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Auto-import reactivated paused campaigns - same pattern as multiple existing threads, refund declined

Rami 0 Reputation points
2026-05-04T05:00:34.1533333+00:00

I am posting to add another data point to what appears to be a recurring, documented issue with Microsoft Advertising's Google Ads auto-import.

We received a first invoice for campaigns we hadn't knowingly activated. Assuming the issue was a misconfiguration on our end, we paid the invoice in good faith, manually paused all campaigns on February 7, 2026, and considered the matter closed.

It then happened again. And again. Two further invoices arrived across the next two billing cycles.

The Cause: The Google Ads auto-import (probably set up during onboarding, never knowingly configured as a permanent daily sync) had silently created and reactivated the campaigns each time. The import also pulled in the Google Ads budget, which was significantly higher than any budget we had ever set on the Microsoft Ads side. Across the three billing cycles the campaigns generated zero leads.

So we now have three invoices in total. We paid the first one, assuming it was our setup mistake. The two we are disputing — totaling ~€800 — came afterwards, for spend on campaigns we had explicitly paused.

We have contacted support, got a full chat investigation that confirmed in writing the import was the cause of the reactivation. The agent filed a refund request on our behalf. Refund was then declined twice by Billing on the grounds that the spend is "valid" and the behavior is "expected." Request to escalate to a Billing supervisor was denied with the statement that supervisors are "not customer-facing."

There are multiple existing threads describing exactly this pattern, going back years:

My questions to the community and any Microsoft staff reading:

  1. Why does pausing a campaign in the UI not also pause the import that controls it? This is not surfaced anywhere in the campaign view.
  2. Has anyone here successfully escalated this past a "Support Specialist" to actually get a refund?

Happy to provide SR# privately to any official Microsoft staff who can review the case.

Microsoft Advertising | Billing and payments | Billing queries
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  1. Q&A Assist
    2026-05-04T05:01:01.0633333+00:00
    AI generated content. This question contains an answer created with AI from Q&A Assist. Learn more
    1. Pausing a campaign in the Microsoft Advertising UI does not automatically pause or change the configuration of a Google Ads auto‑import job because imports are managed as a separate, higher‑level synchronization process. The import job is configured with its own options (for example, how to handle new or existing campaigns, budgets, and statuses) via the Google Ads Import feature and, in API scenarios, via the GoogleImportOption object. By design, Microsoft Advertising “will import most supported campaigns, ads, targets, ad extensions, and other settings by default,” and “as needed you can exclude an entity or otherwise customize the import” using those options, but the import itself is not implicitly disabled when a campaign is paused in the UI.

    The documentation also notes that there is no option to exclude future supported entities from scheduled imports and that most boolean import options default to true unless explicitly set otherwise. This reflects the general model: the import job continues to run according to its schedule and rules until the import configuration itself is changed or disabled; pausing a campaign in the UI only affects the current state of that campaign, not the behavior of the import job that may later overwrite that state.

    1. For escalation and refunds, the documented path is through Microsoft Advertising billing and finance support rather than through the product UI or forums. For billing disputes and adjustments (including those related to traffic or spend), guidance is to:
    • Use the Microsoft Advertising Customer Support Portal and open a case under the appropriate billing/finance category (for example, “Client finance” → “Other billing and financial requests”).
    • For broader billing issues (such as netting, multiple invoices, or questions about how charges are applied), the same portal and categories are used, and Client Finance is the team that reviews and determines amounts to be paid or adjusted.

    The available documentation does not describe a separate, public escalation path beyond working with support and Client Finance via the Microsoft Advertising Customer Support Portal, nor does it document any guarantee of refunds when spend is considered “valid” under the configured behavior (such as expected import behavior). Any exception handling or supervisor review would be internal to those support and finance workflows.

    References:

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