Soon after I wrote Google Says They Treat Small Publishers As They Treat Large Publishers a new thread at DigitalPoint Forums says the same thing.
The thread has several AdSense publishers claiming that Google has been very proactive about possible Google AdSense terms of service (TOS) issues on their site. Google has reached out to these publishers, adjusted their earnings, but did not ban them for these violations.
Well, I had my first run-in in 2 years after putting Google ads on a page/URL that contained a "Google Brand" (wasn't aware there was such a policy) and my experience was different from what I've read.Google actually advised me about the violation without banning my account and politely replied my email within 24 hours.
One other publisher said:
I agree, I just posted a thread last week about some invalid clicks on my account. Google replied to my email quickly and did not ban me, they just adjusted the payment. This was fair because I do not want to cheat honest advertisers when someone click bombed me. It restored my faith in Google and makes me wonder about those who claim to be banned for no reason and no fault of their own.
I love seeing these types of threads, because there are so many other threads saying the opposite. You know what they say. Most people are only vocal when they have something to complain about.
Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.