If you read this piece, it’s probably because you’ve had at some point your ad account disabled by Facebook for no obvious reason. One of the motivations very often seen on Reddit and in other professional forums is the vague “Circumventing Systems” justification.
Eight days ago one of my clients’ accounts was disabled for “circumventing systems”. I immediately submitted a review request (which you should NOT do, see below), had multiple fruitless conversations with the Facebook (Meta) Concierge Support (via Facebook/Meta support chat) and 8 days later received an email from Facebook, without any excuse or compensation, announcing that the account had been re-enabled. No explanation whatsoever. I’ve highlighted some gems in the email template.
Without any sarcasm, I feel truly sorry for the front line of Facebook customer support agents.
They are totally powerless, unable to provide any concrete answer to their clients’ burning questions. Their main strategy of defence is to share preset replies, completely out of context. They act more as a helpless psychological counsellor than as a business helpdesk operator. I can’t even imagine how bad they feel at the end of a workday.
What type of support can you expect from Facebook (Meta) Concierge service if your ad account was disabled?
Let’s set the expectation: none.
As you know, it’s impossible to find any phone number to reach Facebook customer service. The best you can do is use Facebook support chat. That’s the most effective way to contact Facebook about a problem, for instance if you want to recover a Facebook ad account.
To show you what to expect and alleviate some of your guaranteed frustration, here’s a short anthology of preset answers you’ll receive if you contact Facebook Concierge Support (I’d like to know the name of the copywriter, probably incentivised on the amount of pseudo empathetic phrases thrown into the preset replies).
- I understand where you’re coming from
- I can certainly understand on your concern and you would like to know the reason of the disablement of the Ad Account. Usually, Ad Accounts are disabled when random reviews are constantly conducted from time to time, where there could be few that led to disablement of an Ad Account as outlined here :
– Advertising Policies: https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads
– Terms of Service: https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms - I hear you and I understand the importance of running the ads for your business
- As an advertiser like you, I understand how much this account meant to you as bread and butter to promote your business online specially during this pandemic.
- I know how you feel as I also own an online business. At this moment, we would like to ask for your patience while we wait for our Internal team to completely review your account. Once the review is complete, you will be notified via email and support inbox.
- I have checked it for you and appears that the account has been restricted for being unable to meet Facebook Advertising Policies. I understand that you have no intention of violating any policies and I am sure that you always ensure that you comply to it. However, due to limited access and policy constrain we’re unable to advise on the exact cause of violation. I do not have the permission to access your account further due to Data Security Policy and this is in place with the interest of protecting your data.
- I definitely understand that having an active Ad Account is important for your business. However, I do hope you also understand that we do not take disabled accounts lightly. These issues need extensive research and investigation, which is always the reason why appealing for these cases takes longer than usual.
- However, my sincerest apologies as we also do not have visibility over these cases being directed to our Facebook Internal Team for security purposes.
- I hear you and I understand how important and urgent it is but I don’t have the capacity to enable it or even view the exact violation.
- I am really sorry, Frederick. As much as I want to reenable your ad account, just like you I don’t have the capacity to do it. Since this has been escalated to the Internal Team, we humbly request for your patience as we work on your case.
- Frederick, I understand your frustration with the situation, however, at this point, the best and only option regarding the Account that is currently disabled is to wait for our Internal Team to review the Account
- I am sorry if you feel that way, but I believe that I did my best to help you with this concern.
- I understand that this is not the outcome that we were after but I’m glad that we could at least get clarity on this matter and I’m positive that you’ll definitely get an update in any given time since the review has been almost 48 hours.
- Although the outcome wasn’t exactly what you had hoped for today, I hope that I was still able to answer your questions.
- We respect your feedback and I am really hoping that this issue will be sorted out the soonest possible time.
- I honestly understand and respect your opinion. I am just doing the best of my abilities, Frederick and I do not have an exact date for you when it will be reactivated.
- Would there be anything else that I can assist you with today?
How to accelerate the review of your disabled Facebook ad account?
In 5 different dead end robotic conversations, I only received one useful piece of information, which is worth sharing:
I normally suggest that when you have issues with your account such as disabled accounts the best thing to do is to contact us immediately for us to escalate it on our end so that we can easily make a follow up with the internal team. When you are the one who requested for review, we can only see the status of it and will not be able to make a follow up for you. Also, if we are the one who sent the appeal for your disabled ad account, we can get updates up to 48 hours.
So basically if your account has been disabled, DO NOT submit the review on your own, contact the Facebook Concierge Support and they will do it for you. Apparently this should accelerate the process… (update: yes, it did… 3 days instead of 8).
Can you get a compensation if your Facebook ad account was disabled for no specific reason?
The short answer is… NO (but at least there was an apology in the refusal). Here’s a conversation from Facebook support chat.
If you have any questions, please add them in the comments below, I’ll do my best to help you. It can’t be worse than the non-existing support I’ve received in countless conversations with Facebook Concierge agents.
A powerless customer support is pretty much useless.
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