
Admob refunded all my payments - Caligula
http://forums.makingmoneywithandroid.com/advertising-networks/4032-admob-refunded-all-my-payments-3.html
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Caligula
I noticed a bunch of debits and credits to my credit card yesterday relating
to admob. I never initiated these so I feared that my credit card was stolen.

I searched around and saw this link that described my issue. Apparently google
has authorization to credit and debit our credit cards at will. They also do
not bother to email you to let you know what is going on. And of course, no
google customer service.

It also turns out that my debits and credits are not identical as the exchange
rates vary and perhaps credit card fees occured. So I am either a bit up or
down. Merry fucking christmas google.

~~~
unreal37
If this ends up costing you even $1, I would dispute it based on principle.
And would not be surprised if a class action lawyer gets interested in
extracting some compensation from Google.

~~~
gjm11
But note that if they do then it'll be the lawyers who actually get all the
compensation they extract.

~~~
shortstuffsushi
This is exactly what I have wrong with the parent to this post. "Dispute for
the principle of it," so that some lawyer(s) can make big money off a mistake
Google made. How is that helpful to anyone (except the lawyers)? It ends up
making everyone more reserved, or even killing a company off (probably not in
the case of Google).

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jpatokal
Does anybody have a good explanation of how credit card charge limits actually
work? I once had Jet Airways mistakenly charge me $30,000 (in two installments
of $15,000) on a card that had a limit of $14,000, and while I was unable to
use the card afterwards, the original charge should not have been possible in
the first place. When I called the bank to complain, all they could say is
that it was an "offline" transaction and thus apparently unlimited.

(And yes, I got it reversed eventually, and then had to pick another fight to
get them to credit me the difference in exchange rates in the meantime. All
this because Jet's shiny new booking engine apparently didn't multithread too
well and replaced my $300 tickets with somebody else's... longer version of
story here: [http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/other-asian-australian-
south-...](http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/other-asian-australian-south-
pacific-airlines/663761-jet-airways-spurious-s-30-000-charge-credit-
card.html))

~~~
dsl
The entire system is designed so banks implicitly trust each other. As with
anything else, as a business grows you eventually start cutting out middlemen
to reduce costs. Eventually large players are treated effectively as banks
themselves, and can push any transaction they want into the network. As long
as things total out correctly at the end of the day between individual banks,
nobody really gets in trouble.

It ends up being a lot more complicated than that (as everything in banking
is), but that is the general idea.

~~~
triplesec
and then... Enron.

------
ChristianMarks
I remember calling my bank one day and hearing that not only was my balance
over a billion dollars, but I had a "two day float" of several million
dollars. I called back to make sure I had the right number. I did--the amounts
were increasing. Unfortunately, by the end of the day whatever it was
corrected itself, and I was no longer a Forbes billionaire.

~~~
jaggederest
Withdraw cash and flee to a non-extradition-treaty country in your newly-
purchased cargo plane?

~~~
unreal37
What is the maximum amount of cash you could withdraw from a bank account in a
single day with no advance notice to the bank?

Probably less than $10,000. And probably not enough to be worth fleeing to a
safe haven for since the plane tickets and one week in a hotel will cost
approximately that.

~~~
jaggederest
I've personally done more than that. You do run into reporting issues if you
pull more than $10k at once though.

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white_eskimo
Same issue happened to me, Google responded several hours later with the
following email:

""" Dear AdMob Developer,

Last week, we wrote to let you know that on December 19th 2013 we would
initiate refunds to you for unused legacy AdMob advertising credits. Today we
are writing to let know that between December 19th and 20th we inadvertently
processed refunds for more than your unused balance. In some cases, customers
will see multiple refund amounts on their bank card statement.

To correct this error, we have reversed these incorrect refunds with
corresponding transactions for the same amount(s). These corrections have been
processed on December 23rd and December 24th to the same bank card that the
initial refund(s) was processed to. This means that you will see one negative
and one positive transaction on your card statement for each refund made in
error. These transactions will have “GOOGLE*ADMOB” as the description for the
credits.

We will be processing the correct refund in early January 2014 for the correct
amount owed to you. You will see a separate transaction for this refund amount
on your January or February bank card statement.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

If you have any questions about this communication please check out our FAQ’s
linked here.

