So for the past few weeks I have been unable to make purchases through my Google Apps account.  At first, I thought it had to do with my Google+ Circles transfer that I had requested.  This put a suspension notice on my account for a couple of hours but was lifted after the circles transfer was complete.  That was about 2 or 3 weeks ago.  Last night, I was attempting to make a free subscription purchase through Google Play on my phone.  But I kept getting an authorization error.  If I switched back to my old account, I could make the purchase.  But thought my new Google Apps account, I could not.

My first thought was to attempt to visit Google Wallet.  Since that is where payments are made from.  Upon visiting Google Wallet and click on “Get Started”, I was immediately redirected to a Google help page about the inability to access a Google product.  This was a generic page and had nothing specifically to do with Google Wallet.  It stated that my account had violated the terms of service for a Google product and was suspended.  As far as I could tell, the only Google product that was suspended for me was Google Wallet.  At the end of the paragraph, they included a “contact us” link which requested your problem email account and a reply-to account and nothing more.  After about 10 minutes, I got a short 2 or 3 line message back from a generic Google support account stating that a Google Apps administrator [that would be me] had suspended my account and that I would need to contact my GA Admin.  I replied back, but did not get a response.

In the meantime, I began scouring Google and finally came across some information that mentioned the resetting of a user’s password by a Google Apps administrator may cause the Google Wallet service to become suspended (obviously to protect the financial information of the user).  Eventually, I found a Google Help page that included a verification form to be submitted in order to have your Wallet account reinstated after a suspension.  I filled out this form which wanted to know my last purchase, the cost of the purchase, and some other basic information.  Within about 15 minutes, I got a response from an actual person at Google informing me that my account was reinstated and explaining that when an Administrator resets a user’s password, Google puts a suspension on the Google Wallet service for that account.  This will happen every time and re-verification will be required. Understandable, but annoying when you are the Google Apps admin.

Here is the link to the page that will get you to the reinstatement page in case you yourself have had this happen to your Google Apps account: http://support.google.com/wallet/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2909022