So I decided to create an Google Adwords account for an SEO client and make use of a £75 voucher that I had – all I had to do was spend £25 – bargain!
So I set up the payment and the campaign, and started getting lots of nice paid search engine traffic. All was good. Then, two weeks later I noticed that Google had taken £50 from my bank account – panic! I logged into my Adwords account and noticed that I’d had “automatic payments” setup, and the campaign had kept running and therefore had accrued £50 worth of clicks! I tried to change from “automatic payments” to “manual payments”, but Google don’t allow this (I think you have to contact support to do this) – probably because this is such a cash cow for them, people paying much more than they were anticipating as they get the clicks first, and then ask for payment. So I decided to stop any further payments being taken, I would change my card details slightly, so I can’t get billed on that account anymore when the £50 ran out. Sadly, I got this massively wrong as the payment is requested AFTER you’ve built up all the charges. So, 4 weeks later (today), I get a bill for £122! I’ve gone from wanted to spend £25, to spending nearly £200! Very angry!
I have paid the bill now as Google Adwords support were not very helpful, i.e. just telling me why I had to pay that amount, and not being sympathetic to my plight.
I explained to them how I was never going to use Google Adwords again as it is just too easy to spend more than you wanted to. I shall be using Bing Ads from now on as I also used them last month and amazingly they only charged me for what I wanted to spend! Hoorah for Bing!