiped out the digital identities — meaning Gmail accounts, access to photos, voicemails and files — of those consumers who used a tax loophole to profit from reselling their Pixel smartphones. The affected people were, in fact, in violation of Google’s Terms of Service, which prohibits you from commercially reselling any device.
However, Google’s disproportionate response to the violation has been described as the “21st century version of losing priceless mementos in a house fire,” according to Daniel Eleff, the owner of the website Dan’s Deals, which initially spotted the bans following the complaints from forum members.
The violation, in a nutshell, involved consumers who bought their phones from Google’s Project Fi mobile operator, then shipped them to a reseller in New Hampshire, a state with no sales tax. The reseller agreed to split the profit from the resale of the devices, which were marked up, with those who shipped in their phones.
Obviously, this is a pretty shady arrangement on all the participants’ parts, and it does warrant a response of some kind from Google. But wiping out a user’s Google identity was a bit too much.
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/18/go...one-resellers/
