adventures in vpn-land

omg, that was insanely complicated: i just spent the last hour and a half trying to set my mother up with a google account that we could connect to our family account. everything about the process is ridiculous, not least of which being that our family accounts are all registered as canadian because that's how they were legitimately created, and we can't change that because we need access to the canadian play store in order to use canadian apps (like our banking apps).

firstly, google insists on phone verification when creating an account on the desktop, but wouldn't accept any of our valid, active phone numbers. after quite a struggle, i stumbled across a support answer that suggested creating the account from an android phone, where phone verification is optional.

excellent. i still can't believe that worked.

but then, once i had an account created i couldn't change its country. even after providing my canadian payment details, because that's based on the current IP address and not card issuer. i - tried - so - many - things...

eventually, i thought "bugger this", subscribed to and installed a vpn on both my desktop and my mobile, set everything up for ontario (not quebec, which was somehow confused with romania?!), created a brand new account on my mobile, signed in on my desktop, and finally - FINALLY! - was able to hit the "join family" button.

i never thought i'd post an endorsement like this, but veepn was well worth the once-off $10 for the month. i've paid for vpn trials in the past and been very disappointed, but this was simple AF. if i actually needed a VPN long-term, i'd probably go for the cheaper plans, but it's good to know there's a viable option that doesn't suck.