Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card • Hacker News Board

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#151

Post by jeremyjh » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 9:58 PM UTC

filoleg wrote: post #92

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so glad it isn't my job to fight fraud. I worked at a place that would blacklist entire countries from signing up for their service, as a disproportionate number if fraudulent sign ups came from those countries. Every now and then I'd be contacted by an apparently regular customer who just wanted to try the service, and there was nothing I could do to help them, even when I really wanted to. I hated every part of…

Your situation isn't even as bad as what google did. It is one thing to proactively prevent sign-ups from potentially "fraudulent" users and another to permaban existing users on their first "offense" with no explanation and/or opportunity to appeal that decision. The latter should always be an option for permabans, no matter what.

How many dollars should Google be required to spend handling these appeals? Do you think fraudsters won't appeal as well? Some don't, but actually many of the most indignant/irate "customers" are the ones who have been caught in a scam, particularly if they are caught before they've actually closed the lid on it. They probably won't blog about it, but they'll definitely try to force the company to spend as much as possible dealing with them.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#152

Post by anonymousab » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 9:59 PM UTC

lloeki wrote: post #17

> Since this decision is final, the account will not be reinstated. > I offered [to] set my primary payment method back to the previous card. This is, to me, the most infuriating part: account is blackholed at the first misstep, that you cannot even guess, with no possible redemption, and with damages far beyond the initial misstep scope: if you use the same account, payment issue on google ads, your photos are inacc…

> How does that even make sense?

They view losing this customer and all potential related profits, forever, as significantly cheaper than accountability and reasonability at their scale.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#153

Post by mleonhard » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 10:02 PM UTC

geerlingguy wrote: post #20

> If you're planning on using the Apple Card for anything important, think again. That was the final line in the article, but from reading the rest of the article, it seems like the overarching problem was not the Apple Card, or the idea of virtual CC numbers... but more that time and time again, Google will shut down your [YouTube|Gmail|Ads|Cloud|anything] account with little or no notice, and arbitrary, non-contest…

Companies producing Android apps have no choice.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#154

Post by PunchTornado » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 10:05 PM UTC

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 couldn't get my virtual card to do anything online. It's not just Google, but tons of companies refuse virtual cards. I gave up on it.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#155

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 10:06 PM UTC

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…

When these things happen, the pattern is always 1) shit happens, 2) company is unhelpful in resolving 3) victim writes it up and it ends up getting some publicity (e.g. front page of HN) 4) company says they're sorry and fixes the problem.

As I read OP, I wondered what I'd do. I guess I'd have to write it up on my mostly empty, pretty much dead blog. It would look weird and out of place on my mostly empty blog.

Then I look to the comments and see you calling them out for doing what I was just thinking I'd have to do.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#156

Post by the_watcher » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 10:06 PM UTC

iamben wrote: post #109

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.…

Sure, but it seems reasonable to offer at least one "decline bc it's a virtual card, do you have something different?" response.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#157

Post by jimktrains2 » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 10:13 PM UTC

ytpete wrote: post #49

pixelbath wrote: post #12

>Companies like Google have waged war on virtual cards First, this seems a bit histrionic. That's a wide claim to make with a sample size of one . Second, the entire idea that the author was banned for using a virtual card comes from a friend who spoke to another friend who allegedly works as an "account manager" (presumably at Google?), who themselves admit they can't even see into the process.

Agreed - especially as another post pointed out that Google's official policy states they _do_ accept virtual cards: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2375433?hl=en

That doesn't mean it doesn't increase the fraud score assigned to you/your transaction. e.g. the same behavior could trigger a ban with a virtual credit card but not with a physical one.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#158

Post by lapnitnelav » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 10:13 PM UTC

sha666sum wrote: post #107

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 nee…

Exactly, it's all about power.

On one hand, in the online ads biz, Google is king and is happy to outsource its customer support for its most premium customers both large network of agencies and advertisers. I know it quite well, I was one of those guys for Doubleclick many moons ago. That is if you are big enough to be worthy of being a Google (DC) customer in the first place, which means, you have to be a large spender.

But on the other hand, if you sign up for their Google Cloud thing despite being a nobody (me again), you'll have their sales folks hounding you for an upsell, mostly because GCloud is ridiculously behind both AWS and Azure.

Funny how it goes.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#159

Post by b112 » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 10:14 PM UTC

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).

As others have mentioned, we only currently have one data point on this. However...

Google is well known for terrible customer support. And if you think of it, it makes sense. After all, if you can server 100M users via an automated support systems and only 0.01% have issues a year, it's probably far, far cheaper to just drop those "problem" users, than hire thousands of customer support persons.

Note: just threw the above numbers out, but you get the gist.

EDIT:

Speaking of algorithms, I wonder if the OP was below some adsense fiscal threshold of 'it's worth it to intercede here with a level 4 manager' or some blather.

Re: Banned from Google Ads for Using Apple Card

#160

Post by burnaway » Fri, Aug 30, 2019, 10:17 PM UTC

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…

Let me also add that "the author wishes to remain anonymous" is a usual BS for 100% affiliate-scheme funded 'we care about your privacy and here are the best tools' sites, while also claiming total independence and honest editorial process. Sure. How they don't lose all credibility instantly when it's not clear who runs it is hard for me to gauge - I can only go back to "if it's on the top SERP on Google/DuckDuckGo or main page of HN it must be valid".