Never ending hassle with appshop payments refused

[peterh337]

This is all over the internet, with thousands of android users tearing their hair out, and most getting no solutions.

I have just bought an S9 as a present for my GF, set it all up (had an S7 etc for years so know android pretty well, albeit all my stuff is rooted) but

1) cannot get paypal to work
2) one credit card never works
3) another credit card worked a few times and then stopped
4) phone account payments (Vodafone) stopped when monthly limit reached

Well, 4) is at least obvious and maybe there is a config in the phone account somewhere.

1 2 and 3 are bizzare.

Google have pages on this, waffling on about clearing the play store app cache etc but nothing does anything.

Even the card which was authorised (by a long phone call with the card provider) to work on Google Pay does not work for app purchases!

The error message is the standard completely useless one, same every time.

How does a company with so many billions to spend on getting things right manage to screw up so badly?

I vaguely recall going through this years ago with my first android phone, making a long call to some chimp call centre, to get it "fixed".

Paypal works fine for me, but my own paypal account also completely failed to work on the S9. Yet I see no config in my Paypal account (on the www) for authorising google appshop payments.

Has anyone found a solution that actually works, or does everyone end up calling google's chimp call centre?

 

[KBU2]

This is all over the internet, with thousands of android users tearing their hair out, and most getting no solutions.

I have just bought an S9 as a present for my GF, set it all up (had an S7 etc for years so know android pretty well, albeit all my stuff is rooted) but

1) cannot get paypal to work
2) one credit card never works
3) another credit card worked a few times and then stopped
4) phone account payments (Vodafone) stopped when monthly limit reached

Well, 4) is at least obvious and maybe there is a config in the phone account somewhere.

1 2 and 3 are bizzare.

Google have pages on this, waffling on about clearing the play store app cache etc but nothing does anything.

Even the card which was authorised (by a long phone call with the card provider) to work on Google Pay does not work for app purchases!

The error message is the standard completely useless one, same every time.

How does a company with so many billions to spend on getting things right manage to screw up so badly?

I vaguely recall going through this years ago with my first android phone, making a long call to some chimp call centre, to get it "fixed".

Paypal works fine for me, but my own paypal account also completely failed to work on the S9. Yet I see no config in my Paypal account (on the www) for authorising google appshop payments.

Has anyone found a solution that actually works, or does everyone end up calling google's chimp call centre?

I never use PayPal app on any device nor apps to pay anything. If I'm on the go I always open the website from my mobile device browser I currently use to pay bills through it. Note: Google password save is a must to have. All accounts, bills , websites that I pay money through Google has all of that information saved. I just type in the information and authenticate what I'm transacting within that website. Google automatically have my password and username already in there Even with PayPal as a payment source. Visa Mastercard , Discover card all has it's place within the payment link through Google passwords save apparatus. Once a site logs cookies from a particular device, It becomes easier to pay bills and purchase stiff with that device because it's recognized as a payment source.

 

[peterh337]

You have to use app shop payments to install apps which are not zero price.

The only way around this is to search for apk versions and sideload them, but that doesn't get you the "pro" (no ads) versions unless they are cracked, which brings other issues. Also I like to pay app developers the few bucks for their work.

 

[peterh337]

Having spent a lot of time on the google chimp call centre, it turns out that google placed a block on app shop payments!

They did it because they saw a number of small-value transactions taking place in succession. I carefully explained to the chimp that this is EXACTLY what somebody will do after they buy a new phone! I mean, you install some apps and you want to pay for them! And if you know what a phone looks like, you might do this pretty quickly. As the English saying goes, no sh*t Sherlock.

He got the block removed.

One transaction went through ok and then next one and all subsequent ones got blocked again.

More time on the phone. They said that again there was suspicious activity and I have to wait 24hrs without any transactions. Previously they wanted 4hrs.

So we will try it again tonight......

They must have a million people going through this hassle.