You just paid for a robocall. Or a guy asking about a service you've never offered, or a "customer" who turned out to be a solar telemarketer. You went looking for the dispute button in your Local Services Ads dashboard — and it's not there anymore.
That's not you missing it. Google removed manual lead disputes in mid-2024 and replaced them with an automated crediting system: Google's own machine-learning review now decides which leads were invalid and credits your account without you filing anything. Your leverage didn't disappear, but it moved. Instead of arguing individual leads, you now win by rating every lead quickly, tracking credits against your own log, and tightening your targeting so the worst leads never get charged in the first place.
Here's exactly how the current system works, which leads still get your money back, and the weekly routine that keeps an LSA budget honest.
What changed: from disputes to automated credits
Under the old system, you reviewed each lead, picked a dispute reason, and waited for a human-ish verdict. It worked, but slowly, and contractors spent hours a month on it.
As of this writing, per Google's documentation on automated Local Services Ads lead credits, the flow is:
- Google reviews charged leads automatically — its systems assess each lead for validity, typically within about 72 hours of the charge.
- Invalid leads are credited automatically, generally landing on your account within 30 days. No form, no filing.
- You can still flag leads through the lead feedback survey in your inbox ("rate this lead"). Google says this feedback trains its lead quality systems and can occasionally result in credits for leads you report — but it's input, not a formal dispute with a guaranteed review.
Also worth knowing: the most obviously fake contacts — robocalls, known spam numbers — are increasingly filtered before they ever hit your inbox, so you're never charged for them at all. Automated credits currently apply in the United States and Canada, with some verticals excluded (healthcare, tax specialists — not an issue for the trades).
Which leads still qualify for credits — and which no longer do
This is the part that actually changed your economics, so read the table twice:
| Lead type | Credit under the new system? |
|---|---|
| Spam or bot calls | Yes — usually credited automatically |
| Robocalls / telemarketers / solicitation | Yes |
| Wrong numbers, misdials | Yes |
| Duplicate contact from the same customer | Generally yes — flag it in feedback |
| Job type you don't offer | No — no longer credited |
| Location outside your service area | No — no longer credited |
| Reached you but never booked | No — that's a sales outcome, not an invalid lead |
| Price shopper, no-show, ghosted you | No |
The two bolded rows are the sting. Under the old dispute system, "job type not serviced" and "geo not serviced" were credit-worthy categories. Now they aren't — Google's position is that your job type and service area settings control those leads, so mismatches are your configuration problem. Agree or not, the practical takeaway is the same: every dollar of protection you lost in disputes, you have to win back in targeting. We'll get to that.
For background on what officially counts as a lead and when you're charged at all, Google's page on how Local Services leads work is the canonical reference.
The 30-day clock: rate every lead, every week
The lead feedback survey is the only input channel you have left, and it expires: feedback submitted more than 30 days after the lead isn't considered. A backed-up inbox is literally money you can no longer influence.
So the rule is simple: no lead goes unrated for more than a week. For each lead in your LSA inbox:
- Mark the good ones too — booked, quoted, in progress. Positive signal matters; Google's systems learn what a good lead for you looks like, and lead responsiveness feeds your LSA ranking.
- For bad ones, pick the most accurate reason from the feedback options — spam, solicitation, wrong number, and so on. Accuracy beats indignation; tagging a price-shopper as "spam" just muddies the signal.
- Add notes where the interface allows. Specifics ("caller was an IT services telemarketer") give the system something to match against.
Two minutes per lead. If you're getting 40 leads a month, this is 15 minutes a week — the highest-paid 15 minutes in your marketing.
Timelines: when the money actually comes back
Expectations, so you don't waste phone calls on normal delays:
- Automated review: typically within about 72 hours of the lead being charged.
- Credit applied: within roughly 30 days, appearing against your account balance or invoice rather than as a cash refund.
- Feedback-driven credits: occasional and slower — treat any credit from a flagged lead as a bonus, not a receivable.
Which means reconciliation has a rhythm: the leads you log this week should be checked against your billing statement over the next month. If a lead was blatantly invalid — an obvious robocall, a fax tone — and 30-plus days pass with no credit, that's your trigger to contact LSA support. Bring the lead ID, the date, and what happened. Support can't promise a credit, but documented, specific cases get real reviews; vague complaints get sympathy.
And if a pattern emerges — say, five uncredited spam calls in a month — escalate the pattern itself. "Here are five lead IDs, all telemarketers, none credited" is a very different conversation than calling about each one.
