At least in my personal experience.

Over two business days ago I began a CPC campaign. I used the Google AdWords Editor, another poorly implemented piece of work. First, it was a regional or geographically targeted campaign that spanned two metro counties.

Doing regional targeting with the AdWords' Editor is clumsy to say the least. First, if you check or highlight a selection there is no "un-check" ability. Clicking away leaves the selection highlighted. You need to change the targeting "type" from "specific locations" back to "one or more countries" which also re-sets any desirable selections you wished to save.

Strike one.

Then, if you managed to select a city within a selected metropolitan area, on campaign upload you will get a failure message. Just a failure message that says the geo targeting is wrong. Not what is actually wrong (that a city falls within a metro area and this is verboten).

Strike two.

So once the dark lord-like opacity of the geo targeting failure messages were deciphered thanks to prior experience months and months ago with this same issue using the online AdWords interface, I watched the fresh campaign for performance.

Three hours go by. No impressions. Okay, no problem.

A day goes by. No impressions. Houston, we have a problem.

I spend the time to test the keywords in search and find that after viewing over 20 pages, not a single display (perhaps I bid too low me thought).

Found a keyword that had but one bidder and watched only their ad for five pages in a row.

The quality score for all keywords ranged from "okay" to "great." All bids exceeded the minimum to keep them active for search. Nothing.

So at 7:43 am I wrote to support and received the "auto ack." It offered the less-than-promise of the following:

"We strive to reply individually to advertiser emails within one business day."

Since my message went in at 7:43 am (or so) and we are on the same piece of the USA (more or less) that would mean an answer by 5:00 pm that day.

Or so I'd hoped.

But consistent with my past experiences with Google AdWords not only did they fail to meet the qualified definition of reasonable service had they replied with a fix by the close of business that day, they utterly disappointed by failing to respond by the next business morning.

So at 9:23 am that following morning, replying to the "auto ack" so the case number would remain attached, I offered a rather heated follow-up request for a response and resolution.

To digress a moment, I'd had a CPM campaign live, but without a single impression for days. It however, was intentionally bid low. But not too low that it was below the floor for any impressions. But day after day - zip - none. So while checking the status of the CPC campaign I'd boosted the CPM bid on this second effort such that AdWords told me in its bid site tool that there was a "Good chance" the impressions would start. By the next morning it too remained an impression-free campaign. So I added that issue to my 9:23 am update e-mail.

And I waited. And checked the stats. And waited some more. No impressions. No response.

By 12:13 pm that day I'd had enough. Still no impressions and no response. So I called AdWords "support."

I think I've called for help (initially, not the follow-ups) at least five times, perhaps as many as 8-10 times. If my issue was resolved in the first call with one person it was only once or twice. Every other time so far the matter has required many calls and most often escalation to management. I'm no Einstein but I'm also not the biggest idiot on earth (okay, maybe the top 10).

If resolutions require escalation that often, Google AdWords is a flawed program staffed and managed by questionably qualified personnel.

I call. The call runs 21 minutes and 6 seconds of my self-employed time. Can you hear the sound of money running down the drain?

Now I'll admit some of that time was me standing on my tip toes on the soap box explaining why, with my history with AdWords, I was not taking this "Googler's" statements at face value nor was I in any mood for more "patience" with Google.

The staffer was provided my account information and support case number. Then they were walked painstakingly through my own efforts to assess where, if at all, my choices and settings would be the source of the specific problem on the CPC campaign.

To digress again, after getting the case number, the staffer said someone was working on it, but that no, they never bothered to update me in any respect. Furthermore, they could not figure out the problem so that other staff member escalated it.

My staff member wanted to put me on hold to use "tools" to evaluate things. I said "No thank you, I'd rather walk through all the settings and quality scores live together."

We did. The text ads reflected content on the site. The keywords related to and scored well in association with the site and text ads. In fact, some came from allowing the keyword tool to suggest keywords from the site's pages. The bids exceeded the minimums. The staff member agreed, from what they could see the ads should be running.

We then took a look at the other site-targeted CPM campaign. The one with the "Good chance" of showing impressions. The staff member offered that those ought to be running too and the issues are likely related.

No kidding. The common thread is Google Adwords.

So I pointed out that we both now agreed that:

1. My settings appeared to be correct
2. The ads were not displaying as I'd expected
3. Google AdWords failed to meet the support expectations raised by the "auto ack"
4. And I asserted that this fit the pattern of past shortcomings and that AdWords should offer some form of mitigation or compensation.

I was told in response "Please be patient and you'll be hearing from us." In other words, while we've failed before, trust us, we are a supplier and you are a customer, and though we did not do what was reasonably expected of us, in fact, we have a demonstrably flawed system (AdWords Editor, impressions and support), you get nothing but being told to be patient.

I said essentially the above to the staff member on the phone. The reply?

"That said, that is my answer for you."

I said perhaps I need to speak to a supervisor (for a change - arrgh.) They said one of the most arrogant things any first tier support person can say - well - to me at least: "A supervisor would tell you the same thing I have been saying."

Wrong. And I explained why.

They somewhat, but not very, sheepishly agreed that they could not know what any other human would say and ought not to have said that.

It has been about an hour since that call ended. No response so far. Stay tuned.

4:45 pm Same day - No impressions. No response. No update. No surprise.

8:18 pm Same day - No impressions. No response. No update. Two full business days without a reply. My contacting them does not count as a response on their part.

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