Sincerely, The Google AdMob Team """

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nacs
I'm unaffected by this as I have never used Admob but I wonder which imbecile
at Google thought it was a good idea to mess with payments and push/pull money
out of people's bank/Paypal accounts around Christmas holidays?

I feel bad for all those affected knowing that there's virtually no way to get
any kind of customer service from Google.

~~~
smartician
It may have something to do with the transition from "old" to "new" Admob.
Advertisers can request refunds for unused funds from the "old" Admob, maybe
that job had a bug and refunded everything. Makes you wonder how that's
possible for a company that has the supposedly brightest of the best
developers.

~~~
adventured
I wonder if there is much of a difference in engineering talent between the
advertising products (AdSense, AdWords, Admob, etc) side of Google compared to
the consumer and business product divisions (search, maps, G+, docs, etc) and
data center engineering.

~~~
peterjancelis
If anything I would expect the ad related engineers to be more talented, given
that it ads are the bread and butter of Google's business.

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xoail
Few days ago Google emailed me saying they have credited all my advertiser
balance on admob. But yesterday I noticed a debit of $50 on my credit card
from them. I never ever used Admob for advertising but only as a publisher on
some of my apps long ago. I can't wait to speak someone to resolve this after
holidays. Something is surely messed up with admob.

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Zaheer
The biggest issue I have with this is Google's practically non-existent
customer service.

~~~
adventured
Given this is the single biggest running complaint I've seen about Google for
the past decade, it's impressive how resistant to doing anything about it they
are. Specifically regarding their advertising customers / partners. The sad
reality of course is, they don't have to care, as there's no competitive
threat to their core such that they might be forced to offer real customer
service.

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thinkboxx
Google screwed me over good today. Around Dec 20 admob refunded me $4400 in
multiple transactions. then few days later they took $2700. This gave me $1700
refund which looked ok, since I deposited around 200-300K into admob over
time. Today I woke up and found a -14K in my BOA account after admob decided
to batch rape my account with 120 transactions for around 17K. My Bank of
America that gives me a fraud alert every time I make an extra purchase just
let them have this, no problem oh Google Gods. I called my bank today and did
a claim, they didn't give me temporary credit pending investigation like the
usually do because of the amount and the number of transactions, blah blah,
and it can take up to 90 days to get my money back. I spend the whole day
today trying to figure out how to run my business with no money. I can go on
and on about how much $h1t, grief, nerves and money this has caused me, but I
don't have time to whine. I'm not the type to sue people, but they are going
to pay for this. not even out of principal, the $h1t just got REAL.

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skbohra123
Happened with me too,few days back I got a notification about some payment
into my account by Google Admob and an email about refund, I thought it must
be some unused fund but yesterday I got another notification about google
taking it back! I was puzzled that is it my bank account or google's, they
seem to be doing whatever they want with it.

~~~
mikespook
My account was disabled one year ago. No warning, no reason. Then I contacted
the customer service of Admob, after few days, they told me their system
detected that my account has some issues. I lost hundreds dollar just because
the arithmetic said I was criminal. And someothers told me, their system made
mistakes sometimes. If you met, it's your own badluck. :(

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tehwebguy
Sounds like an awesome way to get some sky miles

~~~
rahimnathwani
Hmm... do you lose miles for refunds that are not linked with the original
transaction?

~~~
coralreef
I assume so, someone would have gamed that a long time ago otherwise.

~~~
kevinoconnor7
I'm actually curious about this. You can refund without having an original
charge. This is exactly how Square's new payment system is working. This is
simply because a refund is not canceling the original withdrawal, rather it's
depositing the original transaction amount back. I'm not quite sure how a
credit card company could determine the exact transaction link (other than
just comparing merchant and transaction amounts). Maybe they just deduct the
base points rate on the deposited amount. I then wonder how they would handle
if I bought a TV during a promotion for a bonus 3% points and then returned
it.

However, I wonder what would happen if I were to send money from my actual
credit card to my Google Wallet (with no fees until Jan 6th, unless extended),
and then use the Google Wallet card to use Square to send the money back to my
bank account using my debit card. If I wanted to slow the process I could use
a bank transfer from Google wallet. Of course there are daily/weekly limits
for both of these but it's a method I think would work.

~~~
saryant
If it works, it's somewhere in here:
[http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/manufactured-
spending-719/](http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/manufactured-spending-719/)

