Unless and until you're bringing in real money for Google, make no mistake: you're in a consumer relationship with them, not a commercial one. A merchant that'

Unless and until you're bringing in real money for Google, make no mistake: you're in a consumer relationship with them, not a commercial one. A merchant that's sold a few hundred dollars worth of stuff is never going to be important enough to Google to bother putting a real person on. It may suck, but that's the way it is. If the vendor in question had a few more zeroes on their sales figures, Google would make sure that the complaints were valid before shutting them down. But I agree fully with the basic point - any small vendor should think twice before relying solely on Google Checkout.