Posted by Michelle Ding • 08 Jan, 2023

I woke up early one morning around 7:30am, ready to go out hiking with my boyfriend when I decided to just check my email. I was shocked to find that at 5am, there were receipts (in Korean) of payment which I did not make! Google Play had charged me for some multiple in-app purchases for a mobile game called Lineage W, and they totaled up to about almost RM100! And it was directly charged to my U Mobile number as I had previously connected it as one of my payment methods for the Google Play Store. (I’m not even using an android phone now) So, I started to panic, I quickly changed my password then I tried to contact Google to refund my money, and I also contacted U Mobile’s customer service for help but seemingly to no avail. When I tried Google first, they said that in normal circumstances, they would not normally return money for in-app purchases, only for apps and games. However, if you were to report unauthorized purchases, they needed something called a ‘correlation ID’ from the carrier. So, I waited a little before contacting U Mobile’s customer service hotline, (they only open their lines at 8am) and after finally getting through the person on the line wasn’t very helpful or sympathetic, she basically told me she couldn’t really help me except for maybe removing U mobile as a payment method for Google Play store. She also had no idea what a correlation ID was and did not even make a point to find out. I was feeling kind of defeated at that point and was like yeah, sure just remove Google Play store’s authorization. Even at that point she was like, you still need to pay for the previous payment before that, you know that right? I was frustrated at that point but couldn’t do much else and just asked her to remove it. Usually at this point, I would go into a downward spiral, start to feel depressed and sorry for myself. But then, I remembered recently from a devotion I read, that God tests us and builds our character in the hard times and sometimes even though we go through tough times, it’s to prevent us from falling into worse times. So, I prayed, surrendered the whole situation to God. I told Him, it would be great if I were refunded, but if I must pay because of my carelessness (not updating my password and turning off my 2-step verification), then so be it and I just thanked God the charges were capped at RM100 (I saw that the hacker had tried to get more but was blocked). I also tried emailing U Mobile asking for a correlation ID. Their replies were slow, but they understood the situation and tried to help me. The next day at around 10pm, I received a few SMS from U Mobile saying that all those unauthorized purchases were refunded! Hallelujah! I’m not sure whether it was from Google or U Mobile’s side but I’m so thankful for God’s great goodness towards me.