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There was a bug in the Rails code he wrote, so he berates Google until the last couple of paragraphs when he explains it was his fault (he thinks?) Did I overlo

by tumult 17y ago

There was a bug in the Rails code he wrote, so he berates Google until the last couple of paragraphs when he explains it was his fault (he thinks?) Did I overlook something in the article? I think that's exactly why Google sends out form letters as their first wave of defense.

jacquesm 17y ago
True enough. He has a point though: customer support does not scale. On a relationship that has spent $12K in advertising you could easily afford the little bit of work to work with this customer and get his problem sorted out. The fact that google sends out just a form letter does not help their image, and in the long term may be bad for their business. Personally I don't even try to get a reasonable answer out of google if there are issues (and yes, there have been issues in the past, most notably in the click fraud domain).
jakewolf 17y ago
He didn't say his account was suspended, right? It's just that he screwed up how the conversions work and therefore google stopped showing ads because they weren't converting. Sounds like adwords is working perfectly. Am I the only who checks my adwords account almost daily when I have a campaign running? A month seems like a long time to wait, plus you'd expect to see regular charges in your bank/credit account.
patio11 17y ago
Did I overlook something in the article? Well, it could have been the bug in my Rails code. I find that unlikely, because the numerical impact would not push this campaign out of its historical norms. It could have been a bug in Google's code (like their automated diagnostic reporting "Your account has no credit card associated with it", which is contrary to the truth and scares me because if the right hand of their system is as borked as the left hand then that very well could be my problem). It could have been a concerted effort by a group of bored Dutch housewives to simultaneously monopolize 99.999% of the entire advertising inventory on teaching bingo sites. If Google were interested in talking to me, there would be a little less wild speculation above. Heck, "I checked your account. Everything is fine on our end. Best of luck to you." would be an improvement on the answer I got.
- tumult 17y ago
  I can understand your frustration, but this is how it works almost anywhere. Like if someone joins an IRC channel about a programming language and says something like "I'm getting build error X when including library Y" people will just say "working fine here" or "did you check the wiki?" or something like that. Someone will have to surrender time to help you and you'll have to give more information and run through options with them. I mean, it could be a lot of different things causing it. The bogus error is bad, though. Also, as a paying customer, you would think they would have a better response. Damn :[ Maybe someone ran some numbers and found out it was a better idea to just hit everyone with form letters first, to dissuade the people who will never get adwords working anyway.
  - pegobry 17y ago
    The difference is that in an IRC channel, you're not the other guys' paying customer...

by tumult 17y ago

jacquesm 17y ago

True enough. He has a point though: customer support does not scale. On a relationship that has spent $12K in advertising you could easily afford the little bit of work to work with this customer and get his problem sorted out. The fact that google sends out just a form letter does not help their image, and in the long term may be bad for their business. Personally I don't even try to get a reasonable answer out of google if there are issues (and yes, there have been issues in the past, most notably in the click fraud domain).

jakewolf 17y ago

He didn't say his account was suspended, right? It's just that he screwed up how the conversions work and therefore google stopped showing ads because they weren't converting. Sounds like adwords is working perfectly. Am I the only who checks my adwords account almost daily when I have a campaign running? A month seems like a long time to wait, plus you'd expect to see regular charges in your bank/credit account.

patio11 17y ago

Did I overlook something in the article? Well, it could have been the bug in my Rails code. I find that unlikely, because the numerical impact would not push this campaign out of its historical norms. It could have been a bug in Google's code (like their automated diagnostic reporting "Your account has no credit card associated with it", which is contrary to the truth and scares me because if the right hand of their system is as borked as the left hand then that very well could be my problem). It could have been a concerted effort by a group of bored Dutch housewives to simultaneously monopolize 99.999% of the entire advertising inventory on teaching bingo sites. If Google were interested in talking to me, there would be a little less wild speculation above. Heck, "I checked your account. Everything is fine on our end. Best of luck to you." would be an improvement on the answer I got.

tumult 17y ago
I can understand your frustration, but this is how it works almost anywhere. Like if someone joins an IRC channel about a programming language and says something like "I'm getting build error X when including library Y" people will just say "working fine here" or "did you check the wiki?" or something like that. Someone will have to surrender time to help you and you'll have to give more information and run through options with them. I mean, it could be a lot of different things causing it. The bogus error is bad, though. Also, as a paying customer, you would think they would have a better response. Damn :[ Maybe someone ran some numbers and found out it was a better idea to just hit everyone with form letters first, to dissuade the people who will never get adwords working anyway.
- pegobry 17y ago
  The difference is that in an IRC channel, you're not the other guys' paying customer...