February 22, 2026
Banned, billed, and bewildered
Google restricting Google AI Pro/Ultra subscribers for using OpenClaw
Paying $249 a month… to get silently shut out by Google
TLDR: A Google AI Ultra customer says their $249/month account was quietly restricted after using a third‑party tool, while charges kept coming. Commenters are split between calling Google’s move abusive and warning that these “unlimited” AI deals were always bait to lock users in, making everyone nervous about trusting big tech AI.
Google’s latest AI drama reads like a tech soap opera: a paying customer drops $249 a month for Google AI Ultra, links it to a third‑party tool called OpenClaw, and suddenly – bam – their account is restricted for days with zero warning, zero explanation, and the bill still rolling in. The community didn’t just notice, they exploded. One commenter laid out the horror-movie timeline: connect with Google login, get banned, still get charged. People are calling it “getting paywalled and punished at the same time.”
When a supposed internal response surfaced saying the user broke rules by using Google’s “Antigravity” servers to power a non‑Google product, the crowd went full courtroom drama. One voice called it flat out “draconian”, accusing Google of nuking a customer instead of just blocking the tool. Another camp fired back with a harsh reality check: these cheap “unlimited” AI plans are just bait, they said, to lock you into the company’s world, and using them to power outside services was always going to get shut down.
Meanwhile, others piled on with their own war stories: error messages, slow service, and “Pro” accounts that feel anything but pro. The memes wrote themselves: people joking that Google’s AI tiers are like gym memberships where the doors sometimes don’t open — but your credit card still does. The real product here, commenters sighed, isn’t AI. It’s lock‑in and late‑stage capitalism.
Key Points
- •A Google AI Ultra subscriber reports their account has been restricted for three days without prior warning or notification.
- •The user pays $249 per month for Google AI Ultra and states they are being billed despite losing access to the service.
- •The only recent workflow change reported by the user was connecting Google’s Gemini models via an OpenClaw OAuth integration.
- •The user has emailed Google support but has not yet received a response regarding the cause or resolution of the restriction.
- •The user discovered that accessing Google Cloud Customer (GCC) support requires an additional fee beyond their current subscription and considers this unreasonable.