GOOGLE: GET HUMANS, NOT CLEVER SOFTWARE, TO HANDLE EXCEPTIONAL COMPLAINT CASES!

- An open letter to Google Ghana:

Dear Google Ghana,

I am contacting you, yet again - after not getting a satisfactory resolution of my adsense payment complaint, using Google's complaints system.

I last spoke to a very nice Google Ghana chap sometime last year, about the same issue - who directed me to go to Google, click "my account", and follow the required steps for resolving complaints.


Well, it seems to me that your parent company, Google, assumes that we are all tech-savvy, when in actual fact not all of us are so lucky.

Whiles billions around the world might be, unfortunately I am not one of them - and after being given the run-around by Google's complaint-resolution software, in my bid to get my years of accumulated adsense ad payments paid to me, I am thinking of going public with what I think is a failing of the search Leviathan, your parent company, Google.

I am a journalist and simple organic cocoa farmer, who also blogs - with a worldwide audience, which, though not huge, nonetheless is spread globally, virtual footprint-wise.

My "Ghanapolitics" google-blog was monetised some years ago. Ditto my www.ghanaweb.com "Thoughts of a native" blog: which I unfortunately no longer publish. I forget exactly when the monetisation took place - being a somewhat forgetful old man who is nearing 60.

In all those years, I have not been paid for any of the adverts appearing on my blog - although I do admit that I am not a very practical fellow, when it comes to such things: and consequently have not been as proactive in chasing payments as I should have been.

Actually, it has a lot to do with the fact that the side of my brain that processes information to do with following instructional manuals and the like, is rather retarded.

Simply put, it just doesn't function - and as a result, alas, I am unable to follow written instructions of any sort in instructional manuals, etc.

Please do try and find a way to get your parent company, Google, to get a human being from their support team, to help - by taking me through the necessary steps required to get paid what I am owed.

Its not a huge amount, I know - but it is mine, nonetheless: and in austere times, every little bit helps, especially if like an old fool like me, you aren't a corrupt and crooked journalist, in a nation in which a majority of media professionals are on the make and on the take, and firmly in the pockets of our ruling elites.

But I digress - so back to the topic: What can Google Ghana do to help me get paid what I am owed by your parent company for the adsense advertisements that appear on my "Ghanapolitics"Google blog?

Above all, and finally, would it not help individuals like me, if your parent company, Google, made sure, that instead of clever computer software being the intermediary, in the interface between user and Google, there were actual human employees, to help resolve cases of complaints of an exceptional nature, like mine?

Many thanks in advance for your help - and I do hope that as a result of Google Ghana's intervention, there will be a positive outcome to all this.

Yours faithfully,

Kofi Thompson.

Tel: + 233 (0) 27 745 3109.