How to fix Google Apps - Server error

About a month ago, a mate was having issues with his webmail provider.  I suggested he swap to Google Apps (free edition).

All was going well for around three weeks, then when he or any of his other users tried to login, they would be presented with this error:

Unlike our 3Bit email (Google Apps paid edition), the free edition comes with no support, so I had to figure out the solution myself - a quick search of the Google forums show this is a common issue, and no-one really had a solution that worked.

While I wish I could claim some stroke of brilliance, the answer came to me by accident.

The issue is, if you don't verify your domain name within the time frame (three weeks), it seems Google disable the administrator account for the domain, which in turn, causes issues for everyone on that domain.  The ambiguous error message thrown by trying to login to the cpanel for the domain doesn't help.

To check whether your administrator account has been disabled, try logging into Google Accounts.  If your account has been disabled, you will be redirected to this help page.  I sent an email to Google using the link at the bottom of the page, explaining what had happened, and within an hour, the account was re-enabled, and I was able to login to Google Apps again.

I hope this helps save some hours and frustration for anyone else with this issue.