This Adcenter Bug Puts SEMs at Financial Risk, Halts Accounts

To those of you with Adcenter master accounts which contain multiple “sub accounts” you should know about� a glitch that can put you in a pinch with all of your accounts off-line - and YOU in a financial pinch.

If any one of your sub-accounts’ credit cards expire or get declined they’ll all be put� on “account hold” even though each sub-account has its own credit card number.� Last Summer, Microsoft told me a fix was in the works. But yesterday, after it happened to me for the third time� the Microsoft rep called it a “feature” that “protected” client accounts� (I drilled, but couldn’t get� any sensible explanation of how.)�

When this happened, in each case, there were no email notifications sent (I have “microsoft.com” whitelisted) so, the only way that you’ll know is by a sudden removal of your Adcenter traffic.� Furthermore, there is no indicator in the accounts list on Adcenter to show you which account has the credit card glitch.� You have to check inside each accounts billing list activity to see it.� � Microsoft told me they had “a few problems” with outgoing card notifications.� Oh.. kay…

How could SEMs be stuck holding the bag here?�

If you end up with a deadbeat client with an open balance and a bad card, you could get stuck with having to pay it yourself to clear up the account and get your other clients back on-line!� Microsoft won’t unlock the other accounts until ALL accounts are cleared up.�

For me it was no big deal, I only had a few clustered together, and it was a simple expiration date issue tat was cleared up right away, but I run hundreds of thousands of dollars through pay-click campaigns and this could be a disaster if they had been grouped in a bigger way and the balance was higher.� (Account grouping is very tempting for a time-strapped SEM wanting to avoid repeated log-ins.)

I asked Microsoft if they could break apart my accounts for me and they wouldn’t, saying I’d need to create them all from scratch and they were really “sorry I’d lose all my historical data.”� At this point I have little choice.

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