
Free phone support for AdWords advertisers - shawndumas
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/free-phone-support-for-adwords.html
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dpcan
That's not "free".

"we’re always looking for new ways to support you"

Really? REALLY?

How about a web form where you select a department, send in a support
question, get a ticket number and eventually a response? FTFY. I didn't even
go to Yale or pass your interview process and I could figure that out.

Call me bitter, but I'm an Android Market developer and what do I get???? How
about pages and pages of desperate Android users and Developers asking
questions into dead space:

[http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Android+Market/label?l...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Android+Market/label?lid=7dc8a5c590cd22ee&hl=en)

~~~
jrockway
Yeah, but these questions are unanswerable:

[http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Android+Market/thread?...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Android+Market/thread?tid=710fb15147436b96&hl=en)

The way to get these questions answered is to ask your OEM or carrier. Verizon
has a ticketing system, as does HTC.

~~~
dpcan
Hogwash. Look through those questions. Look at all the help needed for
download issues, error messages, install issues, developer console problems,
stats problems, payout problems for sold apps, uploading issues, etc, etc,
etc. If I emailed HTC and asked why I couldn't upload an update to my app for
the last 4 days they'd tell me to go to Google.

~~~
jrockway
I guess the question that I always have in this case is "why do you care". You
can't upload an update to your app. It's your problem, not Google's. They
don't need the money from your app. The Marketplace exists to have something,
not to have something good. It's a checkbox for people thinking of licensing
Android, which is where Google actually "makes money".

The problem that people have is that Google matters more to them than they
matter to Google.

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thecoffman
I thought their April Fools pranks were a little lacking this year- I guess
that's why. They were saving their best one for today.

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thailandstartup
My adwords account suddenly stopped displaying any ads about a year ago.

As I tackled the problem, my understanding grew that the Google's Adwords
support staff didn't have any additional information than what was already
published online. That kind of support is fine for maybe 50% of your users who
don't read the online docs. Probably not of use to HN readers.

I suspect that Google doesn't provide information about recent changes to
algorithms to the support staff that would help them understand what's going
on. I can understand why they might not want to, but it reduces the quality of
support that can be provided.

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joelrunyon
It's part of their "local" push in order to bring back the tons of small
business customers that tried adwords once, didn't know what they were doing
and got burned.

Interesting to see how this goes. Adwords is so competitive that it's almost
too expensive for small guys to hire big agencies & too time consuming to
learn for small businesses to figure out themselves....

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PostOnce
An ad platform with good support and a simple interface would make a lot of
money.

I'm new to internet ads, just launched my first psuedo-product as an
experiment. Anyway, while waiting for Google to approve an AdWords campaign, I
went to check out Bing advertising. Popup says: browser unsupported. Chrome.
Promptly closed the window. The only reason I'm even using Google is that they
gave me free ads. This whole system sort of sucks. Maybe I'll go check out
Project Wonderful now. At least they have a memorable name.

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eli
This is great. I really, truly hope it's part of a broader effort to unsuck
their customer service.

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rumpelstiltskin
Hell has frozen over.

