My Google account got suspended and I wasn't able to log into GCP. Instances kept running but obviously it's a lame duck when I had no management access.
Googlers are very active in many forums, including HN, Stack Overflow, mailing lists, and other forums, not just via paid support.
If a customer is having trouble reaching someone at Google regarding Google Cloud Platform issue, I'm sorry to hear that, and would love to hear what was tried and did not work so we can improve the process, but we are listening and paying attention, and happy to hear constructive criticism.
It's definitely NOT the intent that you must personally know someone at Google to resolve an issue with your Google Cloud Platform account.
Sorry to hear you ran into this issue, and glad that it was resolved.
Just curious: did you try any channels of getting in touch with anyone at Google before reaching out to your friend? And if you did, and they did not work, we'd definitely like to know so that we can fix this.
We'd certainly like to make it easy for anyone to resolve issues with their GCP accounts easily, without requiring you to have a friend or acquaintance at Google to help fix this.
Issue resolved with a call to a Googler friend :/