Build the weekly lead review habit
Everything above collapses into one repeatable routine. Same day every week, 15–20 minutes:
- Rate every new lead in the LSA inbox (booked / quoted / bad, with reasons).
- Update your own lead log — a simple sheet: date, lead ID, job type, area, source, outcome, charged amount. Don't rely on Google's dashboard as your only record; you're auditing it, so you need independent books.
- Reconcile credits — check billing for credits landed, flag anything invalid that's aged past 30 days uncredited.
- Check booking rate by job type — this tells you where LSA money is actually turning into work.
- Adjust one thing if the data says so: a job type toggled off, a zip removed, budget nudged.
What a lead log worth keeping looks like
You don't need software to start — a spreadsheet with these columns does the job:
| Column | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Date and lead ID | Ties your record to Google's billing line |
| Job type requested | Surfaces mismatch patterns you can fix in settings |
| Zip or town | Same, for service-area trimming |
| Charged amount | What you're reconciling credits against |
| Outcome | Booked, quoted, lost, spam, wrong number, mismatch |
| Rated in inbox? | Confirms you beat the 30-day feedback clock |
| Credit received? | The audit column — date it lands |
Ten leads a week means ten rows a week. Within two months you'll have something almost no contractor has: an independent record of what Google charged you, what it credited, and which lead types actually turn into revenue. That record is also what turns a support call from a complaint into a case.
If a weekly manual log sounds like the kind of thing you'll do twice and abandon, automate the capture: call tracking, a CRM that ingests LSA leads, and automatic logging are exactly the plumbing we build in our automation service. Speed matters here too — LSA leads are live callers, and answering fast both books more jobs and improves your ranking. The missed-call calculator will show you what every unanswered LSA call actually costs, credit or no credit.
When bad leads mean a targeting problem, not a credit problem
Here's the diagnostic line: invalid leads (spam, bots, wrong numbers) are Google's problem; mismatched leads (wrong job, wrong area) are yours. If your weekly review keeps surfacing mismatches, stop hoping for credits that will never come and fix the machine:
- Audit your job types. In LSA settings, every job type you leave toggled on is an invitation. An HVAC shop that doesn't touch duct cleaning should have it off, full stop. Review these quarterly — Google adds new job types to categories, sometimes enabled by default.
- Tighten the service area. If leads from a town 45 minutes out keep coming and never book, remove the zip. A smaller area you dominate beats a big one that bleeds.
- Check your business hours and ad schedule. After-hours leads that go to voicemail become "bad leads" in your log but were really unanswered good ones.
- Watch budget pacing. A budget too high for your area pushes Google to stretch — showing you for fringe job types and edge-of-area searches to spend the money. If mismatches spiked after a budget raise, that's usually why.
A useful benchmark from shops we've worked with: if more than roughly one lead in five is a mismatch, settings are the problem. If mismatches are rare but spam is constant and uncredited, document and escalate to support.
Quick answers to the questions contractors actually ask
Can I still talk to a human about a specific lead? Yes — LSA support still exists and still takes calls and chats. What's gone is the guaranteed per-lead review. Support conversations work best when you bring lead IDs and a pattern, and accept that "we'll pass it to the team" is sometimes the final answer.
Do credits come back as cash? No — they're applied against your account balance, offsetting future lead charges. If you pause LSAs entirely, talk to support about your remaining balance.
What about message leads instead of calls? Same system: charged leads are auto-reviewed, and the feedback survey applies to them too. Message leads that are clearly spam tend to be the easiest cases for the automation to catch.
A real customer called twice and I think I was charged twice — now what? Flag the duplicate through lead feedback with a note. Duplicates from the same customer within a short window are the kind of thing the automated review is built to catch, but the feedback is your backstop.
Did lead quality actually get worse under automation? Plenty of advertisers have complained since the change — especially about mismatch leads that no longer qualify for credits. Whatever the averages, your account's experience is decided mostly by your settings and your response speed, which is exactly why the weekly review exists.
Is any of this different outside the US? Automated lead credits currently apply in the United States and Canada; policies differ elsewhere, so non-US readers should check Google's current lead credit documentation for their market.
This post assumes your LSA account is already up and running; if you're still deciding whether the channel deserves your budget at all, start with our full breakdown of Local Service Ads for contractors — and if you're weighing LSAs against search campaigns, the broader trades marketing guide puts both in context.
The automated system rewards exactly one kind of advertiser: the one paying attention weekly. If you'd rather have someone else be that person — rating leads, chasing credits, tuning job types, and reporting your true cost per booked job — that's part of what Founders Resource handles in ads management for home-service businesses.