Major Facebook Problem - Anyone have advice?

Share this page

Mark_Henderson

Mark_Henderson

very stable genius
Joined
Feb 7, 2004
Messages
9,216
Reaction score
1,165
Points
113
Age
59
Location
Titletown
I've occasionally asked technical questions over the years in here and people in here have often been helpful, so I'll give this a shot. My 90 year old mother got COVID in December and cognitively declined and I'm in Kansas City selling the things in her house and taking care of things because she's moved to assisted living. I've already sold a baby grand piano, some valuable furniture from the 1950s, but have a lot more stuff to get through and have time constraints.

I've never used Facebook, but started using an account for Facebook Marketplace to sell my mom's things for the last week, after being told that there's a lot more people on it than Craigslist. It was frustrating that because I was a new user, FB at first only allowed me to post one item, but over 8 days, I've sold several things through them and they had expanded me to being able to post 4 items at a time. I've been hoping that any day, their algorithm would show that I'm not spamming and free my account to post up to 150 things at a time, which I think is what a standard account is allowed.

Just a few minutes ago, I was getting ready to post something else and was looking through the Kansas City Marketplace swap & shop type groups that I've subscribed to and saw a post where someone said that they were looking to buy furniture that cost under $25. There's a very worn couch of my mom's that I'm giving away, so I replied to that post with a picture of that couch and said, "You can have this for free if you can come to 95th & Nall in Overland Park to pick it up."

Then bam - within 5 minutes I have a message on my screen saying that my account has been banned from Facebook for violating their standards, or something like that. There was a screen where I could request to be restored, but it didn't give me a space to enter any type of explanation, it just asked for my picture and when I submitted it, it gave me this message:

"Thank you for sending your information.
We have fewer people available to review information due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. This means we may be unable to review your account.
We apologize for any inconvenience."

Does anyone know if there's any way to address this? Maybe I misunderstood the forum rules where I posted the picture of the couch and I wasn't supposed to do that, but it seems insane that my account is banned. I've communicated with no one on the platform other than making legit marketplace posts that people messaged me about and I responded to them and sold items.

It's probably some kind of algorithm glitch, but now it seems that I'm fvcked because I was counting on using Facebook to sell about 30 things. There's some antique dressers that I'm selling for $600 each and now I've been locked out of the communication I had with people about them. There doesn't seem to be any phone number or email where I can reach a human at Facebook to correct what is obviously an error. Their supposed method to appeal my ban gives me a message informing me that they will likely never respond to it.

I guess I will take the iphone that I gave to my mom and use that to set up a new Facebook account and try listing things to sell tomorrow through that, but then I'm going to get bounced back to only being allowed to list one item at a time for a week as a totally new user. This is really frustrating and pointless.
 
Last edited:
I can't offer much help with Facebook, but wanted to bump your thread.

Are you using Craigslist too? I still do well on there when I occasionally need to buy or sell something.
 
Facebook bans accounts very quickly now, and usually, it's only temporary. 24 hours, I think is the first offense, the n48, a week, a month and permanent. I and friends have gotten these stupid bans for seemingly nothing lately. I've pretty much abandoned FB anyway.
 
Nice to see you, Mark.

I'm not much help, but, I do something similar to what HSanders suggested. Even though I do have a Facebook Account (few friends, never post, and only use it for gameplay), I have a friend with a Facebook Account who occasionally sells my stuff. I'm cleaning out my house and so far it's small stuff so she even takes the items and when sold she meets the buyer in a safe location. So, I'm out of it altogether.

I hope you find a solution. Good luck!
 
Undertaker #59* said:
I can't offer much help with Facebook, but wanted to bump your thread.

Are you using Craigslist too? I still do well on there when I occasionally need to buy or sell something.
Click to expand...
Thanks. I had started on Craigslist and added FB a week ago, it's just that FB had been much more responsive and I will need to have both of them churning to work through the number of items I have.

