Map Maker is evil.

Not sure if this has been corrected, but something to try with your new karma: overlay an existing POI you do not own with partially updated information. Wait a while.  Now the original marker/google place will be updated (unverified and all).  

I have a client whose competitors hijacked their places. First they changed the phone number, then marked the business as "closed", and finally replaced the URL/business altogether.

Of course, there's no recourse, not a person to get on the phone, etc etc.  Took months to correct.

Sander Raaymakers -- sorry to hear about the bad experience you had.  Like any crowdsourced tool it's open to fraud and abuse.  The abuse teams at Google have some pretty sophisticated ways to stop large scale spammers, and scammers -- but it's always hard to defend against a someone with a grudge.

One way to fight back against such issues is to rate the bad edits and/or undo them.  (Select a POI and go to the history to do this).  Accounts that have changes reverted will lose reputation, and you can also raise the issue of bad edits in the MapMaker forum or you can use this form to report a problem:

http://support.google.com/places/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1386120&page=ts.cs

Like I mentioned, not sure if this is still possible, but there were several people complaining about this 'hack' in the forums. Undid edits, etc etc. but it took a loooong time.

There's something fundamentally flawed in the "prove your ownership" mechanism, once someone changes the phone number and business name, they can control the listing, as USPS never delivers the card (no such business at this address).  We need a better mechanism, e.g. one where google contacts the owner of the URL associated with the place.

Note that this wasn't spam, but a directed attack.

If I had access to this in Sweden I'd mapmake the hell out of it. I remember driving around teaching Waze about unknown roads, but after getting Google Maps Navigation I haven't used it.

Example: (not my client)

http://places.blumenthals.com/thread2906.html

There's an automated tool which "cleans up" the data that buggered it for us several times.

My first try at a map edit was a bad experience.  I tried to correct a Grocery store that was closed for 4 years and replace it with a mega thrift.  it was declined.  I did fight it out of spite and Won.

David A Jamieson / Daniel Johansson  - you can request a notification when MapMaker is available in your country here:

http://code.google.com/p/google-mapmaker/w/list

Hopefully soon!  They've been adding countries at a pretty good clip so far.

Sander Raaymakers - I sent some internal feedback regarding your pain points.   I'm hopeful that they'll come up with a more elegant solution that balances the ability to make changes along with reputation management.

Paul Lindner Sorry, I had no clue you were with Google.  Just vented on something I saw in my feed.

Let me state for the record that I truly admire all you've done for mapping. Used to work at a company whose data Google  used to license (AND) so I know how far you've come.  

The experience was mighty frustrating. My client was very upset. I reached out to anyone and everyone at the time, from our adwords rep (we spend $4k+ a month), my google engage contacts and personal friends at google, only to be told the same thing you mentioned above: go to the forums (that and "it's not my department"). 

This little issue caused significant confusion and without doubt, lots of lost revenues. It affected positioning in google search results and was a true act of vandalism/sabotage. My client would have easily paid $1000 just to get to speak to someone and get this resolved. 

This is my main gripe with Google mapping: you truly fail the business community with the non-availability of professional support. I understand where you're coming from, support is expensive, lots of users, but we really need some tiers that I feel could take into account the revenues generated at other google 'departments' and/or for-pay options.

Sander Raaymakers -- I actually work on Google+, the mapping thing is just a hobby.  That said most Googlers try to do what we can to help customers and users with the realization that it doesn't scale.

I am hopeful however -- AdWords added phone support this year and the customer support tools keep getting better and better.