Google (Customer Services) Is Evil
Added to Internet by Richard.stokoe on Friday 13th January 2012
Back in July I signed up for Google AdSense so I could earn a little cash to go towards hosting my little corner of the Interwebz. After a week or so of looking at a "your account is under review" page, I suddenly got an error saying I had been disapproved. Then I joined countless others in Google customer services HELL.
Read that - "An AdSense account does not exist for the login", and yet the only way to fix it is by going to the Adsense Home page. Unremarkably, clicking on the "Back to Adsense Home" link returns you back to this page. Well done Google. *patronising pat on the head*
You end up literally going round in circles with no guidance, no advice, nothing at all.
Rich, What about the "Adsense Help Center"?
Well, that's not very helpful, actually. They say:
There are two major problems here:
- Like many others, I never received an email. There is no way of asking for this to be re-sent.
- Even if I had an email explaining the problems, I am unable to sign in to my account to fix them!!!!
But There's an Account Cancellation Form You Can Fill In To Delete Your Account!
A-ha! I know! I filled that in, but got the following totally feckless reply by email:
The line which says "you can resubmit it after making necessary changes by following the instructions" and gives a URL actually links you to the Help Centre article shown above. Let me remind you:
- Like many others, I never received an email. There is no way of asking for this to be re-sent.
- Even if I had an email explaining the problems, I am unable to sign in to my account to fix them!!!!
Cheekily, they then sent me a "Customer Satisfaction Survey"...
I'll leave it to your imagination the level of expletive superfluousness I sunk to in the "Any other comments?" textbox.
Well I'm Having No Problems. Are you not just being stupid?
That is a great question, and I'm glad your AdSense experience is smooth.
But no. I am only one of many people who have suffered from Google Adsense's lack of customer support. The main issues are:
- Not getting the initial "disapproval email"
- Not having any way of getting the "disapproval email" sent, if they didn't receive it
- Google Adsense people posting "Sticky" FAQ pages which offer information which I have already shown above DOES NOT WORK (and then closing the page to replies so nobody can explain their error!!!)
- Deleting accounts can't be done because you can't get into your account!
- Posting valid questions and being IGNORED BY GOOGLE STAFF
- Adding comments to other people's posts reinforcing the original poster's problems but being ignored and told to start their own thread if they want assistance
It is a total clusterfuck of incompetence.
I am very much enjoying watching Google getting hammered by Twitter, EPIC and hopefully the FTC. They not only consider themselves above privacy laws, but also above having to sort out messes their own crappy systems have created which are really frustrating their customers.
In Conclusion
Apart from Android development, which is the best thing ever, Fuck You, Google.
Comments...