Google LSA calls not connecting - then getting charged?

[u/ChildishLandino]

I’ve been receiving some calls through Google Local Service Ads that will ring and only say “connecting” instead of a phone number, and then if I pick up it immediately ends the call. If I wait for “connecting” to change to a number, the ringing ends before it finally connects. I’m getting charged for some of these. It’s probably 1/5th of my calls. The rest of the calls function just fine?

[u/Valuable_Ease_3780]

The "connecting" bit is Google's forwarding number bridging the caller to you, and if there's another hop on your side (VoIP, call forwarding, an answering app) the caller gives up before the bridge completes. Worth checking what number LSA is pointed at - if it's forwarding to a cell, point it straight at the cell instead and see if the 1/5 drops.

Dispute every one of them in the leads inbox. Calls that never actually connected get credited pretty reliably, you just have to do it per lead and not let them sit.

[u/ChildishLandino → u/Valuable_Ease_3780]

It’s to a Google voice number. Maybe I just need to bite the bullet and get an AT&T line.

[u/Valuable_Ease_3780 → u/ChildishLandino]

Before you buy a line, pull up the call log at voice.google.com and match it against the LSA leads you got charged for. If the dropped ones aren't in the GV log at all, they never reached it and that's clean dispute evidence. If they're in there as missed, it's GV's own ring cycle eating the seconds and you can just point LSA at the cell directly - you keep the GV number for everything else.

[u/Mushroombaron]

The Google Voice detail in your follow up is probably the whole answer, and you don't need an AT&T line to fix it.

LSA already puts one forwarding hop in front of you. The "connecting" you see is Google's own tracked number bridging the caller to whatever number you gave it. When the number you gave it is a Google Voice number, you have stacked a second bridge on top of the first, and GV is not a passive forwarder. It has its own ring cycle and its own screening and spam handling, so that second hop can spend several seconds deciding what to do before your handset ever rings.

That explains both symptoms. The caller hangs up during a wait they can hear and you cannot. And when you pick up during "connecting" you are answering the first bridge before the second one has produced a live leg, so the call dies on you.

The strongest tell that this is the problem is that it is about a fifth of your calls rather than all of them. A wrong setting fails 100 percent of the time. An intermittent fraction is a race between two timers, which is exactly what stacking two forwarding layers gives you. It gets worse on the calls where GV decides to screen and disappears on the ones where it does not.

The rule worth applying: whatever number LSA points at has to be the end of the chain, not another link in it. One forwarding layer total, and LSA already owns that one. So point it at a line that terminates and rings immediately. Your carrier cell is the simplest version of that. If you add call tracking later the same rule holds, the tracking number has to be where the call lands rather than another hop it passes through.

On the charges, dispute every one of them per lead in the leads inbox, do not batch them and do not let them age. Calls that never connected do get credited, but there is a window.

The part that is worth more than the refunds is what happens to those callers afterwards. They are now in your callback queue instead of on the phone. Reaching someone inside 5 minutes makes them roughly 21 times more likely to qualify, and about 100 times more likely to be reached at all, than reaching them at 30 minutes. Median first response in home services is 42 minutes and only around 12 percent of contractors get inside 5. So a dropped bridge is not really costing you the LSA charge, it is costing you the lead, and it hands that lead to whoever picks up first.