YouTube fans fuming as Google abruptly ends money saving premium loophole but users say ‘they’ll get nothing from me’

YOUTUBE users are furious after Google started cracking down on a common loophole used to get premium on the cheap.

The popular video sharing website has already felt the wrath of fans by increasingly enforcing a ban on ad blockers.

Now it appears to be taking aim at YouTube Premium subscribers trying to save money.

The service charges £12.99 / $13.99 per month for people who want to get rid of adverts, as well as allowing them to download videos to watch offline and play music in the background too.

Brits and Americans pay among the highest in the world - though Switzerland ranks most expensive.

For years, some have been using a sneaky trick to pay less.

Using a VPN app, they have been spoofing their location and subscribing to the service from other countries where it is considerably cheaper.

For example, in India it costs 129 Rs per month, which is about £1.22 / $11.54.

It's even cheaper in Argentina at 869 ARS, equivalent to £0.76 / $0.96.

However, subscribers using the loophole have complained that their accounts are now being cancelled.

Emails have started landing in inboxes informing people.

"Have just spoken to customer service who stated that as I "moved" to a different location from the one I signed up at (Ukraine but UK based), the service has been cancelled until I sign up with a UK card and address," one user wrote on Reddit.

"From £2.30 a month to £12.99. Yikes...."

Others have said they won't subscribe at all, commenting: "They'll get nothing from me."

A YouTube spokesperson confirmed the crackdown to several tech sites, saying: "To provide the most accurate plans and offers available, we have systems in place to determine the country of our users.

"In instances where the signup country does not match where the user is accessing YouTube, we’re asking members to update their billing information to their current country of residence."

Google gets tough...

Analysis by Jamie Harris, Assistant Technology and Science Editor at The Sun

Google has come down quite tough on freeloaders and money savers recently.

It's been progressively preventing people from using ad blockers on YouTube, going as far as stopping videos loading at all so users have to switch the ad blocker off.

I'm actually surprised Google took so long to take action - hours of footage is uploaded to YouTube every second and it's no cheap business running and maintaining the servers that keep it ticking along.

But now Google is going for people using VPNs to get YouTube Premium on the cheap.

It may seem unfair that the UK and US pay among the most for essentially the same service but this is common practice across most digital platforms like this, such as Spotify or iCloud, where prices are adjusted based on things like average wages.

Given the sharp jump in cost it'll mean for affected users some will surely cancel premium entirely.