Google Bans Hundreds Of Pixel Phone Resellers From Their Google Accounts (theguardian.com)

Hundreds of Google users lost their access to their emails, photos, documents, "and anything else linked to their Google identity," wrote the Guardian last week, reporting on "hundreds of people who took advantage of a loophole in US sales tax to make a small profit on Pixel phones" -- and got all of the Google accounts suspended. Long-time Slashdot reader RockDoctor writes: "The Google customers had all bought the phones from the company's Project Fi mobile carrier, and had them shipped directly to a reseller in New Hampshire, a US state with no sales tax. In return, the reseller split the profit with the customers," the Guardian adds.

People might ask, in a hurt tone of voice, "why are you doing this to me?" To which the obvious answer is "because we can, and you agreed to these (link to 3000 pages of text) terms and conditions, including our ability to do this"... The only question has been "When?", never "If?"
Update: Google "has reviewed banned users' appeals and re-enabled their accounts," reports The Guardian.

Comments

Re:Is this Soviet Russia?

[klingens]

In this case, it is ok ever since Google and its corporate brethren dodged paying taxes by playing shenanigans with the tax system in different countries. It's the same here: this worked cause some US state doesn't have a sales tax.
If Google can arbitrate taxes cause it's "technically not illegal", then so can their customers. Or do you think Google is allowed but their customers have to play by a different rule?

Lots of states have anti-scalping laws

[rsilvergun]

they're meant for tickets but might apply to any good or service being scalped. So depending on your jurisdiction yeah, laws might be broken.

And in any case they're violating Google's terms of service. Google can't control what you do with the phone after they sell it to you (right of first sale) but they can choose not to sell it to you.

And there are lots of good reasons to prevent scalping. For tickets the reasons are obvious. Bands sell tickets at a loss and make it up with merch at the show. I've seen photos of sold out Red Hot Chili Pepper's concerts where the auditorium was 1/10th full because the scalpers bought all the tickets and only sold them to the few rich folks who could afford it. Great for the venue (100% sell out) horrible for the band.

I see the same thing with a product like the NES classic. Nintendo isn't just selling those to make money, they're selling them to keep themselves in the consumer's mindshare while they work on their next console. So they sell them at a lower price to ensure 100% sell out. Scalpers blow that to hell since they're sitting on all the product.

I also saw this with the Gundam Seed toyline. Really nice toyline. $10 figures with amazing detail and playability. Got scalped like crazy and were going for $50 online. The Scalper could make a profit by selling 2 to OCD collectors and sitting on 7 of them. So they did. The show needed the merch to stay in mindshare. Cool toys are one of the things that made Wing and G Gundam so big. Fans and kids couldn't get the toys, show died on the vine.

When artists of all stripes can't get their product in consumers hands for a price that all but a handful can afford they lose out. That's the real cost of scalpers. For a real business making real product it's not just about the sales today, it's about the sales tomorrow, next month, next year. The scalpers cut that off like a parasite.

Re:Click bait much?

[Half-pint HAL]

I agree.

If nothing illegal was done here...what's the problem?

As I've just commented above, maybe the law was broken. There is a huge difference in law between a retail contract and a business-to-business contract and the related rights. Google's Ts&Cs say no "commercial resale", specifically because they know that they can't ban private resale. But their standpoint is that any purchase with the express purpose of commercial resale is technically "wholesale" and not covered by the contract. This is potentially very important when it comes to transfer of rights and responsibilities (a complicated part of consumer protection legislation that is further confounded by state-level commerce laws).