Ads Google Reviews 938

I spent more than 10 years on communication with google ads and nothing has changed, it is low quality on each level, regardless of ad spends. $1K or $1M a month doesn't matter it will be same low-quality trash answers and AI slop

Waste for time and money. Hours of redundant work for nothing, sacrifying valuable time and then google saves nothing because of one of the unbelievable qty of glitches their system has. No customer service at all by design. How is that lawful? its not. The biggest scam of history. They take your money and there is no single contact phone or anything. No invoice. Paying no taxes and the EU that otherwise steals the last Cents from its citizens leaves that behavior of a US company without any legal consequencies and wonders if the system falls apart becuase people feel themselves deceived. They are deceived indeed.

Google Ads has taken over $300 in charges that were charged to me but made against a Google Ad account which I do not have. I have no Google Ad account. After months of emails they refuse to refund me. They say this is not fraud. They told me to get chargeback from bank. Bank tells me to get refund from Google Ads.

I created a new campaign and an ad for it, received a notification that the ad was not approved, and have been charged for ad clicks without any explanation.

RIP off! Do not touch with a barge pole and the support/ advisors have no shame… they took 1000’s and I received 14% (-86%) return after 2 months. How is this service even legal?

I treated Google Ads as a standard tool: I add a budget, set up a campaign, the system starts delivering ads, I track the data and gradually optimize. Instead, I ran into an experience that, from my perspective, was a mix of zero results, zero accountability, and maximally complicated communication. This text describes my personal experience—not “the truth of the world,” but a specific practice I actually lived through.

google money-guzzler

The money left, ad delivery didn’t

I added €50 to my Google Ads account. The payment went through instantly—the only part of the process that worked reliably. After that, I set up and reviewed the campaigns repeatedly. The result was always the same: no impressions, or practically none. Considering how much time and energy I put into it, it felt like a system that knows how to take money but can’t (or won’t) deliver the service in a reasonable way.

Dozens of hours of setup and checks with no effect

This wasn’t “one attempt and done.” It was dozens of hours of work: checking campaigns, ad groups, keywords, goals, budgets, targeting, landing pages, quality—everything you can work on in Ads. Over and over, I verified whether there was a simple block, an error, or a wrong setting somewhere. I found nothing that provided a clear, understandable answer—only the same outcome: it doesn’t deliver. Yet Google claims everything is OK.

Consultations: AI, agencies, my own analysis—and still zero

I tried to resolve it through multiple routes. I consulted external agencies that specialize in Google Ads. I also worked on it with AI (including Google support that presents itself as “help”). In practice, the result was pointless. Even if individual recommendations sounded reasonable, nothing changed the fact that the campaign wasn’t delivering and the system didn’t provide a clear technical reason.

“Support” without people: reading the web instead of solving

The biggest issue was contact and resolution. Instead of live support, I repeatedly ended up with automated replies. What is labeled as “help” in my case meant that artificial intelligence basically started reading me web texts—generic guides and principles I can read on my own. When someone needs a specific technical solution to a specific problem in a specific account, this type of “help” is realistically unusable.

Closing the account and refund: simple on screen, unpleasant in reality

When things weren’t moving anywhere, I closed the account. According to the information in the system, the remaining balance was supposed to be refunded by today (January 15, 2026). However, the refund did not happen. And here comes another layer of the problem: even reclaiming your own money is a process that is unnecessarily complicated, unclear, and without immediate verification. After submitting a request, you often don’t even have basic confidence that it was actually recorded somewhere and that a specific case exists that someone will take over. There is no email notification or case number, ticket, or anything else.

How it all feels from a user’s perspective

From my point of view it looks like this: the system takes your money without any problem, but when the service delivers no results and the user asks for an explanation or a fix, they hit a wall of automation, generic answers, and forms. And when you decide to leave and want your remaining balance back, you face another process where direct communication and clear responsibility are missing. I’m not saying it works like this for everyone—I’m saying this is how it worked for me.

Who this might serve as a warning for

If you’re a small advertiser and you expect that, when there’s a problem, there will be human technical support that looks at the account and gives a clear answer, my experience is the exact opposite. In that case, it’s fair to count on the possibility that you may end up with zero delivery, lost time, and then an unpleasant refund process where reaching a “live” solution is difficult—or impossible.

Conclusion: My experience with Google Ads was an absolute catastrophe. It brought zero delivery, a large amount of wasted time, and frustration because support is, in practice, built on automated responses instead of real solutions.

Worst customer support ever.
We have had a ticker open and not solved for over 2 months and many many emails.

They have monopoly in their market and can treat a customer how they want. If I could I would change supplier asap.

Horrible. Never again. This is actually fraud. Was charged over 1000 dollars. This is why this country is going to crap because these companies sub all their work out and have horrible customer service.

I really don't google ads. At certain point I was in tech you interested but later became disinterest in its completely unless now and for the rest of my google will show tech ads no matter what .how many I block the ads. I personally think google keeps it playing to i will pay money on YouTube to stop it.

This is a total scam of a business, I have been trying in vain to activate my account and have been given nothing but the absolute runabout for over 2x weeks now. I have sent many of emails, have had two call backs from a staff who spoke very broken english to a point i could not understand them/her. I asked if they/she could slow her speaking down so i could try and understand her at which point she got very rude with her response and starting just talking overtop of me each time. And then when i tried to get a word in she hung up on me both times. I have been trying to activate my google ads so I can activate my YouTube channel to start advertising but can't do this as they have paused me from my account due to a verification process that i can't amend as it keeps kicking me out when i follow all prompts to rectify the issue.

