Things Change..

I have 2 rather large accounts with them, with several million keywords. These campaigns have been live since early/mid 2006 and have run with only minor glitches. The campaigns generate in the range of $40K-$60K revenue monthly, and have been consistent performers.

A little over a month ago, Adcenter's Bot decided that my landing page content was not relevant to any of my keywords and started rejecting all my keywords in these campaigns which essentially took my account offline, it started slowly with about a 30-40% drop to eventually about a 98% drop in traffic, and revenue. They admitted that it was an error and all keywords should be approved.

When I explained to the reps how much revenue I was losing I was given the standard, " we apologize for the inconvenience" line and also had it mentioned that most advertisers use other advertising services as well as if losing this revenue shouldn't be a big deal.

First I am a small business owner and losing $20K-$40K per month IS a big deal, and it's not for you to know or judge what other advertising I do use or should use. For this campaign I chose to use you and you are apparently unable to deliver.

Getting to the point. I have contacted Adcenter virtually every single business day for over 4 weeks now, Constantly getting the same reply that the appeals were being worked on.

The first support person I dealt with told me they would keep me updated daily. Daily lasted for about 2 days and then I never heard from them again. I finally got a second person to handle my case and I will say this person has kept me updated as promised on a daily basis, the only problem is, after 1 month NOTHING has been done on this. I keep being told it is in the hands of editorial, it has been assigned to higher management, they are having problems pulling rejection reports, They are overworked, they have a lot of advertisers having the same problem. etc, etc.. Blah Blah Blah

So as of this weekend I went in and modified my ads to see if I could get my campaigns back online, and within a few hours was able to get almost 2 million keywords back online, something Adcenter couldn't do in 1 month. Now the keywords are again starting to be rejected, so when I called today, essentially I was told that because I modified things we have to start over and I should be patient.

Patient? ADcenter, you had 1 MONTH and did nothing except pass things on to someone else, Nothing was done in a month.

I don't want to hear how you are having crawler issues, or how overworked your editorial department is. I don't want to be told that because of what I DID, that you know have to start over.. start over? From what? You accomplished nothing in a month. When I asked exactly what actions had been done to resolve this in a the past month I was given a non answer.

I was asked to patient. I have been very patient and very polite. You had 1 Month and failed.

The best answer I was given was that you were having trouble pulling up rejection reports due to the large volume of my keywords. If you can't handle the large volume, don't accept it. Now I'm told that you have to wait for the keywords to again get clicked so they will be rejected again so editorial can then pull up a fresh rejection report which they weren't able to do in the first place. What a convoluted system you have.

I was given 2 ($200) credits during this month and was told that very few other advertisers were given credits. Either they didn't ask or I don't believe you.

I was also told that since I went in and modified my ads to get them back online, no more credits would be given for this issue, since I am making your job harder. ( Not good PR Adcenter) Putting the blame on the advertiser for your inability to get something resolved, not a smart move.

I constantly asked for a time frame as to when the problem may be resolved and was always told you couldn't provide one.. until today, when after telling your support how I brought my ads online was told that I shouldn't have done that because they would have had a resolution within a week, good timing ADcenter.. and how convenient for you to now have a time frame.

I was told that the editorial person who is working my case actually came in on their own time (Boo hoo) Saturday to specifically work my case and was told they worked "millions" of keywords, though their is no evidence to support this.

I also want to add, that I was told by Adcenter support that I should apply for your premium Adcenter support service which I did, a couple months back, so what happened, you are obviously outsourcing the front end of this process as my response was from someone working for Kelly services, who didn't even know the parameters of the program she was supposed to be representing. I spend a good 5 figures a month with ADcenter and was told that I needed a monthly spend of 6 figures to qualify. This is bogus, as the spend amount is $10K per month, your person then responded and wanted to know how much I spend with Google and Yahoo each month. Here's the answer. None of your D*N* business. Be concerned with how much I spend with you.

I then received a followup from someone who appeared to actually work for Microsoft telling me to ignore what I had already been sent , well, I replied, and to this date not a single followup

Adcenter, You have MAJOR issues, I can't speak for others but you are going to lose this customer real soon.

The quality of your service isn't judged by how things are going when their are no problems, it's judged by how you respond when their are problems and you are failing MISERABLY.

You have 1 VERY unhappy customer right now, I gave you 1 full month to try and resolve this, being patient and polite. You have run out of time and I have run out of patience.

[edited by: Shadoze at 5:51 pm (utc) on Feb. 19, 2007]