Google Ads Gave This Advertiser a Credit, Then Took It Back a Month Later

TL;DR: PPC consultant David Melamed has documented at least two cases of Google Ads promotional credits getting marked “Invalidated” after advertisers already spent the qualifying amount, in one case more than a month later. Google’s ads liaison Ginny Marvin acknowledged the reports but gave no explanation and no fix. There’s currently no clear appeals process for advertisers caught by this.

Spend the money, then lose the reward

Here’s the part that should bother anyone running paid search campaigns. One advertiser spent $3,200 specifically to qualify for a matching $3,200 promotional credit, exactly as the offer described. More than a month later, that credit got marked invalidated. No warning beforehand, no clear explanation after. Just gone, with the original spend already locked in and non-refundable.

A second case involved a new advertiser whose credit got invalidated because their account’s billing profile had initially been set up under a manager account. That’s a technical wrinkle most small business owners would have no way of anticipating before it cost them money.

Why this isn’t just an annoying glitch

David Melamed, the PPC consultant who surfaced both cases, made the key point plainly: advertisers “likely wouldn’t have spent the first $3,200 without the promotional offer.” That’s the whole mechanism these credits are built around. Google dangles a match to get businesses to spend more than they otherwise would, particularly newer advertisers still testing whether paid search works for them. If the credit gets pulled after the spend already happened, the advertiser is out real money they wouldn’t have committed to spending in the first place.

And once that money’s spent, there’s no walking it back. You can’t un-spend an ad budget. The credit is the only part of the equation that’s reversible, and Google’s the one holding that lever.

Google’s response so far: acknowledgment, nothing more

Ginny Marvin, who handles public communication for Google Ads, responded to Melamed’s report with a fairly minimal acknowledgment: “Thank you for bringing this to our attention, David. I’ve passed this along to the team.” No timeline for a fix. No explanation of what’s actually causing credits to get invalidated after the fact. No mention of whether affected advertisers will be made whole.

That kind of response might be standard practice for isolated bugs, but promotional credits touch real advertiser budgets, not just a reporting dashboard glitch. The bar for “we’ve passed it along” should probably be higher here.

No appeals process worth mentioning

Maybe the most frustrating detail in all of this: there’s no clear, documented way for an advertiser to dispute an invalidated credit. If you’re a small business that got burned by this, your options right now are basically limited to posting publicly and hoping someone at Google notices, which is exactly what happened in these two documented cases. That’s not a real process. That’s luck.

What advertisers should do in the meantime

If you’re currently working toward a Google Ads promotional credit, screenshot everything. The offer terms, your spend confirmation, the credit appearing in your account, all of it, dated and saved somewhere outside Google’s own dashboard. It won’t guarantee you get the credit honored if something goes sideways, but it gives you something concrete to point to if you end up needing to escalate a support case or go public the way Melamed’s clients did.

Bottom Line: Promotional credits are supposed to be the safe part of the advertiser-Google relationship, the reward for spend you’ve already locked in. Right now that safety doesn’t seem to actually exist, and until Google explains what’s going wrong and fixes the appeals gap, advertisers chasing these offers are taking on more risk than the fine print suggests.