As part of the long and prolonged death of Hangouts, Google is also turning off the Call Phones feature, which allows you to place a call on Hangouts via Google Voice. It was almost completely free, but you had to pay for certain types of calls. With the feature set to expire next month, Google is now sending emails about refunds of any remaining balance you may have, and you can also trigger the process manually.

People with a balance can see one or two emails from Google about it soon – especially if there are problems with refunding the original form of payment. However, if you want to trigger the refund process manually, Google has provided a set of detailed steps:

  1. Request a refund for Hangouts phones at https://voice.google.com/billing. This can be accessed in the Hangouts app if credit is available.
  2. After completing step 1, you will receive an email confirming your refund request. The credit shown in the billing view will go to 0 and phone calls paid 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 at https://pay.google.com.
    1. If the refund is successful, no further emails will be sent.
    2. If Google Pay is unable to refund to the original form of payment (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 using the link in the email or at pay.google.com. Note: It is important to visit pay.google.com with the same account mentioned in the email in step (2).

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

The transition from Hangouts to Google Chat is currently picking up speed. Even if you have not yet transitioned, many of your conversations outside the group have probably done. Recently, Google Chat started announcing “preview” functionality to those coming from Hangouts as the transition continues. Group chats are not yet available, but many other features, such as video calls and contact search, seem to work, and we’re continually getting tips as waves of our readers report new conversations – presumably as the migration continues at the end of Google stuff.