<story><title>$11M settlement reached with Google regarding terminated AdSense accounts</title><url>http://www.adsensepublishersettlement.com</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>staplers</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  when it comes to customer support
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Do they have customer support?  Last time I used my google account (a few years ago) to attempt to buy a Nexus, my transaction was flagged as fraud and I was locked out of my account.. I tried for a few days to find a way to contact anyone from Google.. never happened..&lt;p&gt;I eventually gave up and bought an iPhone and it was ironically the best thing that could have happened in that scenario.</text></item><item><author>tedivm</author><text>When I was in college I had a website that I ran google ads on. I let a balance build up over time so I could use the money to buy school books. When I attempted to cash out Google (which up until that time had no problem profiting off of my site) decided that I was part of a clickfraud ring and refused to pay out the money. There was no way to appeal.&lt;p&gt;Honestly, to this day, I am still far less likely to use Google services (I won&amp;#x27;t touch Google&amp;#x27;s Cloud, for instance) because of how bad that experience was. The stress of being a college student who needed that money was definitely a multiplier, but at the end of the day I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s possible to expect Google to do the right thing when it comes to customer support- especially when they can directly profit by hurting them.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mherdeg</author><text>&amp;gt; Do they have customer support?&lt;p&gt;Two effective strategies I have seen are:&lt;p&gt;(1) Contact a friend who works at Google and show them the comical chain of correspondence showing how your simple, silly problem got even sillier over time. Convince your friend or friends to show an interest in the problem 
internally.&lt;p&gt;(2) Write a blog post about the problem and circulate it on social media (news.ycombinator and &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;programming front pages seem to work great).</text></comment>
<story><title>$11M settlement reached with Google regarding terminated AdSense accounts</title><url>http://www.adsensepublishersettlement.com</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>staplers</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  when it comes to customer support
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Do they have customer support?  Last time I used my google account (a few years ago) to attempt to buy a Nexus, my transaction was flagged as fraud and I was locked out of my account.. I tried for a few days to find a way to contact anyone from Google.. never happened..&lt;p&gt;I eventually gave up and bought an iPhone and it was ironically the best thing that could have happened in that scenario.</text></item><item><author>tedivm</author><text>When I was in college I had a website that I ran google ads on. I let a balance build up over time so I could use the money to buy school books. When I attempted to cash out Google (which up until that time had no problem profiting off of my site) decided that I was part of a clickfraud ring and refused to pay out the money. There was no way to appeal.&lt;p&gt;Honestly, to this day, I am still far less likely to use Google services (I won&amp;#x27;t touch Google&amp;#x27;s Cloud, for instance) because of how bad that experience was. The stress of being a college student who needed that money was definitely a multiplier, but at the end of the day I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s possible to expect Google to do the right thing when it comes to customer support- especially when they can directly profit by hurting them.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>markdown</author><text>&amp;gt; Do they have customer support?&lt;p&gt;Their free services have no direct support channels, as expected. I wouldn&amp;#x27;t provide free support for free services either.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve received excellent support from Google for GSuite&amp;#x2F;Google Apps and Google Cloud over the years, both via chat and calls, usually out of their Ireland office.&lt;p&gt;I live in Fiji and my account with them isn&amp;#x27;t worth all that much (~$100&amp;#x2F;month).</text></comment>