I signed up for about 10 local Marketplace "swap and shop"/"deals and steals" groups in different local towns and I remember that they all had rules that I had to agree to and acknowledge that I would be banned if I broke them. Thinking back, some of them did say that you can't advertize items for sale on their local boards, so that might be the rule I broke. But, I thought that meant that the moderator would ban me from the local swap and shop group, not that they had the power to kick me out of Facebook entirely. And, I don't even know if that's what happened.

I'm really hating FB with white hot intensity now. The fact that they ban accounts so easily and then provide NO means to contact them or address it is bullshit. They've made more money because of the pandemic, not less, and then they use that as an excuse for why they will be unable to process my request to restore my account, when there's no reason staff can't do Facebook moderator work remotely. Because they're so omnipresent, it can have an impact when they ban someone for arbitrarily tripping something in their automated software and their attitude is just fvck you if that happens.
 
HSanders said:
Do you have a friend with an established account who would be willing to post the items for you with your contact info?
Click to expand...
Thanks for the suggestion, HS. I did email a local friend late last night, but haven't heard back yet. But, I don't know if it's against the rules to advertize things for someone else and I wonder if that could get her account banned to list my contact info. I asked her if she could forward my email to people who reply to the ads, but that could get tedious for her if there are lots of replies and might seem suspicious to the FB users who reply to the posts.

I guess I'll use my mom's phone to set up an alternate FB account and then access it through my phone and see what I can accomplish that way. Then, I wonder if FB figures out what I'm doing, will they ban me for life? It's asinine that they're putting me through this. I don't see how anyone who looked at my activity wouldn't see that I'm using the site legitimately.
 
Someone must have reported you for a violation of rules.
 
Mark wish I could help but I left Facebook a while back.... Good hear from you and good luck selling all the stuff.

~Dee~
 
king of kings said:
Someone must have reported you for having 2 different accounts. Thats why they banned you.
Click to expand...
No, I only had the one account. I was probably reported for posting my free couch in a message board where you're not supposed to list items for sale in the thread. But, banning me from Facebook for doing that once is seriously draconian.
 
king of kings said:
Someone must have reported you for a violation of rules.
Click to expand...
They don't have to be reported. On a local group for free pets to good homes, I had a 4' Ball Python I was willing to give away and the ad wouldn't post because lizards are not allowed. It's in the software in many cases
 
deec77 said:
Mark wish I could help but I left Facebook a while back.... Good hear from you and good luck selling all the stuff.

~Dee~
Click to expand...

Thanks. The politics forum got me to the point where I didn't want to come back any more, but other than that, people here have always been cool.
 
Yeah i get how not knowing what you did wrong sucks, Mark. that's why i don't post on profootballtalk anymore. they would arbitrarily delete with no reasons/ guidelines. not just me, but many. we would post to ask why, and get no answer, and there wasn't much of a way to contact them. it was around the time they sold out to nbc. not sure if that was a coincidence or not.
i do hope you find a solution!
 
One question that might be helpful - Do you guys think it's a bad idea to open a 2nd account with my mom's phone today? I'm pressed for time and need to get things sold and out of here as quickly as possible. But, I don't want Facebook to use that as a reason to ban me for life. I figured that if I use my mom's phone#, her email address & her picture, it should be undetectable.

But, I don't know if Facebook will detect that I'm making the same postings that I did before, or if a user eventually sees that I'm me and not a woman, that they some idiot might report me. Also, I don't know if they'll detect if I'm then accessing my mom's account from the phone that they banned.
 
Depending on how much time you have, would you be able to enlist the help of any neighbors or contact the local town hall to see if they have a community yard sale or in the case of things you are not looking to sell, there will be places like veterans' orgs that will pick up these items for donation?
 
Open a Gmail account and then get a Google Voice phone number for free that you can use. Just a thought. Not sure if Facebook has other ways to verify, but I've used a Google Voice number when I need to supply a verifiable number but want to keep privacy from who I'm giving it to.
 
Mark_Henderson said:
I've occasionally asked technical questions over the years in here and people in here have often been helpful, so I'll give this a shot. My 90 year old mother got COVID in December and cognitively declined and I'm in Kansas City selling the things in her house and taking care of things because she's moved to assisted living. I've already sold a baby grand piano, some valuable furniture from the 1950s, but have a lot more stuff to get through and have time constraints.

