For what it is worth, I have noticed that when selecting the amount you want to bid on keywords there is a bug in that after several seconds - and I mean several seconds, it automatically fills in the box with the amount you would have to bid to place yourself in number one position

I've noticed the same thing. I've made it a habit to go back after I've saved the order and sort the order by bid amount (both high to low and low to high) to make sure I don't have any incorrect bids in there.

Over a month now. Same exact response every time I call - "We're still looking into it"

I sympathize, but I don't think this is MSN's fault. You entered the wrong number because you were in a hurry and you got jypped. Trying to explain this as a result of some unknown bug in the system for that one keyword is beyond my cannon.

[url]I sympathize, but I don't think this is MSN's fault. You entered the wrong number because you were in a hurry and you got jypped. Trying to explain this as a result of some unknown bug in the system for that one keyword is beyond my cannon. [/url]

Ispy, even if this were true, it doesn't justify adCenter exceeding his budget.

That said, if you don't believe this system has unknown bugs, I have some great waterfront property in Arizona to sell you.

I guess that would fly if they did not get any additional orders from all that extra traffic.

Well, Ispy, the profit from the orders may not cover the additional costs from the ad. Therefore there is a good reason to want to LIMIT how much you spend both with bids AND budget.

I guess that would fly if they did not get any additional orders from all that extra traffic.

Not to defend anyone but you are assuming all traffic converts at the same rate.

Many adgroups or campaigns are "works in progress" untill you fine tune the traffic, conversions and the cost for each keyword. If you get hit during that fine tuning phase you can very easily not recover your costs due to increased traffic. That is why you put a budget or cap so that you don't get killed if your traffic goes up and turns out to be poorly converting traffic.

Not following a customers daily or monthly budget is very, very serious and should not be tolerated or defended.

The day that this occured, my dedicated PPC manager said that she encountered 3-4 errors every 10 minutes on adcenter, and finally gave up. She is very meticulous - I trust her input more than I trust MSN to properly perform calculations.

On top of that, every time I call tech support regarding the $3,000 they stole from us over a month ago, they politely ask if they can "call me back tomorrow to give me a status update".

Then they NEVER call me back. This has occured over 7 times now.

On top of that, they have NO escalation system, and claim to have NO managers that I can speak with. (On a side note, I am always friendly when I call.. I may be mad, but I'm not stupid!)

Today, we are calling them and remaining on the phone until they resolve our month-old issue of blowing right through our preset budget ($3,000 on a $1,000 monthly budget in 3 days) with an $11/click bug that THEY caused.

MSN will literally have to put us on hold for 8 hours, or hang up on us. I'll let you know what happens.

It's a catch 22, my client want's us to advertise with AD-disaster, but, I can't realistically bill them for the amount of time it takes to manage the account, thus, making it not profitable for me to manage. What do I tell the client is what I'm trying to figure out. We have to bill you 2x what you're making in adcenter to manage your account? Ridiculously frustrated with this joke of an advertising medium.

Among other previous emails, they know there is a problem but refuse to

A; confront it

or

B; totally ignore what is happening as long as the money and new customers evolve on the "scene"

or

C; BOTH!

HERE IS THE CRAP I GET!

This is Kyle from Microsoft adCenter Support.

08/16

We are in the process of resolving the issue and considering your case for a credit. A resolution has taken longer than expected but I assure you that we are drawing on all our resources to resolve this.

I will continue to keep you posted on this ongoing issue and I will definitely follow-up tomorrow. If you have any questions regarding this email please do not hesitate and reference ticket number...

Sincerely,

Kyle
Microsoft adCenter Support

----------------------------------------------------------------------
08/17

This is Kyle from Microsoft adCenter Support.

We are looking into this matter further with the new issue that you brought to our attention. We are currently working to get this resolved.

We greatly appreciate your patience as we address this issue as soon as possible. I will be contacting you back tomorrow. If you have any questions regarding this email please do not hesitate and reference ticket number...

Sincerely,

Kyle
Microsoft adCenter Support

08/21

Good Evening, my name is Malista from Microsoft adCenter support. I am sending you this email to inform you that we are still researching and investigating this issue for you.

We appreciate your time and patience as we work this to resolution for you.

If you have additional adCenter feedback, please submit it via the feedback form: Removed...

If you would like you may also contact us by phone. We can be reached at 1-800-518-5689. Our hours are 6am - 6pm PST, 7 days a week. Microsoft adCenter also contains a complete set of help topics to answer your questions, guide you through tasks, and provide useful tips. Help topics will appear on a narrow pane right beside the Microsoft adCenter page you are viewing. Simply click Help in the upper-right corner of any Microsoft adCenter page.

Thank you for choosing Microsoft adCenter.

Sincerely,

Malista
Microsoft adCenter Support
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That is what I got back on TUESDAY and nothing since!

I could go on with other letters they sent, but whats the point!

As I stated earlier, it is an admitted problem on adcenters part, and they have acknowledged that fact, (in so many words) that their system is screwed, and which they now will not resolve within a reasonable time frame!

This whole fiasco started on the 10th, just after I read rehab guys little horror story but said to mysef;

"This will never happen to ME"

We've paused all of our campaigns as of yesterday. (Of course, we were still charged because there is a 24-48 delay on the pausing mechanism)

Last phone call today, disputing the $3,000 overcharge with Mastercard today if no resolution.

MSN reps have promised no less than 10 times - "can I call you back tomorrow and give you an update?"

Why the heck would you ask this question if you don't intend to do it?

Adcenter credited us back $2,500 today after we paused all of our accounts this weekend and threatened to contact Mastercard to get our money back.

Whether that made a difference or whether it was a coincidence, I don't know.

We're still trying to decide if our ROI is good enough to risk turning our campaigns back on or not. This experience caused us to waste at least 20 hours of time on the phone and email, since MSN would never call us back, even when they made the offer.

I WILL SAY, however, that all of MSN's reps (including adcenter411) were all extremely friendly and acted as if they were concerned. This is the only good point of this whole experience - the people were very courteous.

Excellent news! I'm glad to hear it.

Good for you Rehab, I'm glad you got some final restitution!
As for me I am still waiting. I called sunday and was treated great, but the girl on the phone said they will call back early this week, but still nothing?

I guess it just takes time, but I am still debating carrying on with them after we get this resolved, even though my ROI was excellent!