Google Started Banning Accounts That Are Indulging in Pixel Tax Evading Procedure

Recently, Google has banned hundreds of accounts which were reported to have being indulged in the act of resale of pixel phones. The people who used these accounts took advantage of a US sales tax loophole to make profit. Despite the fact that these accounts were restored in a few days, this is a disturbing news for android users.

After selling these pixel phones, people were locked out of their accounts immediately. This was reported by members of the site “Dan’s Deals”. These lockouts caused people to lose sensitive data. They lost access to Google Photos, Google Drive, Gmail and other Google services. Not just this but now these banned users can’t login from other accounts.

The banned users were buying phones from the Google’s Project FI mobile carrier, they were then shipping them to Dan’s Deal. Dan’s Deal run a business that operates from a state, without any sales tax. Splitting the profit that is made from selling the phone, with the original customers. The site is said to be exploiting the tax loophole since years, with the previous phones as well and they are doing it quite well.

A Google spokesperson has stated to Gizmodo that:

“We identified a scheme in which consumers were asked to purchase Pixel devices on behalf of a reseller, who then marked-up the cost of those devices in order to resell them to other customers. 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. Many of the accounts suspended were created for the sole purpose of this scheme, but since some customers were not aware of these Terms of Sale and are now locked out of many Google services they rely on, we’re restoring access to these customers’ accounts.”

It’s quite common for technology sites to ban accounts or take measures If their terms of service are violated, but a large cooperation such as Google can take extreme measures for any illegal or prohibited behavior. Users are raveled in the company’s services to such an extent that these bans can have great impacts on their professional lives.

These customers may still have some hope left. Dan’s Deals has stated that the banned accounts have been reactivated. Here is the message they received:

“Your Google Account was suspended as part of our fraud prevention efforts, based on violations of our Terms of Service and Terms of Sale for Devices. After reviewing your appeal, we are re-enabling your account.

Google takes violations of our terms very seriously, and we ask that you review relevant terms and product policies to ensure that you understand them. Repeated violations of our terms may lead to account termination.

In order to access your Google account, please sign in. When you sign in, you will be asked to verify a security code via SMS. Once you verify the code, you will be able to access your account again.

Last but not least, we wanted to remind you that Google users can always export and download their data from Google products like Gmail, Photos, and Drive while their account is active. In a few easy steps, you can create an archive to keep for your records or backup your data to another service. More information about backing up your data can be found at google.com/takeout.”

As it can be seen, Google is not fooling around, in fact, they are very serious about how people buy into the Android experience. Google is trying to take control over product distribution.