From Blooms to Blues with Blue dart

Update: Google has recently notified all Indian publishers of the delay.

Not a single Indian AdSesnse publisher has received payment for this month as I write this. What happened? There’s been a recent development with regards to the AdSense payment procedure  for Indian publishers. Google had the “Secure Express Delivery” option which employed DHL services to send the payments. Blue Dart is the Indian domentic carrier for DHL. For this reason Google decided to cut off the fee on “Secure Express Delivery” option by switching to Blue Dart from DHL. Since it’s free, all the publishers not opted for the “Secured Express Delivery” also get to receive payments via Blue Dart. So far so good. Those not opted for “Secure Express Delivery” get a premium service and those paying $25 for Secure Express Delivery get the same service for free. But then trouble sets in.

Payments sent via DHL arrived between 1st to 3rd of every month. Delivery could be tracked by the tracking number provided by AdSense. You paid $25 for it and you got what you paid for. For those not opted for the Secure Express Delivery used to get it by post which used to arrive between 10th to 25th of every month – which was a lax service. Sometimes the checks went missing or just delayed beyond expectations. The new payment policy by Google was welcomed by everyone but only till they realised that this time the courier service has not been as swift as DHL’s. It’s been the 6th day of the month and 8 days after the payment shows sent by Google and not a single Indian publisher has confirmed receit of payment. But that’s not the end of troubles. Here’s a few things which have been disturbing Indian publishers:-

• Lack of choice: - Those who are willing to pay for a premium service have been downgraded and devoid of their choice to opt for “Secure Express Delivery”. This is sad and disappointing as many argue that this is a step in the reverse direction – instead of providing more options to the end-user the all-wise people forced their choice to all Indian publishers assuming and choosing for them what they thought was right.
• No Tracking Number: - The official statement is that the tracking number may be available by the 15th of every month. Oops… we thought tracking numbers come in handy to track packages in transit. Are we expecting this much delay in delivery to using the tracking number? And if the package arrives sooner what is the utility of the tracking number? This beats logic… when you ship a package you are provided with a tracking mumber to track it. If the payment has been sent (as publishers’ AdSense account shows the date of 28th of the last month) why is there no tracking number?
• No Accountability: - No one knows what’s up. Blue Dart requests tracking number. Publishers don’t have it. Google may provide it but only by 15th of the month.

While the blues are not so blue for the publishers used to receiving payment by snail mail, those who opted for “Secure Express Delivery” are seriously hit. Mostly these are the publishers who get considerable amount via AdSense that they has chosen a premium service. And mostly they are full-time into this. Those who received it by regular post mostly didn’t get paid huge sums and some didn’t even qualify for a payment every month. Theys publishers are mostly dependent on a second/primary job for their earnings. So those hit are hit hard and those not hit don’t really mind. Did you receive your payments this month? What do you have to say about this change?