Google pays £75,000 for a £100 voucher and then charges £150,000: what’s up?

Google experienced a glitch of its AdWords service in the UK. The service mistakenly credited huge sums of money into an unknown number of UK customers' AdWords accounts after they tried to redeem Google’s vouchers at £100.

Pete Williams told that Google mistakenly credited £75,000 into his account after he redeemed the voucher.

"I got one of these and let Google know via their @AdWords twitter account – no response yet. Obviously I've not spent a penny of it, but it appears other people have!" he said.

But that was not the only case because some other users also reported the mess when their accounts were also credited with £75,000.

Williams said the company eventually spotted the sizable accounting error and "finally" charged him £150,000.

Williams told he "still [had] no word from Google on what's going on."

Google provided no official explanation to the situation. Instead it started charging customers with £150,000 that exceeds the amount of £75,000. As a result people were left indebted after all.

Others are getting a small £50 compensation from Google, after the company made a clear hash of its £100 voucher promotion.

"We recently emailed you a credit for £100 of free Google AdWords advertising. Unfortunately, due to a technical issue you will not be able to redeem this credit. Instead, please find below a new AdWords credit giving you a credit of £150. The extra £50 is by way of apology for our error," reads an email sent out to some customers.