I came across an…unusual…response to an edit I recently submitted, and was curious if this is a regular occurrence, or perhaps a one-time glitch. In an attempt to update the CATEGORY of this POI (Point of Interest) I recieved a response stating that my edit wasn’t applied, because “Google isn’t accepting edits to this location’s phone number…”
I am fully aware of the Temporary product changes in Maps during Covid-19, and I’m not bemoaning my lack of points applied for this edit. I’m simply curious about the link between categories and phone numbers within the Google Local Guides program…
I want to let you know that I’ve moved your post out of the spam and it is now visible publicly. Our filters are sensitive and running 24/7 and sometime also a legitimate message can be caught by the filter, apologies for that.
About your question, thank you for reaching out us. That’s indeed a very strange message, have you just edited the category and what was the previous category before you suggested Financial consultant?
I’m tagging here @JanVanHaver , being our edits master perhaps he has an explanation for this message.
This is extremely interesting @SamanthaSheehy . I have no explanation for it at the moment, as I have never seen anything like it before. I do have 2 additional questions:
Did you sign up to be beta tester?
Did you edit the phone number or only the category?
@JanVanHaver Was there ever any resolution to this issue? I’m finding that I’m having the same issue as @SamanthaSheehy where I suggested to change the category from financial institution to bank. Or yesterday when I suggested that another location be changed from a category of credit union to bank. In these instances “bank” is clearly in the name of the places. I tried suggesting the edit on both my phone and my desktop with the same message, “Google isn’t accepting edits to this location’s phone number.”
@Sleuther@SamanthaSheehy well actually I did find out more on this topic since then. It turns out that most edits to banks and financial institutions are almost always resulting in a ‘Not applied’. The only type of edit I have been able to make to them is moving the pin location. When I attempt to make e.g. a correction to the category of a POI that is incorrectly categorized as bank, this never works.
The background story is that there has been a huge problem is some countries where criminals changed the phone number of bank POIs on Google Maps, which resulted in customers of those bank than calling the criminals when they thought they were calling their bank… and getting ripped off by the criminals! So that is one of the most striking examples of abuse of the power that Google gives to Maps users. Google’s response: make edits to banks very hard (especially telephone number edits).
@JanVanHaver Thanks for the reply. That’s unfortunate but completely understandable on Google’s part. So basically if I see a bank mislabeled as a financial institution, just ignore it as it’s a more trivial edit? And the same applies for other trivial edits to banks, credit unions, etc.?
That is indeed interesting @JanVanHaver . I actually work at a bank and our office changed location a few months ago. And we have been scratching our heads not being able to add the place on maps, getting this same phone number error.
Well @amitsk if the bank is claimed on Maps, they should be able to adapt the info within the Google My Business program. With a local guides account it will not be possible.
The claiming will need to be done by the HQ, I guess.
I know this post is a little old now but has anything changed regarding updating the information financial institutions. I completely understand the reasoning behind making things difficult to update, but this does seem to be unhelpful and not in the least bit transparent.
This seems to raise a couple of ‘obvious?’ issues:
What checks are carried out on new listings of financial institute listings?
There should be clearer customised error messages?
How do you actually correct details that are incorrect or legitimately need updating? You made an educated guess in the last answer to @amitsk but there is no confirmation whether this is correct. Plus how do you prove a communication is actually from ‘HQ’
To my knowledge @nigelfreeney there has not been a change. Edits to banks can’t be done by local guides. The business owner needs to do it by claiming the business and then using the possibilities offered in the Google Business Profile.
