Comments on: Google Gets a Barely Passing Grade with the BBB – For the Want of a Nail…

By: Small Business Influencers 2011 Awards Final Results – Thanks to All! | Understanding Google Maps & Local Search

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 13:52:22 +0000

[...] that don’t recall, I have offered up criticisms of both over time and I once even managed to criticize both in the same post [...]

By: The Better Business Coach

The Better Business Coach — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 13:26:34 +0000

[...] an unreasonable complaint then respond saying as much. Blumenthals has the original story here. The comments make me wonder suspect that this is not a surprising result for Google. Sometimes [...]

By: Google passato al setaccio da Better Business Bureau - The New Blog Times

Google passato al setaccio da Better Business Bureau - The New Blog Times — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 21:59:05 +0000

[...] metodi di espressione del livello di BBB, ma questo poco importa: attualmente, secondo quanto hanno riportato anche altri osservatori, il livello è indiscutibilmente salito, ma non basta.Resta, infatti, il [...]

By: Linda Buquet

Linda Buquet — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 17:25:40 +0000

Thanks Mike. I just posted the following there, but wanted to post it here as well.

I’ve been one of the most vocal on Google Places recently in that 9/23 buggy update thread and here’s a MAJOR problem I have. And it makes my heart literally hurt sometimes for these poor small business people that can’t get any help!

Yes Google Places is a free service…

AND if Places was a mature, bug-free, easy to understand, self service platform – they would not need that much support…

HOWEVER 90% of the problems on the forum are from bugs and/OR a totally broken scraping mechanism that continuously creates bogus duplicates and overwrites VERIFIED merchant data with sloppy erroneous data it pulls from who knows where.

If you stripped away specific buggy problems like rashes of missing reviews or lines through images or broken QR codes.

If you stripped away complaints about being rejected, suspended or pending review. Which are sometimes deserved end-user caused problems. (But are also often times innocent mistakes like a Plumber in Dallas making the horrible mistake of putting in his description that he’s – of all terrible things – A what? A plumber in Dallas!)

If you stripped away what some would consider dumb questions – however they are from small business people who maybe aren’t that technical, so you can’t blame them for being confused.

THEN WHAT YOU ARE LEFT WITH, when you really think about it – are the MYRIAD of problems that Google itself causes.

A businesses phone number or website being changed to the wrong number or worse yet, a competitor’s info (due to scraped data). Who can blame these poor business people who are loosing customers, for wanting support! Duplicate problems (due to scraped data) Who can blame them when their ranking tanks due to a dupe stealing 90 reviews, like just happened to one of my clients. Split, rogue, ghost or mirror dupes. (Due to bugs and/or scraping). Missing tags, double ghost tags, can’t cancel tags or when they added tags then other problems cropped up (due to bugs). Broken QR codes (bugs). I could go on & on & on!

Anyone who lives Google Places like I do and spends lots of time on the forum I think would agree – that a great majority of the problems are caused by Google and not operator error.

So when Google’s own system is what causes so many problems for these poor small business people, I think GOOGLE should be held accountable, fix the problems and offer support – EVEN IF PLACES is a free service!

I am so busy with dupes, bugs, troubleshooting and a myriad of problems – I’ve had to stop accepting clients because I am so buried in problems with existing clients I can’t take on any new ones.

Can you tell I’m a little frustrated?

/endrant

Linda

By: Google Improves From ‘Unsatisfactory’ To ‘C+’ Rating At BBB

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 13:35:12 +0000

[...] as Mike Blumenthal reported a couple days ago, Google has managed a slight improvement to a “C-” [...]

By: Mike Ramsey

Mike Ramsey — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 00:04:23 +0000

Theres a good conversation on this piece starting over at Sphinn as well.

http://sphinn.com/story/160399

By: Brian

Brian — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 20:48:49 +0000

Shit happens.

Employees First, Costumers Second. Read the book.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 17:34:25 +0000

Google used to offer some amount of support for its AdWords advertisers, lately it has offered only limited support. I recently had a site banned from Google AdWords for no specific reason. When I called them to ask why there was no specific answer. The boards at Webmaster World are filled with stories of sites that have been banned from Google AdWords for no reason in the past year with devastating results for the owners of the sites.
Google deserves an F. They crow about their commitment to users, but for the customers who pay ALL of their bills – AdWords advertisers, Google treats us like dirt.

By: Tatyan

Tatyan — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 17:24:56 +0000

Thats so true!! I can’t tell you how many times I needed to contact somebody from google and all they do is redirect you to their FAQ. Itso frustrating…

By: earlpearl

earlpearl — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 16:39:58 +0000

Using the BBB measurement to describe Google’s lack of responsiveness is simply a simple yet dramatic way to describe the phenomena that Google uniquely and often doesn’t respond to customer service issues of various types. Whether one likes or doesn’t like BBB is not the issue.

Whether Google joined or doesn’t join BBB is not the issue.

I’ve attempted to get answers from Google on problems in both the Google Places and Google Adwords areas. At times I’ve asked probing questions. Yup….I’m trying to get them to help me understand how things work.

I haven’t gotten responses on those questions.

On the other hand, I have a business that is currently dealing with a residual issue in Google Places. After an initial set of comments weeks have gone by without a comment from a Google staffer. Many businesses have brought up questions. Some businesses continue to suffer from the problems. Mine is one of them. All these unanswered questions leave businesses in a dark hole of not knowing and possibly having bad or erroneous information being distributed to the public.

Frankly Google Places has a lot of bells and whistles. At the minimum though it should be able to distribute basic information to the public that mirrors what White Pages and yellow pages does and did.

It should provide basic Name, Phone Number, and address information. In this digital age it should provide a URL and email (not every record/business has a website)

It should be required to get that right and communicate to businesses when its wrong. When it is wrong it should fix it quickly. It actually manages to fix those things quickly when the error starts to become embarrassing.

An acknowledgement with regard to fixing the problems would be appropriate.

In this day and age the only entity that seemingly doesn’t communicate at all, as far as I know, is North Korea. Not exactly a great example or model for communicating IMHO.