- Original Poster
- #1
Created a facebook account, I provided a geniune name, email, and mobile number. I then created a business page for my new B&M store.
I added a photo of the store for the page header, and started by posting a couple of photos of products in the store. facebook hassled me to "boost" one of the posts, so I thought I'd give it a try. It hung on the payment processing page. After about 10 minutes of it not doing anything I refreshed the screen and I got the message that my account was disabled...
It gave me the opportunity to try and get it back, and asked for ID. I sent a picture of my UK drivers licence.
A few days later I try to log in again and get this:
"Your account has been disabled
You can't use Facebook because your account, or activity on it, didn't follow our Community Standards. We have already reviewed this decision and it can't be reversed. To learn more about the reasons why we disable accounts visit the Community Standards."
I didn't violate any policies that I know of. The account info was genuine, the shop is genuine, nothing about the posts was hateful or discriminatory or whatever, there's nothing controversial about my business (a games store!) or the 2-3 posts ("here's some products").
I can't post to any of the facebook forums or the facebook business UK group because I have to be logged in to do that... Having spent the last hour banging my head against a brick wall trying to figure out why they disabled my account, how to try and contact support, and seeing lots of posts from other people suffering the same fate for apparently no reason, I'm thinking that I don't even want to recover my account now.
Why would I want to spend time and effort creating an FB business page, spend lots of money with FB to get page promoted or paying for ads to get people to follow it, if they can just randomly shut it down at any time for no apparent reason?
So are there any alternatives for small businesses to promote themselves via social media?
I added a photo of the store for the page header, and started by posting a couple of photos of products in the store. facebook hassled me to "boost" one of the posts, so I thought I'd give it a try. It hung on the payment processing page. After about 10 minutes of it not doing anything I refreshed the screen and I got the message that my account was disabled...
It gave me the opportunity to try and get it back, and asked for ID. I sent a picture of my UK drivers licence.
A few days later I try to log in again and get this:
"Your account has been disabled
You can't use Facebook because your account, or activity on it, didn't follow our Community Standards. We have already reviewed this decision and it can't be reversed. To learn more about the reasons why we disable accounts visit the Community Standards."
I didn't violate any policies that I know of. The account info was genuine, the shop is genuine, nothing about the posts was hateful or discriminatory or whatever, there's nothing controversial about my business (a games store!) or the 2-3 posts ("here's some products").
I can't post to any of the facebook forums or the facebook business UK group because I have to be logged in to do that... Having spent the last hour banging my head against a brick wall trying to figure out why they disabled my account, how to try and contact support, and seeing lots of posts from other people suffering the same fate for apparently no reason, I'm thinking that I don't even want to recover my account now.
Why would I want to spend time and effort creating an FB business page, spend lots of money with FB to get page promoted or paying for ads to get people to follow it, if they can just randomly shut it down at any time for no apparent reason?
So are there any alternatives for small businesses to promote themselves via social media?
