Sky Google accounts deleted, paid apps lost

When Sky partnered with Google for their email they used Google Apps. As a result, every Sky email user had a fully functioning Google Account to use with things like the Google Play store. After the email transition to Yahoo, Sky have deleted all of the Google Accounts, and people have lost the paid-for apps they had associated with their deleted accounts.

Quite a mess.

Wow that is crazy! Have sky come to any solution so far?
I'd be fuming if I was affected.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Wow that is crazy! Have sky come to any solution so far?

No. It looks like individual complaints will have to raised, along with requests for refunds for paid apps lost.

Not good enough really. Heyho not a lot can be done!

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Not good enough really. Heyho not a lot can be done!

This is a Google problem, when they sign up business from an ISP they should be able to "unlink" the email from the content. Apple's app store doesn't care what email address you use - its a key into your account. You can change it at any time, and you can have multiple email addresses (with the same password) at http://iforgot.apple.com

Sky should be escalating this to Google's chief technology officer as it makes their brand look bad for a Google data problem.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Sky should be escalating this to Google's chief technology officer as it makes their brand look bad for a Google data problem.

I agree, since these accounts were created by Sky for their users, I would say they should take some ownership of the issue. So far Sky's response has been for users to take it up with Google themselves, but I disagree with this suggestion since Sky was Google's customer (via Google Apps), not the individual users.

The problem with Google is that the email address is the ID.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

The problem with Google is that the email address is the ID.

But the email address ([email protected]) wasn't deleted. Google's database thinks it was because its incorrectly designed. Emailing that address still reaches the same person.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

The problem with Google is that the email address is the ID.

But it is possible to change the email address (username) associated with a Google Account as long as it isn't being used with Gmail: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/19870?hl=en

This makes me think something could have been arranged after the email hosting was migrated from Gmail to Yahoo, but before the Google Accounts were deleted.

Maybe [email protected] was the Gmail address?

Some extra tags associated with that address and nothing to do with SMTP/POP3 stuff appear to have gone missing somewhere

I had a similar issue where a Google apps hosted domain email was flagged up as also being used for an end-user Google services account and it required the two to be separated.

So [email protected] had to set up [email protected] to retain the relevant retail (non-Apps) Google service, though transfer of data was not an option IIRC. They call it "conflicting accounts".

http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...

In this case Sky look to have cancelled the Google Apps accounts of their users. Oops.

Sky of course just point their MX record to Yahoo and Gmail falls out of the loop :-
sky.com IN MX
preference: 1
exchange: mx-eu.mail.am0.yahoodns.net

"In this case Sky look to have cancelled the Google Apps accounts of their users. Oops."

Is this a Sky issue and not a Google issue as some posters have stated?

It seems that some users were unaware that moving from Google to Yahoo would lose their access to Google Apps.

Was the problem something that people were warned about at all?

If not then no surprise that keep were unaware

I don't think that Sky ever said they had access to Google Apps.

That may well be the case, but they also probably never said don't use this email address if you signup to the Play Store as if we change email providers that it will cause problems.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

That may well be the case, but they also probably never said don't use this email address if you signup to the Play Store as if we change email providers that it will cause problems.

Exactly how I see it. If sky email accounts were somehow special to Google, (compared to say, a random pop3 account at a hosting centre), then Sky should have been informed about this when they signed up to Google email hosting and reminded when they started the migration to Yahoo.

As it was the users were in the cold, and for Google these are often paying users - so Google are to blame for not fixing their systems. Sky just wanted email - it was Google (Play) that sold people apps against their account, either free or charged.

This is one of the many apologies from Sky about Google

Email sent from Google in error
Dear Sky customer,

We understand that you may have recently received an email to this address from Google with the subject title: 'Changes to Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service'.

We'd like to apologise for any confusion this email may have caused. It was sent in error and should be ignored.

Google's technology supports the Sky email service, and hence supports your @sky.com address. However, as a @sky.com email subscriber, your only relationship is with Sky.
Please be reassured that Sky's Terms and Conditions and Privacy Notice apply and not Google's.

To reiterate, please ignore the earlier email you were mistakenly sent. To be clear, Google's privacy changes do not apply to your @sky.com email account.

Please be assured that we are taking this matter very seriously and are working with Google to understand how this error occurred.

We've put together a series of frequently asked questions to address any additional queries that you may have. These can be found here.

Thank you for your understanding.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Not good enough really. Heyho not a lot can be done!

This is a Google problem, when they sign up business from an ISP they should be able to "unlink" the email from the content. Apple's app store doesn't care what email address you use - its a key into your account. You can change it at any time, and you can have multiple email addresses (with the same password) at http://iforgot.apple.com

Sky should be escalating this to Google's chief technology officer as it makes their brand look bad for a Google data problem.

imo google have never played fair.

frequently google sites stop working right on browsers that arent chrome, firefox catchup fast but Ie can be broken for months or more

their entire android platform is designed around a cloud thats google based. so its not just using a generic email account to register they expect you to use a gmail account. as it ties in with other google services as well.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

imo google have never played fair.

frequently google sites stop working right on browsers that arent chrome, firefox catchup fast but Ie can be broken for months or more

their entire android platform is designed around a cloud thats google based. so its not just using a generic email account to register they expect you to use a gmail account. as it ties in with other google services as well.

