A somewhat similar situation happened to me in that my Google payments account was frozen, supposely due to fraud. This caused me to be unable to buy a new project fi compatible phone or do any other payments, except... My monthly Fi bills continued to be processed as usual. I tried escalating with Fi support and filing a BBB complaint (which at least got looked at, but did not resolve my account standing). Finally, I contacted a Googler that commented here on HN and luckily they were sympathetic and fixed the issue. If I hadn't have been able to get my account in good standing and I was forced to start over with a new Google account, I would have switched to an iPhone. Sometimes I wonder if I should have switched anyway.