I noticed a bunch of debits and credits to my credit card yesterday relating to admob. I never initiated these so I feared that my credit card was stolen.

I searched around and saw this link that described my issue. Apparently google has authorization to credit and debit our credit cards at will. They also do not bother to email you to let you know what is going on. And of course, no google customer service.

It also turns out that my debits and credits are not identical as the exchange rates vary and perhaps credit card fees occured. So I am either a bit up or down. Merry fucking christmas google.

Does anybody have a good explanation of how credit card charge limits actually work? I once had Jet Airways mistakenly charge me $30,000 (in two installments of $15,000) on a card that had a limit of $14,000, and while I was unable to use the card afterwards, the original charge should not have been possible in the first place. When I called the bank to complain, all they could say is that it was an "offline" transaction and thus apparently unlimited.

(And yes, I got it reversed eventually, and then had to pick another fight to get them to credit me the difference in exchange rates in the meantime. All this because Jet's shiny new booking engine apparently didn't multithread too well and replaced my $300 tickets with somebody else's... longer version of story here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/other-asian-australian-south-...)

I remember calling my bank one day and hearing that not only was my balance over a billion dollars, but I had a "two day float" of several million dollars. I called back to make sure I had the right number. I did--the amounts were increasing. Unfortunately, by the end of the day whatever it was corrected itself, and I was no longer a Forbes billionaire.

Same issue happened to me, Google responded several hours later with the following email:

""" Dear AdMob Developer,

Last week, we wrote to let you know that on December 19th 2013 we would initiate refunds to you for unused legacy AdMob advertising credits. Today we are writing to let know that between December 19th and 20th we inadvertently processed refunds for more than your unused balance. In some cases, customers will see multiple refund amounts on their bank card statement.

To correct this error, we have reversed these incorrect refunds with corresponding transactions for the same amount(s). These corrections have been processed on December 23rd and December 24th to the same bank card that the initial refund(s) was processed to. This means that you will see one negative and one positive transaction on your card statement for each refund made in error. These transactions will have “GOOGLE*ADMOB” as the description for the credits.

We will be processing the correct refund in early January 2014 for the correct amount owed to you. You will see a separate transaction for this refund amount on your January or February bank card statement.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

If you have any questions about this communication please check out our FAQ’s linked here.

Sincerely, The Google AdMob Team """

I'm unaffected by this as I have never used Admob but I wonder which imbecile at Google thought it was a good idea to mess with payments and push/pull money out of people's bank/Paypal accounts around Christmas holidays?

I feel bad for all those affected knowing that there's virtually no way to get any kind of customer service from Google.

Few days ago Google emailed me saying they have credited all my advertiser balance on admob. But yesterday I noticed a debit of $50 on my credit card from them. I never ever used Admob for advertising but only as a publisher on some of my apps long ago. I can't wait to speak someone to resolve this after holidays. Something is surely messed up with admob.

The biggest issue I have with this is Google's practically non-existent customer service.

Google screwed me over good today. Around Dec 20 admob refunded me $4400 in multiple transactions. then few days later they took $2700. This gave me $1700 refund which looked ok, since I deposited around 200-300K into admob over time. Today I woke up and found a -14K in my BOA account after admob decided to batch rape my account with 120 transactions for around 17K. My Bank of America that gives me a fraud alert every time I make an extra purchase just let them have this, no problem oh Google Gods. I called my bank today and did a claim, they didn't give me temporary credit pending investigation like the usually do because of the amount and the number of transactions, blah blah, and it can take up to 90 days to get my money back. I spend the whole day today trying to figure out how to run my business with no money. I can go on and on about how much $h1t, grief, nerves and money this has caused me, but I don't have time to whine. I'm not the type to sue people, but they are going to pay for this. not even out of principal, the $h1t just got REAL.

Happened with me too,few days back I got a notification about some payment into my account by Google Admob and an email about refund, I thought it must be some unused fund but yesterday I got another notification about google taking it back! I was puzzled that is it my bank account or google's, they seem to be doing whatever they want with it.

Sounds like an awesome way to get some sky miles