Max's Case Co. review for Google & YouTube

Sept. 1, 2023

This is the first time I have ever taken the time to write a review but the service, specifically, the lack of service of I have received from Google is astonishing. My story begins a few weeks ago when I began a PMAX campaign to advertise my company. Granted, these types of campaigns can take weeks to months to fully optimize. Completely understandable since it uses AI to adjust your bidding/targeting. In one week, I had spent $700 to gather data/show ads. In addition, my products were uploaded to the Google Merchant center as Google/Shopify HEAVILY push you to do this. I even began a PMAX campaign for the Google Merchant center as I had read this may be better suited to the products I was selling. This is where EVERYTHING and I mean EVERYTHING went wrong. After two days of running the Merchant Center PMAX campaign in addition to my other campaigns, I received the dreaded "Misrepresentation" warning on my account. Since I am new to Google ads, I didn't think this would be a big deal and didn't fully understand the consequences of having this stamped on your account. I made adjustments to the site to try and be compliant and submitted the site to be reviewed several times until I was put on a cool down period. Again, I didn't fully understand what was happening and thought it would be something that could be easily fixed. That couldn't be further from the truth. After two weeks of calling/emailing Google almost DAILY pulling my hair out trying to get back into their good graces, I was met with NOTHING but "We cannot share the details of why your merchant center has misrepresentation listed, keep trying to fix it, you'll figure it out." No joke, this went on for about two weeks to the point I was going to pay $1800 for an outside company to fix my misrepresentation suspension. That is, until I submitted a question to the forum since Google does not provide you with a reason your account is suspended. I was told because my items are POD, I cannot list them in the store. Google does not specifically list POD and instead states, "Items must be in stock to ship". The items in the POD store are "in stock" and would show "out of stock" if they were unavailable. There is conflicting information from Google forum "experts" as I found some posts that stated POD is allowed and some that say they are not allowed. The problem goes beyond this as my Google Ads account was CONNECTED to the merchant center. Because the Merchant Center was suspended, my Google Ads was suspended as well. The only way to reinstate my Google Ads is to get the Merchant Center reinstated which is IMPOSSIBLE since Google doesn't allow POD in their Merchant Center apparently even though Google Ads DOES allow POD products to be advertised. Do you see where I am beyond upset? I spend $700 for a week of ads to be displayed to have the rug pulled out from under me and have both accounts suspended. I can't tell you the relief I feel that I no longer am doing business with Google Ads and their horrible, nonexistent customer service. You would think paying $700 for a week worth of ads would be enough to get some sort of response or customer service from Google. Its not. This is your warning, if you have a POD service or similar business structure, be very careful and do not upload your products to the Merchant Center even though Google will encourage you to do. You will be put into a doom loop essentially with no way out. I learned my lesson $700 later. You've been warned.