I've been banned from Facebook ads...

[amk]

Has anyone ever been banned from advertising on Facebook? I posted my first ads there for my business, and they were all approved by Facebook, started to run for a minute, and then... Turned off. For "fraudulent activity" with no explanation. Only a message to contact them to restore access. I do, and I get this response (2 days later):

Our records indicate that your payments account was disabled due to suspected fraudulent activity. In the interest of protecting our users, we will not be able to reenable your payments account. This decision is final.

Thanks for your understanding,

Patrick
Risk Operation
Facebook

Anyone have any experience dealing with this? Any way around it? I've emailed them back asking for more information, can I do anything, but no response.

The business is an LLC, has a physical address, has a real phone number, etc. The landing page is legit also with all contact info, terms, about us, and so on.

Could it be they not like the fact that it is a social networking related site/business? Who's making those decisions about what types of sites to allow and what not to, and why don't they just say that?

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Could it be they not like the fact that it is a social networking related site/business?

Do you mean that you are/will be competing with FB?

 

[amk]

Do you mean that you are/will be competing with FB?

No, not in the least. My business definitely has a social networking aspect to it, but wouldn't be considered an alternative to Facebook. I'd be more than happy to PM you the website URL.

 

[Yul]

This happened to me 1 or 2 months ago.

I never knew the reason as to why they blocked my account to run ads. The message that I got is exactly the same as yours.

Long story short...and after reading several websites regarding this issue, the conclusion was that when you email Facebook to unblock your account a bot receives the email and you never get an actual response from Facebook. Just automated responses.

On one website I did find some sort of "guide" to get around them.

Anyway, after approximately 6-8 emails my account got unblocked.

I think what did it, was that I sent a message saying that I thought my account was blocked because of my ads (not because of suspected fraudulent activity), after doing this someone emailed me back and told me that my ads were fine. I responded to them saying that maybe if the ads were not the problem, then my payment method was. After a day they responded that my case would be sent to the correct department and finally after 1-2 days I got another email from another person saying that my account was now unblocked. They did not say the reason, but oh well I was unblocked

Hope that helps.

Edit: Ok, I found it easier than I expected, I linked it in the "guide" part.

 

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[amk]

Now that I think about this as a web/software developer myself, I could see my activity as something that may trigger a program into thinking it was fraud... I set the whole thing up really quick one night (I had everything planned out), and then posted my first ads. Since I had it all planned, what graphics to use, upload, post as profile photo, cover photo, update info, etc., it was really fast. I would suspect fraudulent users (or more specifically, bots themselves), would do things in a similar quick fashion. Maybe I should have waited a few days between setting up account and posting an ad.

Now I see the battle is going to be getting around the canned auto responders and getting to someone who can unblock me.

Very helpful, thank you!