Company trying to sell client back their own GMB?

[coachmarino]

A company I am representing hired one of those GMB farms to manage their presence, which obviously failed, so they hired me. But now the other company won't relinquish the listing! They are trying to sell it my client! They did set it up...but obviously they are lying to my client because they are telling him they 'paid for it.'

What is the recourse here?

 

[PKLilikoi]

I'd remind that company of Google Guidelines .

Under Ownership within that article, you will notice quite a few guidelines but one specific one stands out.

• Always respond to management access requests promptly, and always transfer listing ownership to the business owner immediately upon request. Authorized representatives must, whenever possible, encourage the business owner to create an account, own the listing, and add authorized representatives as managers. Learn more about transferring ownership. Failure to adhere to these policies may result in a suspension for the listing and/or account.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

You can just request access to it and there's no way they can stop it. They can deny access but you can then verify it without them. Honestly, I've never had to do that but I'm guessing you'd need to go through business support to do it.

You might also let that company know what they're doing is in violation of Google's TOS. And you will talk to support to ultimately have the listing given over to you guys. And if they don't release the listing, when you talk to support you will explain the issue and let Google know what they are doing. I would also tell them you will post any written evidence (emails exchanged) and it is possible Google would take action on their GMB account, resulting in suspensions or access removals. While I don't know this is true, GMB support does crazy things sometimes. This was awhile ago but I called in about 1 listing and the rep started poking around in my other listings and asking questions. She then wanted to take action on a completely different listing. Again, awhile ago, and maybe I'm not remembering clearly, but crazier things have happened.

If you lay all of that out they may just let the listing go, which would be the easiest thing. Just let them know all of that, request access through business.google.com and let them know they should approve it lest you escalate the matter to Google themselves.

Good luck!

 

[georgenenni]

We successfully help a large automotive dealer group wrestle back several locations. A former employee was asking for six figures to hand over admin rights. We used GMB support, and used legal trigger language such as "causing confusion in the marketplace", "materially harming our brand" as the dealer could not respond to reviews, adjust hours of operation, etc. Within 3 weeks it was resolved for $0.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

We successfully help a large automotive dealer group wrestle back several locations. A former employee was asking for six figures to hand over admin rights. We used GMB support, and used legal trigger language such as "causing confusion in the marketplace", "materially harming our brand" as the dealer could not respond to reviews, adjust hours of operation, etc. Within 3 weeks it was resolved for $0.

That is outrageous. Glad you guys got it worked out.