Spoke
Lead credits and disputes
You pay for bad leads unless they are credited, which makes this the page that decides whether the channel works. The process changed recently and the sources disagree, so this page shows the disagreement.
The credit posting window, the automatic reassessment of charged leads and the health care exclusion are documented by Google and cited. Whether advertiser-initiated disputes have been replaced by automatic crediting is genuinely unclear — Google's pages and third-party reports conflict, and the page presents the conflict rather than picking a side.
In a pay-per-click channel a bad click costs you a click. Here a bad lead costs you a lead, which is a far larger unit — so the handling of invalid leads is not an administrative footnote. It is most of the difference between a channel that works and one that quietly does not.
Can you get a refund for a bad Local Services Ads lead?
Credits exist, through two mechanisms that Google documents separately. Google states that charged leads are reassessed over time and may be credited automatically if later judged low quality, and its Local Services material also describes being able to dispute a lead you believe is not valid.
Credits are applied to your account balance rather than refunded as money, in most cases within 30 days, and the original charge still appears on your invoice — which is why reconciling spend against credits takes more care here than in a click-based channel.
For Local Services Ads, credits are in most cases applied to the account balance within 30 days. The original lead charge still appears on the invoice.
The same page documents that charged leads are reassessed over time and may be credited automatically if later judged low quality, which is separate from an advertiser-initiated dispute.
One documented rule works in your favor and is easy to miss when reconciling: after a lead is charged, follow-up contact from the same customer is not charged again while there is activity inside a rolling window.
Once a Local Services Ads lead is charged, follow-up calls or messages from the same customer are not charged again while there is activity within 15 days. After 15 days of inactivity, a new contact from that customer creates a new chargeable lead.
So a customer who calls, texts and calls again over a fortnight is one lead, not three — but the same person resurfacing after a quiet month is a new charge.
What changed, and why sources disagree
This is an area in motion, and it is worth being explicit about the state of the evidence rather than writing a confident procedure that may be out of date.
| Claim | Where it comes from | Status as of 15 Nov 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Charged leads are reassessed and may be credited automatically | Google's own Ads help page | Documented |
| You can dispute a lead you believe is invalid | Google's Local Services help page | Documented |
| Automatic crediting has replaced manual disputes | Third-party reports and advertiser accounts | Not verified; contradicted by the page above |
| Disputes must be raised within 30 days of the lead | Third-party summaries of older Google guidance | Not confirmed on the pages checked |
| Wrong job type or service area is no longer credited | Third-party blog claim | Not verified |
The honest summary: both mechanisms appear in Google's current documentation, several practitioner sources report that the manual route has been removed or reduced to a feedback rating, and this site could not confirm that from a primary source on the date checked.
What to do with that. Check the current behavior in your own account rather than trusting any published procedure, including this one. The review date on this page exists because this is exactly the kind of mechanic that moves.
The exclusion worth knowing
Google documents that lead disputes are not available for health care verticals. If you operate there, the economics are different in a way no amount of process fixes, and that belongs in the model before launch rather than after the first invoice.
Reconciliation, which is where money is actually lost
Two documented details make this harder than it looks, and both catch finance teams:
Credits go to your account balance, not back to your card. They reduce future spend. A business that pauses the channel after a bad month may be sitting on credits it never uses.
The original charge remains on the invoice. So invoice totals overstate net cost, and a report built on invoices alone will show a worse cost per lead than you actually paid.
The practical consequence is that your cost per lead cannot be read off a Google invoice. You need charges, credits and the timing of both, and the timing lags — a credit for a lead received this month may post next month.
Running it properly
Review leads promptly. Whatever the current mechanism, a lead reviewed near the time it arrived is one somebody still remembers. Monthly batch review guarantees you are adjudicating from a call log alone.
Record what happened on every lead. Who called, what they wanted, whether it was in your service area, whether it was spam. This is the evidence for any credit mechanism and it is also your only real data on lead quality by source.
**Track cost per qualified lead, not cost per lead.** The channel bills on contacts. Your business runs on matters, jobs or cases. The gap between those two numbers is the thing to manage, and it is invisible in Google's reporting.
Reconcile credits separately from spend. Treat them as a distinct line. They lag, they land as balance rather than cash, and they are easy to lose track of entirely.
Watch the quality trend after any budget increase. Raising a lead target raises volume; nothing in the product promises the additional volume resembles the original. If cost per qualified lead degrades as budget rises, you have found the channel's ceiling, and that is a useful thing to know precisely.
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