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Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

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Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#101

Post by YawningAngel »

pb7 wrote: post #81
kadoban wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it's in no sense of the word "counterfeit", right? So the analogy falls apart pretty hard for me. It's more like that old Taco Bell $2 bill story.

It may not be counterfeit but if Google has a wealth of data indicating that this usage pattern results in fraud then it might as well be the digital form of counterfeit.

Not really. They might refuse to accept it for policy reasons but that doesn't mean that attempting to pay with it is a bad-faith act akin to paying with a counterfeit bill.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#102

Post by twoheadedboy »

lallysingh wrote: post #30
jonknee wrote: post #2

Google's classic canned response of "We've confirmed we're right, we will not tell you why and this is the last reply you'll receive" is one of the most infuriating things I can imagine. I make my income primarily through AdSense and live in fear of that email one day. In this scenario it seems pretty obvious that their automated fraud AI messed up, but the customer service person is probably also automated. They hav…

It's a classic "Go fuck yourself" response.

Modern life is so Kafkaesque.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#103

Post by sterlind »

pb7 wrote: post #81
kadoban wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it's in no sense of the word "counterfeit", right? So the analogy falls apart pretty hard for me. It's more like that old Taco Bell $2 bill story.

It may not be counterfeit but if Google has a wealth of data indicating that this usage pattern results in fraud then it might as well be the digital form of counterfeit.

You'd never know. They'd never tell you. They'd just be giving you the silent treatment whenever you came in the building with no explanation.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#104

Post by lonelappde »

jonknee wrote: post #51
Godel_unicode wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that it doesn't break down except in the extreme cases, and even then it's often less bad than the edge cases with traditional human-mediated customer service. Consider the Wells Fargo accounts snafu, or the Comcast customer nickname issue. Or PayPal just in general. Is Google actually worse, or are they the kind of better that makes their rarer screwups seem worse. Consider in your evaluation just how m…

Extreme cases like using a popular new credit card to pay? Please. Google uses an algorithm to ban people for life without recourse, it's insane. Not everything can be reduced to an algo, sometimes you need to make exceptions. It can even make your algo better (thousands of people are going to try using their new Apple cards in the coming weeks).

One person is an extreme case. Was everyone on Apple Card banned?

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#105

Post by lonelappde »

jacekm wrote: post #100

The stories like this can be heard every now and then and I think we all agree that Google's customer support could be vastly improved. But taking a step back, I am finding this particular story slightly suspicious as the site seems a little bit weird to me. The domain is only 4-months old and the entire site is almost empty, it consists of just a couple "reviews" of mostly VPNs and password managers and the author h…

What was the debunking?

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#106

Post by ar0 »

MereInterest wrote: post #91
cortesoft wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that this is bypassing one of the things some companies use your credit card as - collateral. For example, if you rent something, the credit card is used as a guarantee that you will return the item. If you don't, they can charge the card for the full price. If you use virtual cards, they can't do that.

What is preventing them from placing a hold for the full price, then charging the card if the item is not returned? They get the same verification that they can be reimbursed if the item is not returned, but cannot make an arbitrary charge later on.

I would guess that for a large set of combinations of loaned items and customers’ typical credit card limits this would probably lead your customer to quickly hit his card limit and thus to a lot of frustration.

(Also, in many cases the potential ex-post charges are unknown and theoretically unlimited at the time of purchase, think e.g. of a car rental company wanting to charge you for your speeding tickets.)

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#107

Post by sha666sum »

jonknee wrote: post #2

Google's classic canned response of "We've confirmed we're right, we will not tell you why and this is the last reply you'll receive" is one of the most infuriating things I can imagine. I make my income primarily through AdSense and live in fear of that email one day. In this scenario it seems pretty obvious that their automated fraud AI messed up, but the customer service person is probably also automated. They hav…

Google ignoring their customers is a recurring theme,, and I'd like to think that I have a pretty good list of tech news that I follow.

Since this is HN, which (at least used to) primarily cater to the startup crowd, I hope it goes without saying that Google does not fix this issue because they don't have a financial incentive to do so. This is basic capitalism at play, and what you as a developer/advertiser/user need to do is use and pay for competing products if you're not happy about the status quo.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#108

Post by ianferrel »

Marsymars wrote: post #79
jonknee wrote: post #2

Google's classic canned response of "We've confirmed we're right, we will not tell you why and this is the last reply you'll receive" is one of the most infuriating things I can imagine. I make my income primarily through AdSense and live in fear of that email one day. In this scenario it seems pretty obvious that their automated fraud AI messed up, but the customer service person is probably also automated. They hav…

> Google's classic canned response of "We've confirmed we're right, we will not tell you why and this is the last reply you'll receive" is one of the most infuriating things I can imagine. For non-negligible damages, heading immediately to small claims court (given you live in a sensible jurisdiction) seems to be the easiest thing in that case. Even if Google's ultimately in the right, they typically can't just ignor…

What damages can you prove?

Google presumably hasn't signed a long-term contract with you to provide any services or continue a business relationship.

Is "We don't want to do business with you any more because our algorithm isn't smart enough to differentiate what you're doing for fraud" actionable?

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#109

Post by iamben »

alanfranz wrote: post #13

Beyond the fact that I don't understand why a virtual card should be a problem, I think that this era of "we can deny you a service and tell you nothing" should stop. It's one of the biggest issues of the modern internet. I understand that laws are different around the world. In Italy, whatever is defined as a "public exercise" - anything offering its services to the anybody, be it a shop, a store, a cafè, a restaura…

I kinda get the virtual card thing - it's pretty hard to get a credit card.

Assuming you can create infinite virtual numbers you could, theoretically (and I appreciate it's probably not the case here as the poster has account history), switch/cloak/whatever a whole bunch of high converting against policy stuff until the account is banned, at which point you set up a new ad account, new virtual number and start again. Rinse and repeat.

Seems a simpler method to tackle that by just banning virtual cards with the assumption "if you have nothing to hide you'll use a fixed number".

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