google charging me?

[ThatWildMauveZebra]

hello.

So earlier this year i made a google gmail account, so i could then make a youtube account for a more professional use. Youtube doesn’t let you have more than one channel per email, apparently.

and everything was fine for about a month… until my bank called saying that google workspace tried to charge me a little less than £10, but they prevented it and also had to freeze my card and send me a new one.

So i thought, okay, that’s the end of it… expect it wasn’t. it happened again the next month. This time my bank did not cancel the transaction. So i called them and i did get my money back, but i had to freeze my card again and they sent me a new one.

And now it’s happened once again. I think this is the third time now. I don’t want to keep getting new cards because of this. I’ve sent an inquiry to google about this issue and see if they will do something about it.

I don’t know why this keeps happening, or if it should be, for that matter.
what do you think?

Well they are a business (and quite successful I believe) so if you are using their services it won’t be free. Gmail etc is free but they charge for cloud storage and business platforms.

Have a look at what's under your payments and subscriptions tab in your Google account.

It seems odd that your bank called you and cancelled the card.

Are you using anything else apart
From gmail?

Google Workspace isn't free. You get a w2 week trial and then have to pay.

I know this isn't the immediate issue - but you absolutely can have more than one YouTube channel with one email address

https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/video/hub/guides/how-to-start-second-youtube-channel.html

If you're using Google Workspace, it isn't free. You get a two week free trial then it's £10 a month.

Unless you're running a business you don't really need it, standard Google services are fine. Just unsubscribe from the service from your Google account (you may still be expected to pay the three months you've now used for free)

Here is the help centre page on how to unsubscribe from the service (which you don't need to run a YouTube channel so not sure why you signed up in the first place - lesson learned, READ the T&C's of any service you're signing up to to make sure it's not a subscription!)

thank you for the responses. I don’t have any subscriptions. If i had known this from the start, i wouldn’t have used gmail in the first place, but i guess that’s on me 😅😬

You must have entered payment details for them to have made three successful payment attempts, so that would be a clue you’re signing up to a paid service, not just creating an additional email address.

It's not gmail that's the issue, gmail is free. You signed up to Workspace and entered your card details, hence them charging you after the free period had expired.

How many times are you going to get the bank to refund the payment and send you a new card before you realise that you should actually be going into your Google subscription settings or contacting Google to find out what's going on?

I’m sorting it out now. I just want to clear up that:

1. I never made any subscriptions or other payments to google to begin with, unless i just forgot about them or something.
2. i didn’t actually realise at first that you could have two channels on one youtube account. Had i had known that, i wouldn’t have posted this thread. that’s why i made a workspace account to begin with. I just went with them because youtube -> google.

You made a workspace account, not a Gmail account. You would have been given warnings about the cost after the free 2 weeks and clicked to authorise the payment through google pay.

If you have saved a payment card into Chrome then it can/will be used for Googly stuff.

You still have to click an authorised button.

Workspace and Gmail are two different things. Gmail is free, workspace is not - you've signed up to workspace, ergo you pay for it.

Depending on your payment settings on your Google account you wouldn't have had to enter them again - I believe you can sign up to subscriptions without having to re-enter your card details, just by accepting the subscription.

So just to be sure I just went through the process of signing up for Workspace entering all my personal details and such - and the final page is the below. You can't sign up for it without going through that page. It's easy enough to unsubscribe, just make sure you're reading shit before pressing ok in future, and make sure you know which services have your card saved because Google clearly have yours and you weren't aware of it!

Well I know I have when needed. However I wasn't 100% sure that's always the case.

That said, when using Google Pay I have to enter the CVC again to verify. So it's not clandestine.

Workspace is paid.
G-mail is free.

If you signed up for a workspace account then they're just charging you what you signed up for

I never made any subscriptions or other payments to google to begin with, unless i just forgot about them or something.

You clearly have!

look i swear - there was no checkout page, i saw no signs indicating that i was signing up for a subscription - IF I had known that, i would’ve ducked out on the spot. I didn’t realise i was signing up for workspace, i thought it was just gmail. I’ve checked my subscriptions/payments page - there’s nothing there. Unless i’m missing something..

Workspace isn't a subscription. Google One is a subscription which would show under subscription (their cloud storage for more than the basic you get with a Gmail account). Workspace is more along the lines of Office 365.

Look under subscriptions in the Google Play store. I have subscriptions there that don't show up under Google pay.

again, thank you for your help.

i’m in the middle of figuring it out. once i’m ready i will delete my gmail account completely and hopefully all this will be resolved.

I have a similar issue with Google. About four months ago I noticed a charge from Google One on my credit card statement. Google One is used for additional storage. I have no need for additional storage and never signed up for it.

As the charge was only £1.59 I ignored it thinking it was a one-off mistake. However I have been charged every month since. I've checked my Google account which confirms I have no subscriptions - but I am therefore unable to cancel it.

Getting in touch with an actual person at Google, rather than an AI bot, is impossible. I sent several feedback emails but received no reply. I then completed a fraudulent charge form explaining the situation and have just received a response just telling me there was no fraudulent charge and completely ignoring my ongoing problem.

Google needs to sort out its systems as there are obviously glitches.

i appreciate everyone’s input. In the end I had to sort it out with my bank and the issue has since been resolved. if anyone was having similar issues you could perhaps try what i did. I can assure you I won’t be doing this again in the far future 😅. i was just a silly goose 🪿

I use a Gmail account for my business. After a while I got my own domain name so I then had to sign up to Google Workspace at £9.98/month to add the '@mydomainname.co.uk' suffix to the Gmail address.

Would appear you're effectively paying the same when you don't need it