Photo: sineadgleeson.com
I got a few letters back this week. The first one was a response to my letter on Day 65 to House of Cards creator Beau Willimon. I use the word response pretty liberally. I actually heard from Netflix. It was a form letter thanking me for being such a huge fan of Netflix – which isn’t exactly true, I’m fairly indifferent to Netflix. My letter was to Mr. Willimon and had no reference to me being a fan of their service. I’m sure Mr. Willimon will be writing back shortly – after all I did tweet at him.
Another letter was from my Aunt Kay who I wrote to on Day 52. She thanked me for my letter to her and let me know that she would probably be back in DC in the next couple of weeks. That’s great – I always enjoy spending time with her.
Finally I got a letter from my friend Aimee from Day 5 thanking me for my handwritten letter and absurdly late wedding gift. You may recall that I couldn’t remember whether or not I had sent them a gift or not for their 2013 wedding! Yep, I was really late…more than Emily Post’s “you’ve got a year” advice.
So all in all it was a good week. Well, with the exception of an irritating email from Google Adsense that informed me that they were terminating my agreement with them due to a violation of their terms and guidelines and that I was banned for life. Furthermore, they reneged on their promise to pay me for allowing companies to advertise on my blog. It’s not a ton of money – trust me I’m not quitting my day job – but it would have helped offset the cost of postage, stationery, etc. They won’t even tell me how I violated their terms and guidelines – that’s the most annoying part. In response to my appeal, they just offered some snooze-inducing stock language that says they’d love to tell me why they’ve taken this action against me BUT….they can’t:
We understand that you may want more information about your account activity, however, in order to protect our proprietary detection systems, we are unable to provide further details. Thank you for understanding.
Well, thanks for nothing Google. And shame on you. I expected more from a company who touts the phrase “Don’t Be Evil” as their motto and states their mission as, “facilitating access to information for the entire world” – well, unless of course that information is about Google themselves. I will be looking for other advertising ideas to help offset the costs of the website. If you have any suggestions of reputable, honest (i.e. won’t keep my money!) marketing partners – drop me a note.