Here's why you should never use Google Apps for your domain paid or unpaid.
I started using the free version Google Apps a little over a year ago for one of our intranets. Luckily it was an intranet and not the main site! I guess it wasn't entirely luck. Management would never have let us use it on the main site. Anway, we used the shared calendar, email for a certain group, Google docs and a few other things.

For the most part things worked well.  A few weeks ago it was time to renew the domain, and as the admin I promptly paid it using Google checkout.
Shortly afterwords the domain expired on the day aniversary date and we were totally hosed.

I went and double checked, and, I'm showing in google checkout that I've paid for the renewal. I then go back to the dashboard and see that it tells me that I need to renew in 2010.  So as far as Google is concerned I'm cool. But enom which is the registrar that google used to register my domain thinks that the domain is expired. Worse, I can't log into their system and pay for the damn thing.
I can't pay for it on Google either because Google thinks I'm all paid up. It gets worse. Much worse.

Next I find out that not only is enom setting up one of their @!#$@#$# parked pages selling real estate on my pages (Am I glad at this point that this is an Intranet), but also, any email that goes to this domain, does not bounce. No, instead it goes to some spam handling outfit that they use. Damn it, it's *our* domain. 

So I start doing some research and guess what:
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/static.py?page=known_issues.cs
        "I puchased my domain through GoDaddy or Enom when I registered for Google Apps and the renewal was charged, but the domain didn't renew."

Hello? This is big time amatteur city. This is a known problem? And they want people to pay for this product, and trust their email to them? 

So I research this some more and I find this:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Apps/thread?tid=1e8fdbf9cec765f3&hl=en
Exactly the same issue I have. Fine if the solution is to upgrade to premium support we'll pay the $50 per user. Management's not going to be too happy, but it's better than being down.

Easier said than done. I follow the instructions on 
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=60217
except that there's no "Upgrade to Google Apps Premier Edition." link anywhere on the "Account Information" tab.

Fine. I'll just call the premium support group and sign up and then get them to help me resolve this issue. Apparently that's not going to work either. After looking around everywhere on the site, I foundhttp://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Apps/thread?tid=37b64a9f87c8f406&hl=en
They don't offer phone support anymore.

At this point, I'm ready to cry. What have I done to be stuck in this kafkaesque place. 

I send email to all the different venues that are mentioned on the google apps web site. 

No response for 24 hours. Finally I get a response from a guy asking me to provide info I already provided. I do so, and then 24 hours later (India?) I get a response that yes, this looks like a real problem and he's moving it to the appropriate department. I then reply indicating that this is really urgent for us.

I tried calling the main office, but their phone tree was clearly set up to avoid letting you talk to anyone.

In the mean time I correspond with Enom who's somewhat more responsive. It only takes then 4-8 hours to respond to each email. Finally we agree that the thing to do is to move the domain from Enom through google to enom through enom. Major change! I'm warned that it can take up to 7 days. I happily pay the fee, and start the process. 

To make a long story short, I move the domain from Google to Enom and luckily it didn't take the full 7 days. Never heard back from Google. We're in the process of moving everything away from Google Apps. 
I advise you to do the same until they have a clear procedure to handle these kind of issues. 

I know. Some people here are going to say that I shouldn't expect any better since I didn't pay for the product. I'd like to reply to this with the following points:
-- I was willing to upgrade to a paid account and couldn't
-- Even paid accounts don't have phone access according to my research. If they do, it's well hidden.
-- Many people use both google apps and regular gmail accounts for crucial things. This posting is a warning of the dangers of doing so.