google, google checkout and social networking

firstly, I like google, all my websites email goes through googlemail servers and it does a pretty good job at sifting out the crap, google calendar runs my work and private life with a neatness and easiness that is just a pleasure to use, and I have a G1 HTC googlephone that I just love

This particular issue started late last years, a couple of days after christmas, when my google checkout account was somehow accessed by someone, somewhere, with a liking for online games, and I was taken for a couple of hundred GBP. The google checkout folks sorted that fairly flawlessly, after which I didn't need google checkout again until a week or two ago, when I got my G1 phone, to buy apps in the Android Market (can only use google checkout to pay as it's integrated).

Google checkout was insisting that due to the fraudulent activity (as above, all sorted out by now) they needed to see some photo ID and address ID such as a utility bill, which is a bit of a problem, most of my bills are 'paperless' and so done online, those that are not are in my partners name... so I sent google checkout a scan of my drivers licence (which has my address on it) and my passport, explaining the issue with the utility bills, there response was 'no fella, you must play by our rules, we are google!' or words to that effect...

I replied again submitting the passport and (ok, dumbass didn't think of this before) a screenshot of my mobile phone bill as viewed online, the only one of my bills that has an address on. Their reply was 'no fella, you must play by our rules, we are google!' seeing a bit of a theme here...

So I tried to phone them (and noticed their address in London SE1 and contemplated a 30 minute bus ride followed by some ranting), their phone number just says 'for this email here, for this email some other place', thanks for that voice-actor-lady.

Frustrated, pissed off and really wanting to try a couple of $0.99 apps for my phone, I posted a rant on Twitter.

There are some nice tools for twitter, and for google, that will email you when someone somewhere mentions, something, anything, I have it watching for my book titles being talked about and suchlike, guess what google watches for.....

20 minutes later I get an email, my google checkout is active again.

Now I'm not saying that google did pick up my rant, and I'm not saying that my rant was in any way connected to my checkout account being reinstated, but, erm, nothing else changed in that timeframe.

And in the mail today, which I finally caught up with after a postal strike in London and being away for a couple of days, two letters from google, one to me personally and one to one of my companies with some google adwords vouchers in.

Now again I'm not making any assumptions, I'm sure they sent adwords vouchers to everyone.

But cheers, Loving this social networking deal...

and I'm 100% sure google are going to see this blog, what with it mentioning their name a few times and they own blogger.com and blogspot, so hey google! nice work sorting that out for me, and I'd love a free t-shirt or bag or something, I'd even use them for work and stuff! honest!