Google Adwords Account Unsuspended!

by on July 13, 2009

First, I’d like to thank everyone at Adwords support who helped to bring our Adwords account back to life.  I received very courteous and helpful messages from a few different folks from Google Adwords Support over the past weekend regarding the status of our Adwords account and their efforts to restore it.

You can read about how the account was suspended first at our article on how Google was going after the Google Money Tree scammers. Next, you can read about my efforts to restore our good name on Google Whacked – Our Adwords Account Still Wrongly Suspended

I’ll post their messages if I receive permission from the individuals who sent them, but since they were all private email correspondence, I will just summarize.

On Saturday I received an email from someone who didn’t identify their position or department at Google that they had been made aware of my suspension and were taking steps to rectify the situation, but it would likely not be fixed until Monday.

Then today I received a message that the original Support person I had been corresponding with had re-escalated my issue to the Policy team and they confirmed that we were incorrectly suspended for Google Money Tree violations and apologizing for the inconvenience and confusion.

Note that all this effort from Google was spent for an Adwords account that had spent a whopping total of $7.00, so I don’t think the size of your Adwords spend makes any difference in the support effort.

How We Appealed Our Adwords Suspension

  • First off, we did nothing wrong.   I believe this was the most important factor in getting our Adwords account restored.  Their terms and conditions are quite clear on fraudulent ads, sneaky redirects (mistaken or otherwise), and the like.  If you’ve been suspended for doing something against their terms, I would not suggest holding your breath.
  • I wrote to Adwords Support using their online tools.
  • I did not take no for an answer from their first email.
  • I did not take no for an answer on their followup email and politely insisted the very courteous support person escalate the issue to a supervisor or manager.  This is a little technique I learned back in my Technical Support days right out of college.  Make it perfectly clear that you are not mad at the Support person, it’s nothing to do with them, thank them for all the help so far, but since the issue still is not resolved and they cannot resolve it, please pass the issue to someone who has the power to resolve it.
  • I posted about it here on this site (no idea if they ever looked at the article or not).
  • At no point did I contact anyone outside of the standard Adwords Support structure or tools other than posting here.  However, I have no idea what went on behind the scenes for communication, just the five email messages I received on the matter.

At every step the Adwords Support team was courteous and polite, and I tried my best to be the same, yet insistant that we had been wrongly suspended as well.

So, all’s well that ends well!

{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }

Leo Mauler July 16, 2009 at 12:56 am

“I did not take no for an answer on their followup email and politely insisted the very courteous support person escalate the issue to a supervisor or manager. This is a little technique I learned back in my Technical Support days right out of college.” Unfortunately it doesn’t always work, and certainly doesn’t always speed things up, as I learned in *my own* Technical Support days during college. Managers don’t like taking escalation calls, so if you had called the company I worked for, the “manager” you reached would most likely have been one (or more) Tier I representatives who were told to pretend to be managers. I say this from experience, having *been* one of those Tier I representatives desperately pretending to be a manager.

El Plumber (admin) July 16, 2009 at 10:59 pm

Leo, it’s true that it doesn’t always work, but it’s important to be persistent to get an issue resolved if you have a legitimate position that you are right and they are wrong. Escalating an issue to get it resolved faster while on the phone is a major mistake, you’ll likely get ignored faster.

Escalating an issue over online support however is very effective:
1) You have a record of asking for escalation.
2) You have a record of anyone faking being a manager.
3) It only takes a few seconds to forward an issue to a supervisor or manager over email, and a few seconds to read it.
4) If you still don’t get through, start complaining to the BBB, local news channels, etc.

Again, only useful at all if you are right and the companies policies are preventing correcting your issue. Being persistent in demanding a refund for a 2 year old iPod you dropped isn’t going to get you anywhere ever…

Antony July 18, 2009 at 9:28 pm

Congratulations!

Make sure to hold onto all correspondence, even if the entity at Adwords who ultimately restored your account didn’t identify themselves.

Just have a feeling you may be hit again down the road by some other cog in the machine and you’ll want to cite precedent. That may help expedite your next “run in” for doing the right thing.

Pardon my pessimistic tendencies, but I’ve been worn down by G over the years over even crazier things ;)

Good work!

Antony

Sean Morrissy July 28, 2009 at 10:45 pm

hey, thanks for the post. Similar sort of thing has happened to me. I’ve never promoted money tree or anything, although I was promoting my own site which actually teaches legitimate methods for making money online.

Nowhere is google mentioned, but they still suspended my account and told me not to bother to open a new one. I’ll keep doing the things you did and fingers crossed it will be sorted out soon.

Cheers!

Sean Morrissy

Pete Bowen July 31, 2009 at 6:14 am

We just got suspended for money tree violations but we sell tractor spares. Their system is very heavy handed.

Adrian Key September 4, 2009 at 7:06 am

I’ve followed your series of posts on this subject closely. Well done on getting your account back!

You demonstrate here the perfect example of the right way of complaining to Google and geting results. I’ll be referencing your posts many times in the future when I come across AdWords users complaining about not getting satisfaction from AdWords support.

You’re always more likely to get a positive feedback from any support desk if you approach them in the right way.

Gerald Jimenez October 21, 2009 at 1:40 am

We are just going throught the same issue and had diffculties dealing with their call center. It is obvious their call center for Australia is handled out of India or a related country and they been told to hold the line and do not explain.

Just spent time trying to find someone I can escalate the issue and finally found the name of the GM in Australia and I am in the process of writting him a letter. Hopefully we will get saome action. Let you know later.

El Plumber (admin) October 21, 2009 at 8:15 am

I never tried calling them, just email.

However, looking at your site Gerald, it seems you link to some dubious (at best) offers on your site. Those “US Grant” sites are just as bad as the Google Money ones at ripping people off and you have both an article and a sidebar ad for one both which link to an affiliate program for them, the link for which doesn’t work by they way, points to a removed error from your affiliate network. Many times those grant scam sites are hosted on the IP addresses as ones that host the Google Money scams too, so you might be getting hit with guilt by association.

With that in mind, and considering what we had to go through to get our account reinstated where we’ve only complained loudly about such sites and scams (and never promoted them), I wouldn’t hold your breath on getting your Adwords account back. Find another ad network.

rich November 4, 2009 at 12:00 pm

i just recieved a nasty email saying my account is suspended and not to contact them again i dont know if it is due to a voucher i bought on ebay or not. the voucher worked so if it is that i dont know why the voucher would work. i even changed the address to .info from.co.uk incase that was the problem. i dont think it is fair that google should suspend accounts and not give a reason for it then tell there customers not to open another account or contact them again.

El Plumber (admin) November 4, 2009 at 1:22 pm

Rich, if you are SURE you have a legitimate case that you should not have been suspended, you should pursue it with their support system.

However, you never state WHY you were suspended. The email should have given some indication why they suspended you. Is it valid?

rich November 6, 2009 at 9:58 am

they just said that on review that there decission to suspend my account was correct and im not to open another account with same domain name or ip and not to contact them again. they never gave me a reason why its been suspended which i think is unfair.

Leave a Comment

Previous post:

Next post: