As part of Hangouts’ long and never-ending death, Google is also ending the Phone Call feature, which lets you make a phone call in Hangouts through Google Voice. It was mostly free, but you had to pay for certain types of calls. With the feature expiring next month, Google is now sending emails regarding refunds of any remaining balances you may have, and you can also trigger the process manually.

People with a balance may soon see an email or two from Google regarding the topic, especially if there is an issue with the refund to the original payment method. If you want to manually trigger the refund process, Google has provided a set of detailed steps:

  1. Request a refund for Hangouts Call Phones at https://voice.google.com/billing. This is accessible from the Hangouts app if there is credit available.
  2. Once step 1 is completed, you will receive an email confirming the refund request. The credit shown in the billing view will change to 0 and paid phone calls through Hangouts will no longer be possible.
  3. Google will attempt to refund the remaining balance through Google Pay. It may take several days for the refund to appear on https://pay.google.com.
    1. If the refund is successful, no further email is sent.
    2. If Google Pay cannot refund the original payment method (for example, if the credit card has expired or is no longer in the user’s payment profile), an email will be sent from [email protected] asking 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 mentioned in the email in step (2).

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

The transition from Hangouts to Google Chat is picking up steam these days. Even if you haven’t made the transition yourself yet, many of your out-of-group conversations probably have. Just recently, Google Chat started promoting the “Preview” feature for people coming to Hangouts as the transition continues. Group chats are still not available, but a lot of other features like video calling and contact tracing seem to work, and we’re continually getting tips as waves of our readers report the onset of new conversations – presumably. while the migration continues on Google’s side.