A couple of months ago I stopped being able to purchase anything through the Google Play Store on my Nexus 7 Android device. There were a number of different errors that were displayed:
General error messages:
- Couldn’t sign in. There was a problem communicating with google servers. Try again later.
From the Google Play app:
- “Authentication is required. You need to sign into your Google Account.”
I tried everything:
- Re-installing Play
- Dumping the cache and disabling and re-enabling Play
- Doing a factory reset on the device
- Finding every post and page online that I could regarding the issue.
- Checking my Google domain admin pages for anything that might be related.
After about two months of on and off searching I finally contacted Google Support and got someone on the phone and they suggested that I try to login to my wallet account online. When I tried, I was redirected to a page that indicated that I needed to ‘Reinstate your Google Wallet online account’. Huh? Evidently, it had been suspended. From that page:
‘Your account was suspended as a precautionary measure to protect your payment information because Google detected that an administrator at your organization initiated a password reset for your email address or you changed your own password.’
I did change my password around the time that it stopped working. Unfortunately, this is the first that I have read anything about a password change affecting the Wallet account and none of the error messages from the tablet even hinted at what the problem might be.
On the page that indicated my account needs to be re-instated was a link to a form that I needed to fill out to re-instate the account. On that page was the following:
‘To protect your data and privacy, your Apps Google Wallet / Payments account will always be suspended when your account password is reset by your Google Apps administrator. You will be required to go through this flow each time in order to regain access to your account. If you’d like to avoid these suspensions, please sign up for a Google Wallet account with a personal email address at https://wallet.google.com/signup (if you are a buyer) or a Google Payments account with a personal email address at https://checkout.google.com/sell (if you are a merchant).’
It would have been incredibly helpful to know that when I reset my password.
I ended up having to call the Google Wallet support number to have them reinstate my account because it had been so long since I purchased anything that I had forgotten what my last purchase was.
As a result, I would recommend keeping a log of what you buy and when so that you can automatically reinstate your account whenever you change your password.