I don't have Google workspace for this domain and use an alternate email provider. I was curious so tried to signin and was told that the admin account was an email on my domain (eg foo@mydomain.com). Ok, created that account so I could receive email, except then Google said that I had to use the backup recovery email which happened to be mydomain@gmail.com.
Google said that non verified workspaces (eg not verified through txt or cname records) would be automatically deleted after 7 days.
14 days later the workspace was still there.
I had to go through a convoluted manual form and process to get my workspace domain back and then properly register it so this would not happen again.
I provided the following feedback which seems like common sense, but I guess it ain't that common:
1) you shouldn't be able to create a workspace with a custom domain without verifying it via DNS records from the start. No 7 day grace which actually was broken and for all I know was infinite grace period.
2) the established admin account with a custom domain email address should be eligible to perform recovery. Not some arbitrary secondary Gmail account.