I've never used Facebook, but started using an account for Facebook Marketplace to sell my mom's things for the last week, after being told that there's a lot more people on it than Craigslist. It was frustrating that because I was a new user, FB at first only allowed me to post one item, but over 8 days, I've sold several things through them and they had expanded me to being able to post 4 items at a time. I've been hoping that any day, their algorithm would show that I'm not spamming and free my account to post up to 150 things at a time, which I think is what a standard account is allowed.

Just a few minutes ago, I was getting ready to post something else and was looking through the Kansas City Marketplace swap & shop type groups that I've subscribed to and saw a post where someone said that they were looking to buy furniture that cost under $25. There's a very worn couch of my mom's that I'm giving away, so I replied to that post with a picture of that couch and said, "You can have this for free if you can come to 95th & Nall in Overland Park to pick it up."

Then bam - within 5 minutes I have a message on my screen saying that my account has been banned from Facebook for violating their standards, or something like that. There was a screen where I could request to be restored, but it didn't give me a space to enter any type of explanation, it just asked for my picture and when I submitted it, it gave me this message:

"Thank you for sending your information.
We have fewer people available to review information due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. This means we may be unable to review your account.
We apologize for any inconvenience."

Does anyone know if there's any way to address this? Maybe I misunderstood the forum rules where I posted the picture of the couch and I wasn't supposed to do that, but it seems insane that my account is banned. I've communicated with no one on the platform other than making legit marketplace posts that people messaged me about and I responded to them and sold items.

It's probably some kind of algorithm glitch, but now it seems that I'm fvcked because I was counting on using Facebook to sell about 30 things. There's some antique dressers that I'm selling for $600 each and now I've been locked out of the communication I had with people about them. There doesn't seem to be any phone number or email where I can reach a human at Facebook to correct what is obviously an error. Their supposed method to appeal my ban gives me a message informing me that they will likely never respond to it.

I guess I will take the iphone that I gave to my mom and use that to set up a new Facebook account and try listing things to sell tomorrow through that, but then I'm going to get bounced back to only being allowed to list one item at a time for a week as a totally new user. This is really frustrating and pointless.
Click to expand...
Hate them. I'm no help for sure. I guess my membership is alive and well but i'm not on there at all. Any way if any
thing is worth a good bit there is ebay perhaps.

Anyway, nice to see you. Hope you and yours are Welland good luck with your project.

Cheers, BostonTim
 
HSanders said:
Depending on how much time you have, would you be able to enlist the help of any neighbors or contact the local town hall to see if they have a community yard sale or in the case of things you are not looking to sell, there will be places like veterans' orgs that will pick up these items for donation?
Click to expand...
There's some valuable things where I was trying to get a good price for them. I'd sold $2,200 worth of stuff so far. I'll have to look for other options, but I'm kind of furious that Facebook impacted what I'm doing over very trivial bullshit.
 
Undertaker #59* said:
Open a Gmail account and then get a Google Voice phone number for free that you can use. Just a thought. Not sure if Facebook has other ways to verify, but I've used a Google Voice number when I need to supply a verifiable number but want to keep privacy from who I'm giving it to.
Click to expand...
From what I'm reading online, it looks like I would need to do more than that. It says that FB tracks the wifi network you are using and your IP address, the phone you are using, and other things. I think I would need a new cell phone and and then if I wanted to use a laptop to edit the pictures, to use a different one than before and maybe go online with mobile broadband off of the new cell phone.

Since Facebook has such a monopoly on communication, I'd support some regulations that require them to provide an explanation and means of appeal to people who they ban. Your cell phone provider couldn't just ban you without telling you why.
 
Mark_Henderson said:
There's some valuable things where I was trying to get a good price for them. I'd sold $2,200 worth of stuff so far. I'll have to look for other options, but I'm kind of furious that Facebook impacted what I'm doing over very trivial bullshit.
Click to expand...
have UT open up a flea market here. :LOL:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top