Canadian AdSense Payment Issued with Incorrect Exchange Rate

Adjustment May be Forthcoming

[littlegiant]

Did anyone else receive a notice from Adsense about being issued a payment with an incorrect exchange rate? Apparently they're going to issue another payment to correct this. I remember that this happened before last spring and they recalled a whole bunch of EFT payments and reissued the corrected versions immediately. I'm in Canada, by the way.

[spander]

I received the notice too. It looks legit but there's no info in my adsense account about it. I'm also in Canada.

[suzany]

I'm in Canada, too, but haven't received a notice (yet). The exchange rate was 1:1. And now that I think about it, the CDN dollar has dropped over the past few weeks, no? We should have gotten a bit more in CDN dollars...

Suzanne

[littlegiant]

Hey wait a minute... I just checked my bank records and the payment did go off at a 1:1 exchange rate. I never even noticed that. Thanks Suzany! This exchange rate is definitely wrong for the date my payment was issued (Aug 26 according to Google, Aug 27 according to my bank records).

The Bank of Canada Exchange Rate lookup shows the following for those dates:

Highest and lowest CAN$/US$ rates during the period:
26/08/2008 to 27/08/2008

Lowest (26/08/2008)
$1 CAN = $0.9486 US
($1 US = $1.0542 CAN)

Highest (26/08/2008)
$1 CAN = $0.9604 US
($1 US = $1.0412 CAN)

Looks like we got burned. Well at least Google is on top of the situation (better than I am anyway... *chuckle*)...

[mayest]

Just out of curiosity (since I'm in the US), does AdSense pay at whatever rate is in effect on the payment date, or do they accrue the payments in your currency (at each day's rate) throughout the month? It sounds like they wait until the payment date to do the conversion.

[Leonard0]

does AdSense pay at whatever rate is in effect on the payment date, or do they accrue the payments in your currency (at each day's rate) throughout the month?

The exchange rate at which we are paid is usually close to the official exchange rate on the payment day so I guess it's the former.
It's good that Google does the conversion, otherwise if we were paid in US currency the bank would charge a 2% fee for the service.

[littlegiant]

The moderator who changed the thread title should be aware that the email notification sent by Adsense did not specify that this was strictly a problem with Canadian payments. Not criticizing or anything... Just a heads up.

[leadegroot]

does AdSense pay at whatever rate is in effect on the payment date, or do they accrue the payments in your currency (at each day's rate) throughout the month?

I don't recall it being written anywhere in the Adsense doco, but it is certainly placed in the interface as if it is converted once at the end of the month. The couple of times I have closely tracked the rates, it appeared they converted about 2 days before they did PIP

[mayest]

Thanks Leonard0 and leadegroot. After reading this thread, I was thinking about how Google could best hedge their currency exposure. I can see benefits (for them) either way. It sounds like they decided that it was best to convert on the payment date.

[Leonard0]

I noticed that the Earnings and Payments report now has the following notice:

IMPORTANT: Your payments are currently on hold. Action is required to release payment.
Click the Required Action(s) below for information on resolving your hold. Changes made to these settings after the 15th of the month may apply to either the current or next payment cycle.
Required Action
EFT failed - please enter and verify a new bank account

Last time this happened the people that changed their bank account had problems. So I'd advise that if you got this message just wait a couple days for G to finish doing the payment update.

[littlegiant]

Not only that but it appears as if they attempted to send the entire monthly payment again instead of just sending the difference attributed to the exchange rate that wasn't previously applied. Then they recalled that second erroneous monthly payment. I'm also seeing the 'payments currently on hold' message. It looks like that message is issued automatically if an EFT payment is recalled for whatever reason.

This is a big mess. Well as long as they don't touch the original payment in my bank account. That's been deposited in my account for over a week now.

Oh great Gazoo! ...er uh.. Adsense Advisor..?

[LunaC]

Wow, what a mess! I'm seeing the same banking confusion as littlegiant.

It's been a messy week for Google. I'll do what I seem to have become good at lately thanks to Google... Take a deep breath, sigh... then walk away while things settle and correct themselves.

[leadegroot]

Well as long as they don't touch the original payment in my bank account. That's been deposited in my account for over a week now.

When this happened to us Australian publishers, the notices read as if they were going to recall the entire payment, but they didn't, they just paid the extra. (and we said '*phew*!" :))

[con771]

Anyone see any additional deposits yet?

[littlegiant]

I was just thinking about asking the same thing. I haven't seen any additional deposits since the screwup/recall deposit last week. Neither in my bank account nor my Adsense payment history page. Although I did get a notification from Google about the screwup/recall deposit.

[LunaC]

I haven't seen any correction deposit either. I'm guessing I'm seeing the same thing as many others here, the original deposit (arrived fine), then a messup / recall mentioned in Google's payment history along with the warning that I needed to update my banking info (which I left alone since it was correct) and nothing since.

I'm starting to wonder if the correction is actually going to arrive this month, or if it may perhaps be tacked on to next months payment.

Hopefully they don't just decide to forget about it.

[con771]

Looks as if the stats are now reporting the difference and it will be deposited.

[littlegiant]

Yes, I'm finally seeing a payment in progress for what appears to be the balance of the month end's payment due as a result of an incorrect exchange rate. And the amount looks correct. Didn't take out my calculator and figure it out to the penny but it looks close enough for rock n' roll.