I have been learning and trying PPC for about a month now. All exclusively with Google Adwords. Start with the best I figured and the rest should be substantially easier.

I got a couple of campaigns up and running, all went ok.

As covered in another post, I had contacted Adwords about changing my currency from £ to $. They told me the following

Hello,

Thank you for your email. I understand you would like to change the currency of your AdWords account.

Once you have selected the billing currency for your AdWords account, it is not possible to switch to another currency. The currency that you selected applies to both billing and payment. For example, if you select pounds, payment will be requested and accepted only in pounds.

If you would like to change your currency, please close your existing AdWords account and create a new account with your preferred currency. Use a different email address to create this new account. Or, if you would like to use the same email address, you will need to change it in your existing AdWords account before closing it out. To learn how to close your account, please visit here.

Ok, all that seemed simple enough. I went through the steps and Adwords itself told me I didn’t need to close the account as there was no balance. To be exact, after following their link I entered all of the following which was true;

I want to cancel my AdWords account.
Yes, I can sign in.
No, I just want to cancel my account.
My account has prepay billing.
No, I have exhausted all of the funds remaining in my account.

Adwords help system then told me this;

No action is needed to cancel your account.

As a prepay customer with no balance remaining, your ads will not run and your account is essentially deactivated. Your account will remain inactive and won’t accrue additional charges, so there is no further action needed.

So, fair enough. The big G had spoken. I went and opened another account.

During the signup process it is incredibly unclear and unhelpful about currency settings. Remember, I am in the UK and want to trade in dollars as most of my business so far had been targetted there.

Basically I messed this account up during setup. I misread the options and set myself as living in the USA. I was trying to indicate my preferred currency, not where I lived. I didn’t realise my mistake until I got the account up and running and found I couldnt deposit my funds as my credit card couldnt match to the address on my account. I just completely screwed it up.

I deposited a voucher on that account but nothing I could do could get it setup and behaving normally.

So, I did what seemed logical and setup a third account, I think I even managed to not screw it up this time. I deposited a different voucher, had the same problems with depositing though, so gave up and emailed Adwords support with a big “WTF”.

Today I got home from work and got this;

Upon reviewing your account, it has come to our attention that your Google AdWords accounts do not comply with our Terms and Conditions. As a result, your account, and any related accounts you may have created, have been suspended, and your ads will no longer run on Google.

For privacy reasons, we are unable to disclose any information regarding those accounts. Because your current account(s) does not comply with our Terms and Conditions, please refrain from creating new accounts, as they will not be allowed to run.

I have emailed them back and asked very politely what I did and stressed my noob status. I have no real idea what I have done wrong.

Was it the multiple accounts?
Was it using multiple vouchers?
Was it because at least one voucher was a different currency originally?
Was it because I purchased the vouchers and they weren’t intended for me?

I dunno, but I’ll see if I can find out. I hate mysteries.

I had heard how harsh Adwords can be in their decision making but I never thought it would lay the smack down on me. I wasn’t promoting anything remotely shady or controversial at any point.

My Adwords career just died, barely out of the womb. I’m still taking this in as I write this, all thoughts and comments would be much appreciated.

Tags: banned