G Suite Horror Story

Yesterday my life long Gmail account has been deleted by Google because I integrated it with G Suite by cancelling the subscription.

G Suite for business was a mean to upgrade your personal email so that all your inbox will be unified. But the more email gets into the inbox, the more cluttered it seems. It was hard to manage.

Then, I searched for any way to break apart my personal Gmail from my G Suite account. It was complicated. This is not my first time using G Suite, previous account I just cancelled and move on with my personal Gmail. So I cancelled my subscription. And after that I can’t access my personal Gmail. Things starting to turn for the worse.

I searched for solutions, it turned out I had “unlock” some features that I upgraded my personal account into a business account and there was no coming back. I had setup that G Suite months ago and I can’t remember any “unlock” features prompting me.

As I kept digging Google’s Help Forums, it turns out I am not the only one in this predicament. Below are examples. Take notice on Google’s Customer Support’s passive solutions.

Canceled my G suite account and my @gmail.com is no longer working

Another one, I cancelled g-suite trial but now can’t access my email. In that thread, Google’s Customer Support replied with

If you cancel and delete Gsuite this will have no effects on your personal Gmail account there is not no way to restore a deleted the Gsuite account

So you just need sign into your personal Gmail account.to access your mail and contacts

Whew! That was reassuring. But when you login back to your Gmail account, me and this user has the same problem. It will display a server error

Server error

Sorry, you’ve reached a login page for a domain that isn’t using G Suite. Please check the web address and try again.

Shit. My Gmail account is using G Suite. I opened a ticket to Google’s Help Forum. Cancel GSuite subscription and now cannot login

So, the thing is I setup a business email powered by G Suite instead of another G Suite? Confusing. Their setup and landing page looks the same. Anyway, I looked into their Cancel your business email documentation and it mentioned

After you cancel, you can no longer send or receive mail from your business email address (for example, [email protected]); you return to using free, basic Gmail.

You return using free, basic Gmail. But how come I can’t access my personal Gmail account anymore? I’ve used that email for over 8 years, all my history is gone. All the Google Drive files, the Google Docs and Sheets of important data and documents.

To anyone using Business G Suite just make sure that you’ve “downgrade” instead of cancelling your subscription. This is very sad on my part, a hard lesson to learn. I should have read carefully the details. To Google, I lost trust in your service.

This post went viral on Hacker News back in 2018.