Wake Up Google, it may be the internet age but customer service still counts!

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In a recent episode an old client approached us for assistance after having their PPC account suspended. They were notified by Google that their account was suspended and that it was in the hands of "a specialist team".

The account had only been active for around a week, the ads, for holiday accommodation, had been approved at the time and all looked well. On inspection of the ads the recipient site and the account in general here was nothing particularly obvious.

The client appealed against the suspension and two weeks later had the following

"Thank you for your continued patience. I have reconsulted the specialist team about your account suspension, and have confirmed that our team's decision is correct and final. Your ads will no longer run on Google. This policy will apply to all accounts you have created. As noted in our Terms and Conditions, Google reserves the right to terminate advertisements for any reason."

And that was it, no explanation as to which of the T's and C's had been breached. We re-examined the account and site and were quite honestly dumbfounded by Google's response. We contacted them by phone, which if you don't have a contact there you will find Google do not make easy, only to be told there was a wall of silence on the account and no one could help them.

The only clue we could get was it was something to do with the account. But given that the account hadn't had time to generate a significant outstanding balance, let alone a bad debt it wasn't to do with payments.

On closer discussion with the client it transpired this global client had set up the account in California, using the IT managers credit card (who lives in the Isle of Man) the account was being managed in Spain for adverts to run in the UK for holidays in Scotland.

We thought that Google might have misconstrued this a money laundering, so setting up a new account in Spain, with Spanish credit card details resolved the issue, as the account has been running with no problems for several months we think this was in fact the case.

I can understand Google's response, however the wall of silence to a legitimate company trying to advertise legitimate products could have been handled better without our involvement, but then if they were better at communication we wouldn't have been called in to fix it - so (changing my tune totally) thanks Google :-)

Comments

23 Aug 10 Christina Radisic - We have had similar problems with Google, although we have found no valid reason for Google suspending an account. Google are impossible to contact or get any information out of.