Comment by clessg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by clessg | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

This blog post is a slap in the face. Google should be ashamed.

We had been using AdSense for 10 years and had our account disabled after a competitor used a bot to click on the ads 10k+ times. This particular individual messaged me after doing so and bragged about how our account would be banned.

We forwarded the message to Google, asked them to remove those clicks, and told them we took measures to prevent this individual from doing it again. The next month, we were banned by Google on pay day. We appealed and got an automated denial. When we tried to get information from our Google contacts, we were told to make sure our family wasn't clicking on the ads.

Fortunately, we weren't reliant on AdSense, but it was insulting to be treated like children by this company. I'm glad that I won't have to deal with such an unethical company again, at least until they randomly disable my Google account.

So, to sum up this blog post: your competitors can spend a couple bucks to shut you down permanently, and Google will treat you like a child.

I won't generalize here and say all Google support sucks, Google support for both Adwords and AdSense sucks so incredibly bad.

I don't understand how their CORE money making products can be staffed by untrained and in my experience uneducated foreign workers.

I've been an AdWords customer for probably 10 years, I won't say how much money I've spent (on behalf of clients) because it would sound like bragging but you would think with that much I'd get some sort of concierge treatment, or at least some sort of "direct line."

Even basic questions and support tickets don't get answered correctly, or in a timely manner.

The sad part is their marketing is so on point. I get clients that get coupons in the mail all the time looking to sign up, and end up not signing up because they arent willing to deal with a non-English speaking person reading from a "conditional logic support script."

FWIW my understanding is, the support only sucks on the "paying for ads" side of things. Advertisers, the ones bringing money in, not the ones taking it out, receive extremely good service.

Makes sense, if you're cynical

Can anyone here provide an example of "good" support from google?

Depending on what you mean by support, when one of my youtube videos was falsely copyright claimed, I disputed it and the claim was removed. When another video was falsely flagged as violating a rule, I disputed it and the flag was removed. When someone started repeatedly stealing my videos and uploading them to their own channels, I reported them for copyright infringement, and the first time it took 1 day to be taken down, subsequent claims only took 30 minutes for the takedown.

Exactly, they handle things they are legally required to.

I'm pretty sure they were not legally required to unflag either of my videos.

Sure. They replaced my defective Nexus 4 quickly and with zero fuss.

Well, that's actually not google support...

Actually, it could be. If the phone was bought from the Google store, they serve you directly. I had my Nexus 5X replaced after a conversation with Google (not LG).

They provide much better support than LG regarding replacement of the Nexus 5X for bootlooping issues. Project Fi support has been pretty accessible.

there are a few, but it usually turns out that the person had contacts at Google or were a high profile blogger or something.

ordinary folks? Forget it.

I used them 7+ years until a few weeks back. I had one aging website I literally had not posted anything new to in about 3+ years, and rarely visited. It made enough to have withdraw possible every few months. The only thing I can think of is the few videos on a youtube channel with a few thousand views posted about a year back. They probably were making $5/year. I'm not sure how I am banned for invalid ad clicks when I was barely making any revenue or have traffic. No explanation. Appeal sent on the 16th of Feb saying it will take a week or more to process. Still waiting. What a a joke.

Whoever that competitor is, you should publically blast them assuming you have the proof you say. I'd make it my life's work to call them out as often as possible if I were you. People who operate business like this, need to be called out and blacklisted.

When Google Migrated to GSuite they stole my domain by locking me out of any means of renewing, transferring, after I purchased it when they launched Google Domains ~2004. The domain in question happened to be have an interested party, because apparently they had somehow set up Google Apps for domains and were using it for email (this was a car dealership). They contacted me offering $5,000 to buy it. I couldn't even sell or renew it.

Same here. I was bringing this up in a thread here a few days ago and was downvoted but it is a disgrace to work with clients in such a disconnected way.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com