What to learn from the mistakes of a Claimed Business Owner

[ErmesT]

On June 19th, I was shopping in one of my favorite malls. Since one of my cats has diabetes, I also had to purchase specific cat food. The pet shop inside the mall didn’t have that food, so I was ready to drive 15km (that’s the problem of living in a village) to find food for him.

It was therefore a great surprise, exiting the Mall, to discover that on that day a new store of one of the largest Italian pet food chains had opened, just across the street.

I was twice happy:
As a pet owner, I had found a convenient store for my needs
As a Local Guide … well, with a quick search I was able to verify that the shop was not in Maps. I added the location, opening hours, phone, website, first photo and first review. In short, a real gold mine.

The problems started on Monday, when the owner …

When the owner claimed the business, you would say. Noo.

Mistake Number 1

The company did not claimed the business, they created a new POI and merged the une created by me as a duplicate. They did it from some office located somewhere in Italy, with no idea about where the place really was. They added a wrong address (Mistake number 2), and the pin was moved a few Km away from the real position.

The merge took more than 20 days to complete. 20 days of total confusion, during which the Pin appeared in two different positions, my review was visible but if I clicked on it I was invited to write a new review, the photos had disappeared.

On July 12 finally my photos and my reviews were back. One of my photos was choose as “the cover photo” and started to gain views but … but the place was in the wrong position

The Fatal Error

As you may know, business chains normally manage the information in GMB through a spreadsheet. In this way they can upload the details about all the shops of the chain in one shot. Periodically they re-upload the database on GMB. If in the database some detail is wrong, it doesn’t matter what changes we do to fix the information in a POI, all the details will be overwritten.

I’ve moved four times the pin to the correct position. Four times my edit was accepted. Four times the business reverted my edit, moving the Pin back in the wrong place

I can only guess what happened now … I can imagine the people (clients, suppliers, services) driving in the wrong place, looking for a business that was not there. I can see in my mind they reporting “the place doesn’t exist”, one, two, three, … dozens of times.

So finally, the place was removed, the reviews disappeared from my profile, and the photos with thousands of views are appearing as related to an “unknown place”

Now someone added a New POI, an empty unclaimed box, with no photos nor reviews

I am curious, so I will track the place, to see what the business will do, and to see id the old place, by request of the Business, will come back again.

However, I have learned a lot from this experience:

• about the merging process
• about the changes reverted by the business
• about the fact that also a claimed business can be removed
• about the fact that the error of a Business Owner can be … a Fatal Error

Do you have any similar experience to share? What did you learned form your mistakes, or the mistakes of a business, about contributing in Maps?

[iorikun301]

Halo, Pak @ErmesT

Kami pernah menjumpai hal yang kurang lebih serupa di kota tempat kami tinggal. Ada sebuah POI yang sudah diklaim bisnis (GMB) tapi ternyata di Google Maps lokasinya terletak di sisi jalan yang berbeda (mestinya ada di sisi Selatan jalan, tetapi di peta tercantum di sisi Utara).

Sebagai Local Guides tentu kami mengusulkan penyuntingan titik lokasi tersebut agar dipindahkan ke lokasi yang benar. Suntingan kami itu pun akhirnya disetujui setelah beberapa hari dan titik lokasi di Google Maps sudah berada di tempat yang tempat.

Tapi, entah untuk alasan apa, berselang beberapa hari kemudian titik POI tersebut kembali ke titik semula yang salah. Kami pun coba menyuntingnya kembali untuk kedua kalinya dan kembali disetujui.

Tapi kejadian ini berulang kembali beberapa waktu kemudian. Titiknya kembali ke tempat yang salah di peta. Karena ini sudah kejadian yang ketiga kalinya kami pun bersikap bodo amat. Kami tidak lagi peduli apakah nanti akan ada pengguna Google Maps yang tersesat karena kesalahan berulang yang seperti ini. Takdir.

