Lose Your Google AdWords Account if You Change Payment Options

A Google AdWords advertiser says that he would rather prepay for his Google AdWords rather than have it set up as it is now, with him paying for the ads after the fact. He asks in a Google Groups thread whether it's possible to change the account from post-pay to pre-pay.

AdWordsPro says that it is not possible to do so without closing your account first.

AdWords accounts can't be changed from post-pay to pre-pay billing. If you'd like to switch to the pre-pay option, you will need to close your current AdWords account. Then, you can set-up a new account with the pre-pay billing option that you prefer.
The link below from the Help Center has more details about changing payment options.
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=34103

I have to say that this option is a bit inconvenient for people who maintain huge AdWords campaigns. Would it be possible for the Google AdWords team to make it easy to do without having to close an account and recreate it from scratch?

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

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posted Tamar Weinberg in Google AdWords at July 9, 2007 9:14 AM Comments (7)

Comments

I used to work with a large company spending approximately $1.5M per month on Google. Our dedicated account rep had our account changed from pre-pay to post-pay. If Google can do this, I'm certain they have the ability to change from post-pay to pre-pay. I guess it is only a matter of how many incentive$ they have to do the fix.

Posted by Dan at July 9, 2007 11:14

I have to say that for them to tell you to close your account is pretty absurd and kind of borders on what I would call "horrible customer service".

That said, if you must close your account then I would first download your account using Google AdWords Editor and then open the new account and upload the data using Google AdWords Editor. That should work just fine.

Of course I wouldn't close the old account before the new one's up and running.

Posted by Bill Hartzer at July 9, 2007 15:11

If you close your account… Do you also loose your account history and quality score? Would you see a temporary spike in costs as you rebuild your history and quality score?

Does the same thing happen when you change agencies?

Posted by Hawaii SEO at July 9, 2007 15:52

If you close your account you WILL loose all account history and quality score. This can be painful. On the other hand, when you're struggling with your account now and upgrades don't help anymore, opening a new account could also resolve a lot of problems... (always look on the bright side :)).
Loss of quality score and history can/will even occur when your account is on pause or budgets have depleted!
So keep close track of payment and start a new account if you have to. Adwords editor makes it easy to copy you're old account into a new one.

Posted by Hein at July 10, 2007 04:12

I have the same issue because I need to change my primary credit card to a new one and looks like it is not possible to do. Just wonder who designed and coded so unefficient system? it is just unbelievable!For a such simple thing close account?

Posted by Olena at February 1, 2008 13:04

Or you could just use the Google Adwords Editor found here- www.google.com/adwordseditor
To transfer all you data from one account to another...

Posted by Index Explore at October 8, 2008 16:53

can I annual or monthly budget for google 10 top?
I rather monthly or annual budget instead cpc?

Posted by Dawa at February 6, 2009 00:59

Lose Your Google AdWords Account if You Change Payment Options

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