Google Over Charging For Adwords?

No customer support by phone.

[drdsl2000]

I suggest you check your bank statement ASAP. We have 3 different charges in January from our Google Adwords account, (I thought they billed 1x monthly). When I called the number listed on my bank statement, 650-330-0100 we are informed "Google does not have live customer support".

Craig

[edited by: Shak at 6:45 pm (utc) on Feb. 6, 2004]
[edit reason] lets stay polite please! [/edit]

[Shak]

?

[tak051]

Aren't AdWords set up with a credit limit? That's to say, early on you might be able to spend $50 then they'll bill your card, after a while, they bump you to $100, and so on.

Maybe I have this wrong, but your account might be picking up speed and so you are hitting your credit point faster.

[colinirwin]

They don't bill monthly. First they take a fiver off you for opening the account (its a deposit against clicks).

After that, in their own words:

"You pay only for clicks you've actually received, so you are not billed in advance. We bill every 30 days or after a pre-set credit limit -- £50 - £500, determined by history in the programme.

"The initial credit limit of £50 is incrementally raised each time an account hits its credit limit before 30 days have ended. The credit limit is first raised to £200, then to £350, and then to £500. The amount billed may be slightly in excess of the credit limit if an account accrues clicks very quickly.

"For advertisers who meet our criteria, we will consider increasing credit limits beyond £500. Although credit limits cannot be increased in all cases, we are happy to review all such requests."

Check out the Google AdWords FAQ [https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/faq/index.html]for more information on billing & all else AdWords.

Col

PS. I do find it annoying that you can't set a fixed spend when paying for AdWords by credit card. If you move over to Insertion Orders everything hinges on approved budgets and so you can't accidentally overspend.

[skibum]

You can set a max daily spend and an end date for the campaign which is basically the same as when you use an I/O as far as setting spending limits.

[colinirwin]

Yes, but it isn't as precise as setting a fixed budget. Say you have a really big day when AdWords overdelivers then you can easily spend too much.

Also, as drdsl2000 proves, it's no good having a feature like that if you don't communicate it's importance to the user. If the signup process was:

1. Create first ad group
   
2. Assign keywords
   
3. Set max bid
   
4. Set max daily spend
   
5. Set campaign end date / total budget
   

then you would be making the user aware of their commitment and not leaving them with an open ended budget by default.

Col

[caine]

I've been using adwords on several campaigns since it started, and i have to say that the information provided while signing up was very straight forward and certainly in no way misleading, assuming that you read and understood how their adwords program and billing protocol works.

[ByronM]

for my 2 cents.

If google offered live customer support then the minimum click cost would be alot higher.

The program is so appealing and so affordable because they use the technology they have to pull it off. Sometimes impersonal, but often with a little bit of practice and experience you can work through it.

[skibum]

Even as an agency with multiple clients running AdWords (up to 10k month on some of them) G seems very reluctant to provide support on any individual client account that does not spend 5k/month.

[anallawalla]

They don't bill monthly.

If you are referring to invoicing as opposed to credit card, they certainly do for my client (5-digit spend per month).

[andye]

Even as an agency with multiple clients running AdWords (up to 10k month on some of them) G seems very reluctant to provide support on any individual client account that does not spend 5k/month.

skibum, they do for me. Try kicking some ***.

Best wishes - Andy.