Adwords Suspended Me, Is This A LIFE Sentence? Please help!

Even after a year this is still a sore subject for me.

A year ago, I was trying to get started on the internet marketing gig and planned on promoting my site using Google AdWords. From day one, my ads never ran. I thought it was an error with my budget because the error message I kept getting was that I hadn't adequately funded the campaign. My site was an experiment to test demand for a product, so I upped the budget to $500/day to test demand for 2 days.

After a week of my ads not running, I contacted Google support to figure out what was going on. The online support person couldn't help me (but she narrowed down that it wasn't the budget), so she referred my case to a team of "specialists" who analyzed my site and campaign for 3 days. At the end of 3 days I got a notice that I was permanently suspended with no explanation other than I had violated their terms of service. If it took the "specialists" 3 days to figure out how I had violated the TOS, how the heck was I as a newbie supposed to know what I had done to violate the TOS. I spent a week scrubbing my campaign and the TOS to figure out where I had erred, and ended up giving up in frustration.

I'm actually still pissed at Google to this day about how I was treated by the support staff after they decided to suspend my account. I was summarily treated as a diseased leper, given the same party line ("you have violated the TOS and you can never run with us again"), and shown the door, my newbie status notwithstanding. One of the several support folks I spoke with (as I was passed around and made someone else's problem) told me how bad she felt about my situation but per the party line couldn't help me. It must be a company policy to defend against fraud, but they make it hard for new folks who want to do the right thing and play by the rules.

Apparently I'm not the only person this has happened to (especially given this thread), as I discovered a disturbing number of forum posts, e-mails, and articles about newbies being banned and not being told what they did other than "You've violated the TOS and can never run with us again."

I've used Yahoo! Search Marketing, and not only was their support staff eager to please, they were very helpful and supportive of my experiment. And, I think it's because Yahoo! has the sense to realize that when you take time to help your customers (especially newbies willing to throw down some $'s) and not just indiscriminately ban them, you both come out winners - the customer with his/her product, and Yahoo! with the ad revenue.

Personally, I'm not sure if it's worth jumping through the hoops of getting a new credit card/SSN/address/whatever just to work with Google again. While it's highly improbable I'll ever achieve sufficient wealth and power to make Google feel my pain for how I was treated, I'm officially giving them the finger when it comes to PPC advertising. It hurts sometimes knowing I could probably grow my businesses faster with Google than with Yahoo!, but a year later I'm still standing on principle.