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I actually just got my Google Ads account suspended because I forgot to update my billing address before adding a new card. The suspension was for "suspicious
by bdibs 8y ago
I actually just got my Google Ads account suspended because I forgot to update my billing address before adding a new card.
The suspension was for "suspicious billing activity", tried appealing twice with the correct billing address, and was told the suspension is final (some automated email) both times.
They won't take my calls because the account is suspended, which leaves me not being able to advertise on the #1 service to do so.
It's completely unacceptable, especially for a business in their position. One tiny mistake leads you to a lifetime of suspension to a service vital to almost any business.
- ganeshkrishnan 8y agoMy colleague got banned for not using Google wallet instead of PayPal back when Google wallet was launched. He is still banned today
- nurettin 8y agoWhy not open a new account, or release a new copy your app using a different namespace? I mean it is an inconvenience, but we aren't exactly as powerless as is described in the article.
- parrellel 8y agoAny account they can connect with you also gets banned.
- deogeo 8y agoIt's probably trivial for Google to associate his new account with the old one. Nothing to hide, nothing to fear..
- ashelmire 8y agoThat just puts you back in the same position for relatively little effort. So it’s not like that’s a loss.
- SiVal 8y agoUnfortunately not, because it could succeed long enough for their business to get some success, hire people, have assets, debts, responsibilities, customers, and then Google cuts off their oxygen. Of course, Google could do the same to ANY of us who end up depending on them. The only real solution is whatever makes you not significantly reliant on Google.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- morpheuskafka 8y agoWhat if OP made a new company, and did an arms-length asset sale at fair market value of the old company's IP?
- pyrale 8y agoWhat makes you think google algorithms would care, or that any human would care to review the case ?
- Melchizedek 8y agoWe really need tech monopolies like Google to be regulated, in order to stop abuses like this.
- sandworm101 8y agoNo. They need to be broken apart so they arent so vital individually.
- Pharmakon 8y agoRegulation and anti-trust action are not mutually exclusive.
- morpheuskafka 8y agoGoogle Play is not a monopoly! It takes one checkbox in Settings to open the floodgates to any app (or app store) you want, and device manufacturers (such as Amazon) can ship their own app stores pre-enabled if they want.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y agoWhat percentage of android devices, in the world, have that box ticked?
- Natanael_L 8y agoEnough for Fortnite to get players on Android
- slrz 8y agoI'd guess most of them, if you actually consider the whole world. Probably not enough to matter, if you are only looking at the UK.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y agoOh, good point. I forgot about China.
- hogu 8y agoI was also suspended. - Having friends inside google does not help (I suppose at some level they can, but L5/L6 engineers aren't enough) - Creating a new account with a different credit card does not help. Subsequent accounts they can link back to you will also be banned - I haven't found a solution yet, except for keeping all of my new projects outside of google (no google analytics, no google search console (which obviously still allows your site to be indexed) no gsuite. That way if I never need google advertising, a co founder can pick it up and google has no way to trace the company back to me.
- sheeshkebab 8y agono gsuite is probably key - I'm thinking of terminating all my gsuite accounts simply due to no desire of having my business basically be terminated due to some stupid algorithms maintained by google's idiots.
- w8rbt 8y agoKeep G Suite, but buy your own domain (whatever.com) so you are in total control. If they ban you, just change DNS records to point to zoho or some other provider.
- simple_phrases 8y ago> Keep G Suite Why, so Google can pull the rug out from under me at the least opportune moment?
- Kocrachon 8y agoAnd lose all the emails and Google docs associated
- tedivm 8y agoThis also requires maintaining decent backups of the gsuite emails, calendars, contacts, and drives that people are using.
- jedberg 8y agoMy google ads account has been suspended for 19 years. I'm still waiting for the results of my appeal...
- aikah 8y agoDon't hold your breath, you're not the only one. They claimed I clicked on my own ads which was never the case, of course there is no way to appeal. They stole my money because yes, they still owe me money, these punks sent me a 25€ voucher to buy ads, like it solves anything.... I will never ever trust them or rely on any of their services like the Google Cloud Platform.
- benologist 8y agoGoogle settled a case like yours for $11m on the grounds that it would be too expensive, after four years of fighting, to prove they didn't steal your money lol. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/adsense-lawsuit/248135/ https://www.searchenginejournal.com/adsense-lawsuit/248135/
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Twirrim 8y agoMy wife's paypal account has been suspended for 10 years now, for some utterly ridiculous reason I've long forgotten. After a year of trying to persuade them to un-suspend it, we gave up.
- quickthrower2 8y agoIt’s not hard to create a new account and get accepted again, hypothetically.
- tedivm 8y agoWhen I was in college I ran a forum that got some decent traffic. I put Google Ads on my site and after a few months had enough money to pay for school books. I went to cash out and they suspended my account claiming click fraud and stole the money. This is how google has always operated, and it's one of the reasons why their near monopoly on advertising is horrible for everyone.
- braco_alva 8y agoThis exact thing happened to me too. They claimed click fraud and terminated my account. It was 10 years ago, and I have tried to make an appeal about it but always with the same response.
- kalleboo 8y agoExact same situation here. I don't need Google Ads so it doesn't really affect me, but I'm terrified that some day in the future it will come back and kick me in the ass somehow when some algorithm (sorry, "AI") decides that it has some significance so I get kicked out of email, YouTube, Maps, Google docs, etc
- MattyRad 8y agoI also had my account suspended due to a failed payment method. I was just exploring Google Places API to see if I could integrate it with a side project. The signup process claimed that it only needed a credit card to "prove that you're a financially capable human," which makes sense (and it also said that it would not charge your account until you gave it express permission), so I happily agreed. Despite this claim, Google apparently requires an active, chargeable card at all times, from account inception until you die. Failure to do so will result in terminating your account. Whatever, let them terminate the account. Google's public favor is in a tailspin, and I can get the data I need from FourSquare at a fraction of the cost.
- fyfy18 8y agoIt's worth mentioning that GDPR gives people rights to allow them to appeal automated decisions, and receive a clear explanation of how the decision was made: https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/item-detail.cfm?item_id=612053 https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/article29/item-detail.cfm?item... I'm not sure if it'll help for the author of the article, as Google's decision is clear, just their logic in unfair, and I assume they are talking about a business, not a personal, account.
- drawkbox 8y ago> One tiny mistake leads you to a lifetime of suspension to a service vital to almost any business. This really is where Google might be too big... Since Google is such a force, and they don't have time to support or help people/companies lost in the algorithms, maybe competition is the only thing that can solve this because most companies are too small/medium for them to care. Lots of these systems are probably well intentioned and risk averse by default, but in the end have too much influence on the market as a single point of failure. Highly concentrated systems with single points of failure that fail on a large scale are bad, but even worse is highly concentrated systems that randomly get in an error loop but too small to correct, only here it is small/medium companies stuck in that algorithm purgatory vortex.
- dgudkov 8y ago>One tiny mistake leads you to a lifetime of suspension to a service vital to almost any business. One sometimes needs a lawyer to deal with the complexity of government laws. It seems like soon there will be a small thriving job market for "googlawyers" -- people who will earn they bread and butter by getting through the Google's bureaucracy. PS. Jokes aside, it's a sad state of things.
- pseudalopex 8y agoThere are already "Amazon lawyers"!