As part of the long, protracted death of Hangouts, Google is also pulling the imaginative title Call Phones feature, which allows you to place a call in Hangouts via Google Voice. It was mostly free, but you did have to pay for certain types of calls. With the feature due to expire next month, Google is now sending refunds for your remaining balance, and you can also manually activate the process.

People with a balance may soon see an email or two from Google on the subject – especially if there are any issues with repaying the original payment method. However, if you’d like to manually activate the refund process, Google has provided a set of detailed steps:

  1. Request a refund of Hangouts call phones at https://voice.google.com/billing. It’s accessible from the Hangouts app if credit is available.
  2. Once you have completed step 1, you will receive an email confirming the refund request. The credit shown in the invoice view goes to 0 and paid 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 further email will be sent.
    2. If Google Pay is unable to refund using the original payment method (e.g. if the credit card has expired or is no longer in the user’s payment profile), an email will be sent from [email protected] asks you to solve the problem. You can do so via the link in the email or at pay.google.com. Note: It is important to access pay.google.com with the same account as in step (2) mentioned in the email.

Google warns that it may take up to 10 days for the credit to appear on your side.

The transition from Hangouts to Google Chat is increasing these days. Even if you have not yet made the transition yourself, many of your non-group conversations probably have. Just recently, Google Chat started advertising the “Preview” functionality for those coming from Hangouts while the transition continues. Group chats are still unavailable, but many other features like video calls and contact searches seem to work and we are constantly receiving tips as waves of our readers report new conversations appearing – presumably if the migration continues at the end of Google.