I had an e-mail dialog with an anon support person that walked me through the process of getting my listing verified. I can provide the full text of the discussion if needed.

Anyhow, it turned out that for some reason my Google account had flagged something with their verification process and they asked me to use an account with the same domain as the site I was trying to validate. Once I did that I was verified in 3 minutes.

After 5 months of sending off for the postcard several times and no help from forums, this was excellent. I hope it is the shape of things to come!

I’ve had clients’ listings post smoothly and for no apparent reason, other listings seem to become functional in stages — active but not appearing in search; appearing in search but not having a location to tack a coupon to; and then displaying the location for the coupon, but still not displaying the dashboard search analytics. This progressive posting is occurring over a period of four months. Since the listing is doing well in search results, I’m not too bothered about the absence of analytics on the dashboard.

Thanks again for the information!

After I filled out the form, I got this response from an autoresponder:

“Sometimes it may take longer than 2-3 weeks to receive the PIN. If it’s been close to a month, please request another postcard to be sent to you or request a new PIN to be sent to your business phone number, if this option is available to you.”

If this is all they plan to offer, I am about to go nuts! This e-mail came from local-help@google.com. I sent a personal note to that account about the issue and will continue to do so regularly until I can get a resolution.

So many more SMB’s are going to be signing up with Places and I just can’t even imagine the multitude of problems that are going to compound if the listing process, help tools and support doesn’t get cleaned up and ramped up to meet demand.

God help the small business person right now that doesn’t know what they are doing and hits a snag!

I agree with Matthew! Google should just hire you as a process/support optimization consultant!

Its difficult. I’ll have to try it myself. That is the only way I learn. A small business needs an easily accessable system smart person on hand to often work out problems of all sorts for all types of business problems. I know. I’ve got this issue on all sorts of small businesses located in diverse areas.

Other types of support are easier to work through. There is a fair amount of expertise in solving server issues, dealing with internet connections, dealing with installing and fixing software, etc.

But Google Maps/local business center Google Places Management is different. Expertise is scarce.

More importantly, Google responsiveness is minimal. In fact, Google acknowledges responsiveness is minimal–they tell us that in the contact form for verification issues with this statement : “Need to contact our support team? While we use your reports to learn about issues affecting multiple users and take action when necessary, please note that we don’t generally respond to personal reports here.

Its a security problem. That makes it serious Its been 8 days and there has been no change.

Its very rough to deal with issues with minimal support. Its harder to deal with issues with essentially no support.

C’mon Google. You are plowing after more and more SMB advertising revenues. You have profits up the kazoo.

Put some more effort into customer service.