I really should’ve looked into this before using Google Ads. They asked for advertiser verification, so I submitted my ID, then my account got suspended for “Circumventing systems: Advertiser verification.” Seriously… what?

At first, I didn’t realize they expect a photo of the ID and that a scanned copy can get flagged as “fake.” So I tried again. I explained what happened and uploaded a clear photo of my ID. And my account is still suspended for the exact same reason. It was just stupid.

What bothers me most is that I basically handed over a photo of my ID, and this is how their “verification” process treated me. I’ve never seen anything like this.

On top of that, the interface is clunky and unpleasant to work with. I was trying to run ads on another site to drive impressions and clicks back to my website, and it was such a hassle that I ended up hiring someone just to set up the campaign for me.

Google Ads has been terrible in my experience. If they can’t verify a freaking legitimate ID properly, how can they be trusted with anything else? The whole process feels like it’s designed to squeeze money out of you.

If you want proof, here’s the part that’s almost funny. Between my first attempt (with the scanned ID) and the second attempt (with the photo), my account was supposed to be still suspended. But there was a small window where they didn’t suspend the account at all. Since I didn’t pause my campaign because I thought it’d be a quick process. The ads automatically turned on and started running, and of course I got billed for it.

Reading these reviews makes me realize that it doesn’t matter how long you’ve run ads with them, how much money you’ve spent, or whether you’re brand new, they don’t care about you at all. They only care about making money, and making it fast, even if that means using whatever tactics they can to squeeze more out of you, and then kick you out. No wonder Google Ads has such a low rating on Trustpilot. If you want to save money, and save yourself the frustration, consider Bing Ads/Microsoft Ads instead.

I do not have an account with Google Adds yet the only way to dispute money they have taken from my bank account is online. It requires me to enter my Business name and account number. I do not have a business! Or Google Adds account. I tried talking to customer service twice and the last call i was explaining and the operator cut me off and said I'm sending an email and hung up on me. I need my money back. I am at a loss of what to do. No one will help me.

What a scam. I thought Google would make it easy, but it's set up like it's fake and broken. I can't even run a non-branded campaign and they want all your info...trying to delete the data i shared to get my ads running and that's tough too. Better to not even.

Google have taken lots of money every month but have only given me 3 calls.

Definitely do not recommend Google ads as a means of advertising!

The process of setting up ads is unclear and buggy compared to other platforms. When you call support, you get a guy somewhere in the world with a bad phone connection who is trying to collect personnal information (such as where else you advertise) without a care for your actual problem. When he finally said that he would transfer me to an ad specialist, he just cut of the communication. I suspect that these front "support" guys are actually sales guys trying to upsell you or harvest marketing data.

Worthless, janky site. Runs slower than dial up speed, endless issues and janky. Stay away from.

annoying and so hard to set up, i and others googled my business and could not see it listed but the account says ive had clicks ,not sure how when we cant find it sure its a scam . when you call them you get through to people who cant even speak english or they have trouble understandinng you . and then just hang up on you . save your money dont be conned

I’m a small, service-based business owner using Local Services Ads, and after a short test I’ve turned LSAs off entirely due to lead quality and billing policy.
I was charged $20 per “lead” for the following:
A caller who meant to reach a completely different spa
A caller who asked “how much do you charge?”, said “thanks,” and hung up
A legitimate call that occurred when I was out sick (still billed)
When I contacted support, I was told that due to Automated Lead Crediting, manual credits are no longer possible — even for obvious wrong-number calls. In other words, if a customer dials the wrong business, the financial responsibility is placed entirely on the advertiser.
This effectively turns LSA into pay-to-answer-the-phone, regardless of intent, relevance, or booking outcome.
For solo operators and small service businesses (massage therapy, wellness, personal services), this model is not sustainable. A $20 charge for a wrong number or a basic pricing inquiry is not a “lead” — it’s a failure of intent filtering.
My questions:
How is Google defining “valid” leads when customer intent is clearly absent?
Why was manual crediting removed with no meaningful alternative?
How are small businesses expected to absorb repeated junk calls at $20 each?
I’ve already rated the leads accordingly, but that does nothing to address charges already incurred. Until this policy changes, LSAs are not viable for my business — and I suspect many others feel the same.
Would appreciate a response from a Google representative or Product Expert on how this is being addressed.

Its totally true what everyone is saying! I myself cannot even believe that I am saying this, but Google ads scams BIG TIME. When you onboard the whole process it goes pretty smooth, you’ll get a campaign manager, a technical expert and an advisor that guides you through the process. But after that, these ppl cant help you on anything as they are from a callcenter just arranging the onboarding process. As soon as something was up.. you’ll be left for dead! Thats the real truth about Google Ads.

I started a campaign with Google Ads! There was a promotion offering €400 in advertising credit if you started a campaign within 14 days and spent €400 on advertising within 60 days. I received an email asking me to redeem the offer, but when I clicked the button in the email, I was simply redirected to my dashboard. There was no promotion available, which, according to the campaign specialists, should be there. I reported/lodged a complaint to their department and I only received a response that my case is being forwarded. After that..? Zero response, zero solution! Not even when I told them I had to pause the campaign cause of this. When I lodged another complain guess what… again same story! They just haul you in with a promo that is not possible to redeem.

So, did you worked crazy hard at a product which you are dearly proud of and enthusiastic to think you’re about to launch? Dont go through Google! Not only they will make you regret it, they charge you loads of money first. Oh yeah and the result of the promotion? I didn’t got any clients out of it either. They tell you you need to at least pay 3 months of promotion costs without making any sales out of it. And that’s how incredible Google ads is ladies & gentlemen!