Google Ads - i got stung with £200 payment to google.

Soldato
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tried contacting google and the guy said the system they use is all automated and to get the money back he said, i need to charge a cashback from my debit/credit card and then he would be able to suspend the account.

i was impossible to do, as the money was taken from my paypal credit account i said to him and he said i would need to contact paypal and request a cashback or what ever they use to pull the cash back, the woman said i needed to create a dispute i did this

well yesterday i got a email saying that the case was closed in favor off the receipt :(:(

i feel as though i have been completely ripped off, why the hell would i pay money to google for there ads :( the only thing i can think of is that my 75 year old mom accidently started this subscription completely by mistake, i only new about it when they took the £200 and i looked about to find out who from....

is there anything i can do, i cant even contact google ads billing department cause everything is done online now :(
 
No idea, My mum fell for that " I'm calling from MS and we see you have errors " scam though.
She got her money back in the end. serves her right, I told her the HDD was on it's last legs and I was waiting for her to speak up and offer to pay for a new one to fix it, but nope she's so tight.
 
If its a credit card thats been used, cant you call your card provider and ask them to reverse the transaction ?
Ignore me, read that as credit card instead of paypal credit.
 
the only thing i can think of is that my 75 year old mom accidently started this subscription completely by mistake, i only new about it when they took the £200 and i looked about to find out who from....

is there anything i can do, i cant even contact google ads billing department cause everything is done online now :(
Thats not really how Google adwords works. There would need to be an account that does adwords. Its not a subscription. You pay money for adverts seen and/or get credit for adverts clicked through. You need to find their fraud department and tell paypal to not give them anymore money?

You dont have trojans on your comp do you? More to the point are you robfosters?
 
Sure its google and not a scam?
Like what ad did your mother set to run? Its not a one click process it actually takes time and effort to get it set up .. you could never do it by accident.

Missing a lot if details here
 
Did the £200 from PayPal come from a bank account or card? Or was in PayPal credit?

they took it directly from my paypal credit account :/
if it came from my paypal via my bank account i could have got a cash back but because it was from my paypal credit account i had to do a dispute, and paypal denied claim in there favor :(
 
Sure its google and not a scam?
Like what ad did your mother set to run? Its not a one click process it actually takes time and effort to get it set up .. you could never do it by accident.

Missing a lot if details here

I dont know what she did to be honest, either way why the hell would i or her set this crap up or pay for this crap, i have popup blockers and ads blockers installed on my system so why would i want to watch them, if only i could get in contact with google ads billing department i might be able to get a refund but i have no way of doing that or even if there is a direct chat online that i could use to speak to someone with a brain lol
 
It's a common scam. You've inadvertently paid for someone else's keyword campaign for some dodgy or fake website.

Your only real option is to do a chargeback against PayPal but then you'll be screwed for using PayPal ever again.

Moral of the story? Don't use PayPal.
 
Probably best to figure out what has actually happened and what you've actually paid for before raising more complaints or disputes, situation seems a bit confused at the moment.
 
Probably best to figure out what has actually happened and what you've actually paid for before raising more complaints or disputes, situation seems a bit confused at the moment.
I think the problem may be that without the account details there isnt much Google can do. Its pretty hard to chase payments without proper account details.

As has been said above you cant really set up adwards by mistake. Even when knowing what to do it used to be hard work.

I cant see why Paypal wont look into this as it seems blatant fraud, but then again Paypal probably get a lot of people claiming the £400 inflatable flamingo they bought at 3am is fraud and def not them drunk purchasing.
 
Was this one of those get rich schemes you see advertised all the time on youtube. Where you can supposedly become rich from amazon market place etc.

For example,

 
well i have tried everywhere i can think of i just end up back at the same page every link directs me to a page with no contact information its like im being directed in circles :/ :/
going to wait until after the bank holiday hopefully i will be able to get in contact with someone but the people i have talked to so far are useless or pointless and again send me around in circles.
 
well i have tried everywhere i can think of i just end up back at the same page every link directs me to a page with no contact information its like im being directed in circles :/ :/
going to wait until after the bank holiday hopefully i will be able to get in contact with someone but the people i have talked to so far are useless or pointless and again send me around in circles.

did you ever get this sorted ?



I know this is old but its just happened to me. An alert popped up on my phone that I had paid £30 to Google Ads via paypal. I got an email at 15:01 today saying "Welcome to Google Ads". I thought WTH is going on. Checked my eldest had not done something as he had just come home from school nope it wasnt him. I had never heard of Google Ads. Somehow someone in Germany has managed to setup Google Ads linked to my Google Account and as I had my paypal account as my method of payment its setup an auto payment of £30. So I logged into the Google Ads account and its someone from Germany who has setup it up for an app called ING Banking and DIBA Banking which is on the Playstore and Apple. Its got a warning on the top which says "Your account is suspended Your account violated the Circumventing systems policy." and its generated £63 of costs. How the heck has this happened.

My Google account has got email authentication, Google App Authentication, Mobile Phone authentication every security measure is on. If you look at the devices that my google account is on it only lists my devices. I've got Kaspersky Internet Security and browser security the whole shebang and my PC is clean of any malware. My mobile phone has security etc turned on. I've changed my Google password just in case too. Removed the paypal method from my google account. I've reported it to Paypal and Google so I will just have to see what they say.

I`m starting to lose confidence in these two factor authentication methods too as my son's Discord account got hacked. He had full security on including two factor authentication and his account got hacked and password changed. The person had started to buy Nitro and gifting it to god knows where. For some reason my debit card was on his account prob cos I bought him Nitro ages ago to try and I forgot all about it. My bank blocked the third transaction so I was fortunate. I got my money back but they had to block my card and issue a new one. Luckily we got it back and I did some digging and it turns out you can easily get scripts that grab tokens Discord uses for login authentication. With these tokens you can easily get into someones account without any password or 2FA. The source code for these are freely available on a popular open source website. Discord even admitted it was a token grabber. So they know about them. We even logged him out of all his devices, reset his password, changed his backup codes so when he logged back in a new token would have been generated but a day later on his account 3 people from US had logged in and 1 person from South Korea. So in end we deleted his account.

Moral of the story is dont save your payment details anywhere.
 
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Pretty certain a mate of mine had this happen to him, it sounds very similar. I don't think it's anything to do with bypassing your Google or PayPal account, but they do seem to have found a loophole to hijack a payment. If I remember in his case it was a recurring payment for something.
 
Currently in a dispute with Google myself.

Back I. August I got a notification from PayPal that I had paid £130 to Google Ireland. Immediately raised dispute with PayPal who confirmed fraudulent activity and refunded the money and put a block on payments to Google Ireland.

3 days ago I get an email from Google Ads stating that they will be passing my account to debt collection if I don't clear the balance.

Went to Google Ads and sure enough it was there linked to my Gmail (I don't actually use my Gmail for anything so have notifications switched off so didn't see any emails about it), with campaigns for 2 really dodgy looking apps.

Contacted Google about it and they responded that my account wasn't compromised and that I should ask friends, family and work colleagues if they had set it up for me and if not I should do a chargeback via the PayPal.


Pointed out to them that I had already done this and that Google are now chasing me for an outstanding balance of nearly £300 and made it clear I wouldn't be paying it, they've doubled down on the threat of passing to debt collectors which could result in CCJ etc.

Pointed out again that this is not my debt as my details were used fraudulently and that I have no affiliation with the apps the campaigns were for nor do I have any use for Google Ads. Have given them 7 days to remove the charges and close the account before I take it further. They've now replied asking for 7 days to look into it further.
 
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