As part of Hangouts’ long-term death, Google is also pulling the plug on the imaginative Call Phones feature, which allows you to make calls using Google Voice in Hangouts. It was usually free, but you had to pay for certain types of calls. With the feature set to expire next month, Google will now send emails about refunds for any remaining balance you may have, and you can also start the process manually.

People with balances may soon get one or two emails from Google on the topic, especially if there are issues with refunding the original payment method. However, if you want to start the refund process manually, Google has provided some detailed steps:

  1. Request a refund for Hangouts Call Phones at https://voice.google.com/billing. This can be accessed through the Hangouts app when credit is available.
  2. Once you have completed step 1, you will receive an email confirming the refund request. The credit shown in the billing view goes to 0 and paid phone calls via Hangouts are no longer possible.
  3. Google will attempt to refund the remaining balance through Google Pay. It may take a few days for the refund to appear on https://pay.google.com.
    1. If the refund is successful, no more emails will be sent.
    2. If Google Pay can’t issue a refund to the original payment method (for example, if the credit card has expired or is no longer in the user’s payments profile), an email will be sent from [email protected] ask you to solve the problem. You can do this from the link in the email or at pay.google.com. Note: It is important to access pay.google.com with the same account as mentioned in the email in step (2).

Google warns that it can take up to 10 days for the credit to show on your end.

The transition from Hangouts to Google Chat is getting faster these days. Even if you haven’t made the transition yet, many of your non-group conversations probably have. Recently, Google Chat has started advertising ‘Preview’ functionality to those coming out of Hangouts as the transition progresses. Group chats are still not available, but many other features, such as video calling and contact search, seem to be working, and we’re constantly receiving tips as waves of our readers report new conversations appearing – presumably as the migration continues at the end of Google.