The first week I was charged $101 for the adwords advertising. This wasn't so bad I thought -- let it run and see if I get any results.
The second week I was charged $57, $97, $53, $72, then .... $214. I started getting worried ... the next day it was $390. I paniced and contacted Google suggesting that perhaps a competitor was running up my account on purpose. I opened an investigation on malicious clicks. Of course, this took several days, so by the time I heard from the results, I had been charged: $528, then $566. They said that they could find no evidence of malicious clicks. I told them that I was getting no results -- only about two leads so far. I was doing better through Yahoo at 1/10th the price.

I immediately logged into Google and stopped my account. I cancelled the account on 10/18 and paused my account (I thought). After cancelling, I continued to get charges. I was OK with the first charge after cancellation since I figured there might be some lag -- $553. However, then I got an additional charge of $415 posted to my credit card on 11/11 -- about 3 weeks after I had cancelled the account, I lodged a protest.

Google claims that these charges were legitimate -- resulting from "... accrued charges for legitimate advertising activity
between October 12th and October 18th while your campaign was active." and that this was agreed to in my original agreement for Adwords.

I still believe one of my competitors was maliciously clicking to drive me off of advertising, but, of course, I can't prove that. However, I do not feel that I should have to pay the remaining $415 and protested this amount on my credit card.

Now Google is threatening to turn my account over to collection. What recourse do I have --- Google is Google and therefore they are right?

My company is a very small one-person company. I cannot afford big legal fees to fight this. What can I do?

Ex-Adwords user
spelhank@centurytel.net