Read this interesting article on Google Smoogle doesn't understand CPM. I believe that one is increasingly hearing about more and more such episodes.
Wow that's one major horror story. I've had an OK experience so far with Google's customer service, although I will admit they can be intentionally vague in their answers to your questions sometimes. I'm specifically talking about a question I asked recently - where I asked if a website I'd like to purchase is banned from adsense, will I be able to use adsense on it as the new owner. Their answer was vague, and stated that "if the site is within our guidelines, there should be no problem". When I looked into it in forums, I found out Google banned websites on a per URL basis, not a per account basis - so I guess that's the opposite of their vague answer. I think they're experiencing some major growing pains here, hopefully it'll pass. Adi Friedman TwoBelievers.com Web Holdings.
In reading the article, I see two problems with the publisher and the advertiser. First the publisher sounds like he has phpAds set for one size ad and is calling in a differenct size Adsense ad. The advertiser can chose to not have a CPM campaign on that site. Hopefully Google be quicker with answers, favorable or unfavorable. Also the person with the complaint should not have let $1000 budget be burnt up prior to reacting. I start at five or 10 dollars per day and open up the budget based on results.