[CAAG1959]

Hola @ErmesT si, me pasó como a ti o peor, agregué un lugar (Espacio Cultural), a 45 Kms de mi casa, hasta hice una publicación, que fue elegida viernes atrás por un Googler Moderador, donde hay fotos del lugar, al pie de las mismas, la ubicación, y hasta una reseña del mismo, se colocó el pin correspondiente en Maps. Nadie lo reclamó, nadie sugirió un cambio, nada, hasta ahí todo normal. Bien, buscando en Maps un comercio cercano a casa, veo un pin entre mi casa y un laboratorio vecino. Sorpresa.!!! Era del Espacio Cultural agregado. He intentado varias veces hacer la correspondiente corrección, se aprueba, pero al poco tiempo vuelve a la localización incorrecta.

He llevado el Pin arrastrándolo por el mapa para situarlo donde corresponde, pero vuelve al lugar equivocado.

Seriamente,se qué, prontamente se va a regularizar.

Jocosamente,( , mientras no quede en el lugar correcto, lo tengo de vecino)

Saludos desde Uruguay

[CAAG1959]

@ErmesT Recién me fijé y ahora el marcador está enfrente de mi casa, que también es donde trabajo.

Voy a intentar corregirlo nuevamente.

Saludos.

P.D. acabo de hacer nuevamente la sugerencia del cambio al lugar correcto, esperemos que sea el definitivo.

[TusharSuradkar]

That is a briallinat analyasis and insight @ErmesT

I also highly appreciate your perseverance with that place and the mess that followed with moving, merging and editing the PoI.

A great deal to understand and learning here for those who are still exploring the full potential of Google Maps

[ErmesT]

Thanks for sharing your experience about that “issue” @iorikun301

This is very common with chains, and we have several reports of Local Guides who tried to fix the pin of a listing and, even if the edit was approved, the pin moved back to the wrong position after a few days.

I did it more, I spoke to the people in the counter of the shop, and they called the director. No way, after a few days the pin was back in the wrong place.

[davidhyno]

Hi @ErmesT !

Same thing happened to me years ago with a well-known Fast Food chain: change of management and the new managers have deleted all the photos and reviews of other Maps users! Patience for the cleared photo views, but the one that gave the most nerves and that despite the shop being positioned there for years, the new pointer was a few hundred meters away from the real position! I tried a couple of times to move it to the real position, but then it always returned to the wrong position! I took the trouble both to send an email to the main office and to notify the manager in person: actually after a few weeks everything was back in place. However, these are situations that often happen over the years … new managers (even rightly so) want to start completely from scratch and make sure that the reviews are about their work and not that of the previous owners!

From these situations I learned that it is more effective to contact the business directly than to proceed with the changes in Maps!

Bye,

David

[ErmesT]

I agree @davidhyno , contacting the business may work.

As you can see, after a long series of attempts by @minerva2 and myself, now the bank is on the right position (she contacted the bank).

In other cases, like in the one of my post, the Business do not react, so now a claimed (real) business is no longer in maps

[minerva2]

no, it was absolutely useless to write to the bank, they only replied to me that everything was ok (three times), or that I called their help desk, the only thing that worked was to submit an application again in Google, attaching a photo from the address where it was clearly visible that there was no the bank is not there and the address is fake

@ErmesT @davidhyno

[ErmesT]

Grazie per la conferma, @minerva2 , beh, almeno dal 27 Luglio la banca è ferma nella posizione giusta.

Forse la persona che si occupava di GMB (Google My Business) è in ferie

Comunque aggiornaci se cambia qualcosa.

Nell’esempio del mio post il business non è più in Maps, probabilmente cancellato dopo le segnalazioni degli utenti stufi di andare in un luogo dove non c’era nulla.

[minerva2]

sei sempre spiritoso! si, speriamo che non torna, mi sono stancata a lavorare per loro, tra un pò mi dovranno pure pagare per il tempo che ho speso per sistemare i loro indirizzi

@ErmesT