NEVER Use Google Adword's: Times Of Money Internet Banking Payment. They STEAL Money.

Google's recent partnership with The Times of India Group has been a public relations disaster for Google Adwords.

The Times Group is well know for its inefficiency, horrible management and more famously for the lack of basic grammar and sentence structuring skills.

While their primary product is a national newspaper: The Times of India, they have recently diversified into various sectors including internet shopping.

The ill fated partnership of Google Adwords with the Times Group began when Google Adwords opted to choose http://www.timesofmoney.com a.k.a http://www.direcpay.com as their payment processor.

We can only assume that Google's Management was heavily bribed for this by the Times Group, because there is no sane business organization that would choose a company for processing its payments that can't even get the bank's name right (referring to the change in name of UTI Bank to Axis Bank) even after months have passed, thereby losing thousands if not millions of rupees by getting the payment processing url incorrect for months (I ain't joking, they got the url that you use to pay them for your Adwords credit purchase, wrong. Talk about inefficiency!)

Yet, this is the same Times Group that dares to make an attempt to sell business management products on its newspaper: The Times of India.

In this article I shall focus on the inefficiency of the Google Adwords + Times of Money (Google Adwords payment processor for internet payments) and how they stole my Rs.500 :

My first experience with Google Adwords instead of being: 'start advertising in 15 minutes' as generally promoted, turned out to be: "start advertising in 15 days"....

How, you may ask?

Well, first a little background information about where I'm coming from:
I'm an Indian citizen, this means that I'm not allowed to purchase make any foreign currency payment unless I have a credit card, which is technically impossible at the moment due to India's ingenious laws that don't allow anyone who is not employed/self employed to obtain a credit card legally.
And as I'm only 20 and still a student I'm obviously unemployed(technically/legally).

This meant that I was absolutely thrilled when I read the news in 'The Times of India' (where else!) that Google would allow its Adwords clients to pay through internet banking (this means that they directly debit your bank account with the amount you wish to advertise through Adwords).

Little did I know that it would soon turn into a never ending Google Nightmare for me!

The Early Days of the Ill Fated Partnership Between Google and Times Of Money:

Signs of pathetic management was apparent from the beginning when Google Adword's payment processor (Times of Money) happened to leave out India's largest public sector bank SBI and India's largest private sector bank ICICI as payment options.

But I was still unfettered as I had an Axis Bank Account, which happened to be accepted by Google Adwords a.k.a Times Of Money.

How naive was I, to expect everything was to work correctly. Any guesses?

The Beginning Of The Google Nightmare:

Here's what happened: UTI Bank had changed it's name to Axis Bank months back, but as it happened the world's largest search engine which takes pride in presenting the latest information to the general masses didn't know this? Nor more strangely, did Times of Money which happens to be in the payment processing business on behalf of primarily Google.

Well, I shot out an email to both the Google and Times of Money support as well as to Axis Bank to have the 'url problem' fixed as soon as possible.

In about a week they did "look into it" and had it fixed and I was asked to make the payment.


And I successfully made the payment using my Axis Bank account.

Officially on the Adwords website, Google says that the credit would be applied to my account within 24 hours. Thus I happily made the payment of Rs.1000 (US$25) to Google Adwords through their internet banking payments processor times of money.

While this amount may not seem much to US citizens, US$10 to US$25 is worth a whole day's salary for an above average Business Graduate/MBA degree holder in India.

Well 24 hours passed, still my Adwords balance didn't update. I contacted the Google Support and they assured me that they would investigate it....

So that I don't bore you to death (and since it not really related to how Google Adwords stole Rs.500 from me) I'll cut the long story short and just inform you that it took 15 days for Google Adwords to finish their "investigation" and apply the Rs.1000 credit to my account.

All is finally well I told myself (my BIG mistake) and I bought further advertising credit of Rs.### without encountering any major problems (minor problems include the payment page temporarily not opening).

After that I left advertising through Adwords for a while(few months) for as I had come to the conclusion that SEO was the best long term solution.

Until recently.... When I decided to advertise my new website which I had launched, through Adwords for some quick sales (HUGE mistake).

The Times of Money Scam:
I now saw that Google Adwords's Payment Processor had added Indian's largest private sector bank, ICICI as a payment option and since I generally use my ICICI account for daily purchases, I was happy that Google Adwords was finally moving in the right direction.

