A Tale of Google, Foolishness, and the MCC

I'm currently managing several Adwords accounts and it was about dang time to set up my own My Client Center. Google's My Client Center is a wonderful interface that allows you to manage several independent Adwords accounts in one place. Hey, I've already got an Adwords campaign set up for EJM Designs, so how hard could that be?

Yeah.

Turns out that if you have an Adwords account associated with a Google Account, you can't use that account to create an MMC. So along with my personal Gmail and my professional Gmail and my site running through Google Apps email, I was forced to create an entirely new account to handle my MMC.

Okay, I understand that. It's not ideal in any sense, but if that's how they're driving the bus, that's how they're driving the bus.

But then I tried to adjoin an existing account I was managing to my MCC. And I got a message to the effect: In order to link this account to your MMC, you will have to Contact Us. Hrm?

So I emailed and contacted them and about 4 days later got this back:

Hello Eric,

[sic] for emailing me to link a client account (Customer ID xxx) to your MCC (xxx). You weren't able to link the accounts because the would-be client account is using a beta billing interface, which makes it unable to be managed by an MCC. The new interface is being tested on just a limited number of new accounts, and we're working to give them full functionality as soon as possible. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, and I wanted to offer you a couple of options. Please reply to this email and let me know which you'd prefer.

OPTION 1: You can create a new account through the link in your My Client Center

...

OPTION 2: Ask us to move this client account to the previous billing interface

...

Please let me know which option you'd like to take, and we'll continue from there.

Thanks for your understanding.

Sincerely,

[CSR] B.
The Google AdWords Team

(I picked option 2 because I'm not reinventing an already well-oiled wheel.)

But what? When I initially created the account, there was no mention of "Hey, we're testing a new Billing Interface!"


So this post is not intended to poo-poo the Google that I know and love, just to bring some of those more interesting glitches and hoops to light so when you're about to do the same thing, you don't wonder why something didn't work or get fired up about WTF is going on.


Short version: Have Adwords? Don't try to add MCC to that account, and always add new accounts through your MMC to guarantee compatibility.


Oh, and I guess this came to light last year, but Google Adwords is not supported on the Opera Browser. Looks like all other Google applications are fine, but just not Adwords. Again: weird.


So what are your thoughts about my tale? Have you run into this? Do you have any other advice for others, your own warnings, so to speak?