This article talks about a recent personal experience where Google repeatedly laundered money from me and their customer support sucked. I am a huge Google fan and have been using their products for the last 10 years and I will forgive them for these incidents. However, my main intention is to tell the world how not to lose money and also (if Google happens to note this article) how Google should not indulge in such activities.
Adwords Coupons
The main culprits are these coupons which are given in business conferences, expos and are also mailed to individuals at their home address. I have used several of these coupons over the years but in the last month, I was ditched twice by Google.
Usually, these coupons are of 2,000/- INR. These say if you spend 500/-, you will get an additional credit of 2,000/- in your account. However, there are two very surreptitious conditions.
- You must call the customer care service (phone no. given) at the time of crediting those 500/- and asking them to apply the coupon.
- Your Adwords account must be very new.
Both these conditions are very queer and there are several glitches that can happen. Unfortunately, these do happen and the customers end up losing money (spending actually) without getting any credit for coupons. At the end, it looks like if these coupons are baits which attract customers but end up cheating them.
What could go wrong
In the first condition, what happens is this:
When you call the customer care, they take access to your account through an API and add coupon to your account. However, they often mention that you should spend 1,000/- instead of 500/-. This is due to the fact that the money of the coupon will be credited only when you spend 500/- through your account and it is good to have some money balance in your account before the money of the coupon could start.
So, just check: wording of the coupon does not match the wording of the customer executives
At the same time, if you don’t call the customer care at that time, the coupons won’t work. In these times when people want online access only to save time, this is a serious handicap.
My case was similar. I was asked to create 3 different accounts using Gmail to set up 3 difference Adwords accounts for my websites. I was asked to credit 1,000/- in each of them. The executive got the access to all my accounts and added the coupon to each of them independently. I was happy. However, after I burned 500/- from each one of them, nothing additional was credited. When I called the customer care again, they asked me to credit 500/- more in each account so that they can add the coupons. What the hell is this! Am I suppose to add 500/- each time the customer care executive promises me a coupon? This is a serious fraud and Google should look into it ASAP.
In this second condition, what happens is this:
You receive a coupon and you add this to your existing account. You don’t call the customer care because it does not mention that it is necessary. After you burn out 500/-, you get back to the customer support and they tell you that this coupon is valid only for new accounts.
I mean what else can go wrong! Google having such pathetic promotional system and such fraudulent activities. You just can’t believe it.
In my case, nothing was resolved though I called them 3 times. All of them said that they will get back to me but none did.
If this is the way Google wants to help small businesses in India, I am sure they are totally on a wrong path and execution process.
Google India is surely missing the punch!