Google only bought and pushed Android as they wanted to control the advertising on mobile devices - as people move from PC/laptop to mobile. Google only cares about selling advertising.

Whereas Nokia, Apple and Blackberry care about selling product, and Microsoft cares about selling software (well did, now they're trying to copy, Google and Apple and failing at both).

yeah watching microsoft is just sad, they just blatantly copying, even abandoning their own software in the process.

I assume is advantages for google for people to use chrome, else why develop the product. Chrome itself is what has been pushing the cloud platform with it been the first browser designed to run web apps amongst other things.

Similiar thing is been done with android as well.

If people use the cloud, store their data in the cloud, then thats data for google to harvest which could aid advertising amongst other things.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

yeah watching microsoft is just sad, they just blatantly copying, even abandoning their own software in the process.

and abandoning the enterprise market will cost them a lot in the long run, and closing technet is an accounting decision that forgets lots of home users 'grew up' with these tools and caused big sales in companies. They forget Linux is here (e.g. RedHat Enterprise, SuSE etc) and the LAMP stack is easy to trial and learn on home kit.

I assume is advantages for google for people to use chrome, else why develop the product. Chrome itself is what has been pushing the cloud platform with it been the first browser designed to run web apps amongst other things.

Chrome stops other browser makers from including Google Ad filters.

Similiar thing is been done with android as well.
If people use the cloud, store their data in the cloud, then thats data for google to harvest which could aid advertising amongst other things.

Of course you can use non Google clouds, and split data between cloud companies too. Corporates can use clouds from the likes of IBM and Amazon's S3 services and of course MS Azure

As stated Sky's T&C only apply to the @sky.com email address not the underlying Google email address.

If anyone is stupid enough to use the underlying Google account linked to the Sky address for anything then that's their lookout after all Sky let everyone know that they were dumping Google and it's pretty obvious that the associate Google accounts would be deleted after the transition.

In reply to a post by simon194:

If anyone is stupid enough to use the underlying Google account linked to the Sky address for anything then that's their lookout after all Sky let everyone know that they were dumping Google and it's pretty obvious that the associate Google accounts would be deleted after the transition.

Sky email addresses have automatically been associated with a Google Account for years, long before any rumours of a switch to Yahoo.

Also, if one had attempted to sign their Sky address up for a Google Account over the last few years (a perfectly normal thing to want to do since not everyone has or wants an @gmail.com address), they would be told their email address already has a Google Account. How was the customer supposed to know it was provisioned via Google Apps and will be deleted when Sky's association with Google ends?

So I don't think it was "obvious" at all, and I don't regard the affected customers as "stupid".

Another good reason to register your own domain which can be used to set up a play store account as I've done with mine on my Galaxy Ace 2

In reply to a post by broadband66:

"In this case Sky look to have cancelled the Google Apps accounts of their users. Oops."

Is this a Sky issue and not a Google issue as some posters have stated?

Depends on your point of view, Sky look to have used Google apps to provide email to their sky.com email users without making it clear to those users that these weren't standard Google accounts (it might frighten the horses).

As Google's services have evolved the capabilities of the two types of account have wandered about, most recently I have had to dig people out who couldn't renew paid for Google apps services because they had used the apps email address on Google Play (which didn't even exist when they set up the email I suspect). Google required them to split the accounts and create a new identity or similar.

So a Sky user thinking it was "just an email address" using it in Google land bumped into Google thinking it was an apps email address which is different - not least in the support and admin being in Sky's hands and in there being limitations with some services.

In reply to a post by techguy:

Another good reason to register your own domain which can be used to set up a play store account as I've done with mine on my Galaxy Ace 2

but presumably not to register it with Google via Apps

In reply to a post by yarwell:

So a Sky user thinking it was "just an email address" using it in Google land bumped into Google thinking it was an apps email address which is different - not least in the support and admin being in Sky's hands and in there being limitations with some services.

The problem being Google Play which for some unknown reason uses more detail about a google account than just the email address. So anyone who uses Google Apps and then moved to a different provider (e.g. MS Office 365) could lose all their Android apps. If they are an Apple or Microsoft user then they don't - er, Google, why on earth?

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

yeah watching microsoft is just sad, they just blatantly copying, even abandoning their own software in the process.

You clearly don't use much of it then - I wouldn't consider the insane number of improvements in Server 2012 and Server 2012 R2 as them abandoning anything.

what was removed in 2012.

are you one of those who looks at the marketed fetaures and turns a blind eye to feature cuts and regressions?

also since when is server 2012 a consumer desktop os?

microsoft's peak was windows 2000, XP was based on 2000 hence its success. Since then all downhill.

In reply to a post by therioman:

You clearly don't use much of it then - I wouldn't consider the insane number of improvements in Server 2012 and Server 2012 R2 as them abandoning anything.

There is some lovely stuff in 2012, such as the improvements in Hyper-V, but the front end GUI is just horrible. I'm hoping with 8.1 release, the 2012 R2 will have a little sanity restored - but who needs a tablet GUI on a server when you might have 30 or more in a rack with a KVM ?

Microsofts Servers & Tools division (Windows Server, SQL Server, Visual Studio etc) could be the only bit that makes money shortly !!

Edited by jchamier (Sat 03-Aug-13 17:56:13)