If you want to get the word out about your business, Google Ads is a popular way to go.
The service, which posts ads on Google’s search engine and on other websites, is an important tool for Rich Casamento’s marketing firm.
When the Morris County man manages Google Ads accounts for his clients, he sets a daily budget for ad placements. Google charges the accounts, Casamento pays for each campaign and then bills the client. Simple.
Or it was, until one of the account’s budgets — without Casamento’s knowledge or authorization — was changed from $63 per day to $200 per day.
It was three months before Casamento realized something was wrong because the change, mysteriously, didn’t show on the account’s activity log.
“The week that the budget was adjusted, I was happily sipping cocktails on LBI during a week-long vacation with my family,” he said. “It represents 88.5 days that Google overspent the account and Google owes me 88.5 times $137 or $12,124.50.”
When he discovered the overcharges, he said he immediately lowered the daily amount to $20 and tried to figure out what happened.
Casamento said he reached out to Google, and a representative agreed that Casamento didn’t make the change.
“The amazing thing about my case is that the representative admitted on the phone that this overcharge was due to unauthorized actions by their own employee. They would not give me the name but said he was an Adwords consultant,” he said. “The problem is, I never spoke to an Adwords consultant about this account. Ever.”
After several weeks of back and forth, Google offered to settle the case by giving the account a credit of $11,745, but that wasn’t a victory.
Casamento’s client went out of business in December. The account would never be used again and Google didn’t permit Casamento to transfer the credit to other accounts.
He requested either a straight refund or to be able to apply the credit to other accounts.
“Google’s response to this was basically, `Sorry, you already spent the money on ads so this is the best we can do.’”
That wasn’t good enough. He continued to request a refund, but Google representatives stopped answering his emails, he said.
“I paid Google fully for these illegal charges and I am therefore owed real money in return, not a credit in their platform for an account that is no longer valid, which essentially costs them nothing,” he said.
He asked Bamboozled for help after seeing a story we did about a business owner whose Google Ads account was wrongly changed from $100 per month to $100 per day, costing him thousands of dollars.
ASKING FOR HELP
We reviewed screenshots of the account and emails between Casamento and Google representatives, and we asked the company to review the case.
The day after Google said it would take a look, Casamento received a phone call. The representative said he was investigating and he asked for documentation that Casamento — and not his out-of-business client — paid the Google Ads charges.
The next day, there was good news.
The charges would be refunded to Casamento’s credit card, a spokeswoman said.
We asked how this mess could have happened, noting the explanation Casamento said he was given that a Google employee made the unauthorized change.
“The customer received inaccurate information from the Google representative and we apologize for our mistake,” the spokeswoman said in an email. “Also, our team is reviewing what transpired and will take appropriate action.”
Later that day, Casamento got the refund news directly from Google.
“I’m very excited, obviously, to be getting back this money. I wasn’t sure that I would,” he said. “This experience has not made me a big fan of Google, but what choice do I have?”
“If there was any other game in town, I would try it,” he said.
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Karin Price Mueller may be reached at KPriceMueller@NJAdvanceMedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at @KPMueller.
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