Little did I know that Google Adwords payment processor is run by a company that steals your money.
Here's what happened in detail:
On the 22nd I tried to make a payment of Rs.500 using my ICICI Bank account through Google's internet banking payment processor, Times of Money.
After I successfully completed all the steps, a 'payment has failed, please try again later' message showed up instead of a 'success' message.

I immediately checked my ICICI Bank account to see if Rs.500 had been deducted, I was initially pleased to see that no such deduction had been made.

But, when I logged into my ICICI Bank account the next morning I was shocked to see Rs.500 missing, worried I contacted the Google Adwords support.
The Google Adwords support replied back in a few hours and basically told me to wait until 24 hours had passed.

Alright, I said to myself.

But 24 hours passed, 48 hours passed...but still my Adwords balance didn't update!

Worried, I wrote an email to the Google Adwords support and contacted Google Adwords through their live chat system.

Well, the lady working in Google's live chat basically told me that she needed "proof".

I asked her, what "proof" did she want?

She told me a screenshot of the payment from my ICICI bank account's statement would be fine.

So I sent her the screenshot to her email address.

Well, she was apparently new to the Google Adwords support team or just dumb, because she expected to see 'Google's name' in the payment description column of my account statement!!

I have made 2 successful payments to Google Adwords earlier(through Axis Bank) and never has Google's name appeared anywhere! All that appears is something like: BIL/0000########/MP (This is the description of the last payment made through ICICI Bank. Numbers in the middle have been hidden for security reasons).

So how did this Google Live Chat Support Staff want me to provide her with, 'Google's name' in the description??

Well I don't know and it seems like we might never know the extent of the stupidity of Google's support staff.

Next, let's see Google Adwords email reply:

This was 13 days ago!

Lets see what the Google Support had to say in the email they sent me 11 days ago (29th September, 2008):

Lets analyze the sequence of events :
22nd September, 2008: Payment Made.

23nd September, 2008: Payment Received by Google Adwords payment processor direcpay.com a.k.a. timesofmoney.com [This has been confirmed by my ICICI Bank online account manager]. Google's support says, payment not received and asks me to wait for some time to see if the Adwords account balance updates.

26th September, 2008: Google's "payment specialists" are currently investigating my payment.

29th September, 2008: Last email from Google Adwords. Their support staff informs me that the 'payment proof' has been sent to the 'relevant team'.

10th October, 2008: Google Adwords account still NOT credited. Total time (From 23rd September: Approximately 17 Days as of now).

Conclusion: Google Adwords a.k.a. their payment processor Times Of Money STOLE my money

Feel free to redistribute this article online and offline. However, no changes to the 'intent' of this article can be made. Any media houses and major bloggers, webmasters or lawyers reading this, feel free to contact me if you first require proof (includes a screen shot of my account statement and screen shots of emails sent by my ICICI online account manager, in which he verifies that timesofmoney.com has received the Rs.500 I sent) to reproduce this article.

 

I've recently made a payment to AdWords with no issues and I've been using AdWords for up to a year now

 

Please verify how you made the payment?

If you are using Google Adwords for a year now, you probably paid by cheque/check OR credit card because the internet banking payment option was added in March,2008 if I remember correctly.

I'm specifically talking about payments made to Google Adwords from India through internet banking.
And more specifically about ICICI Bank which Google Adwords has recently included in the list of Banks that Indians may make payments through Google's Adwords internet banking processor Times of Money.

 

@
AcePlayer

I can understand your frustration, incase Google is not sorting out your issue, I would suggest you to get in touch with a personal lawyer who would be willing to serve a legal notice without charging any fees and within no time Google payment team would run from pillar to post to sort it out.... ( Personal lawyer because the amount in dispute is only Rs 500 and lawyers charge more than this if not known)

 

Well now that I actually read your rant I understand your problem

Get a credit card or use PayPal's virtual debit card feature which is accepted by AdWords

 

Same thing with me,

 

A Long Overdue Update:

On October 24, 2008 : They finally sent me an email and accepted that they did receive my payment.
That's a delay of 32 days (from 22nd September, 2008 to October 24, 2008)

Interestingly, the support + billing staff working at Google Adwords (India) are so pathetic and so keen upon hiding their mistakes that in my Adwords Billing page, 'October 8th, 2008' is stated as the payment received date!

Just another example that showcases how easily Google India's top management can be bribed to accept shitty deals.

 

Why did you blame Times of money? It clearly seems the fault was at google's side.

 

Apparently it is the duty of the payment processor to always inform their client if they've successfully received the payment.

While Google was surely sloppy, it was the duty of Times of Money to inform Google that they've received my payment.