Meta takes $40K, holds our business ransom

I can&#x27;t imagine using a credit card for something like this, but if you do, isn&#x27;t this exactly what the chargeback is for? They clearly don&#x27;t recognise your credit card payment, so the chargeback can&#x27;t reasonably get you in trouble either. If the notice the chargeback at all, at least they&#x27;ll figure out that you did pay them after all.<p>I&#x27;d use the payment method you used before, because that always worked, and then chargeback the old payment that clearly didn&#x27;t work. How are they going to side with Facebook when you&#x27;ve got all that documentation that they don&#x27;t recognise that payment?

Former <i>internal employee</i> can&#x27;t even get backchannel help with Facebook&#x27;s insanely customer-hostile purchasing process, has to resort to court of public opinion to (maybe) get resolution.<p>What a great ad for Meta&#x27;s regard for their customers. This company actively makes the world worse and anyone giving them a single dollar of revenue is participating in that.<p>Follow Tesla&#x27;s example and delete your Instagram and Facebook accounts. &quot;We have to use it for our business&quot; is a lie people tell themselves.

<i>UPDATE (2024-03-26):</i><p>A business development manager at Meta saw this post yesterday and escalated the issue internally. They provisionally unsuspended our account this morning.<p>This afternoon, the collections team confirmed that they received our payment, and applied it to the account.<p>Thanks to everyone for their advice and input. For what it&#x27;s worth, we&#x27;ll definitely maintain a presence on Meta, but our team is taking a second look at TikTok for marketing.

I try once to resolve things...and then I just keep insisting they provide thier mailing address for my small claim suit. I say it kindly and matter of fact, not angrily. I talk about it as if it&#x27;s just normal business for me. I might say &#x27;I appreciate you trying to help, but I have spent 1 hr on this to no avail, it&#x27;s just more time and cost efficient to file small claims suite. Judges have a way of getting to it quick. What is the business mailing address for legal correspondence?&#x27;.<p>I wouldn&#x27;t say it works like magic, but I can say it has worked several times.

I would file a lawsuit. Guaranteed that Meta will respond to a lawsuit. You&#x27;ve provided Meta with all the evidence they need and they refuse to acknowledge it. The courts will help them see things your way. Be sure to include your attorney&#x27;s fees in the suit.

You&#x27;ve paid facebook millions in the last few years. Another 37k is only a small % of that. Pay them another 37k and take it as a lesson learned not to use a credit card with them. Write off as loss.<p>Or sue &#x2F; chargeback and end your relationship with the platform.<p>Either way it has become a marketing opportunity that is probably worth the 37k.

Meta took $50 from my paypal account because someone got into an ads portal and ran a campaign. Tried escalating with Paypal and no word from Meta. That $50 seems gone. Meta did lock down my ads account though. Can’t believe they won’t refund the transfer

No idea if it helps with this sort of thing but one hack that patio11 recommends is to own a de minimus amount of stock in the company to have shareholder relations available as a channel for contacting someone who can fix things.

Dispute the charge with Amex, like you probably should have done at first sign of trouble. You can do this even after paying the bill.

CFBP? I know it&#x27;s consumer finance, but might be worth a try. I&#x27;ve had success with the two cases I&#x27;ve filed in the past. Got my money back in both.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.consumerfinance.gov&#x2F;complaint&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.consumerfinance.gov&#x2F;complaint&#x2F;</a>

Unconscionable for a 1.3T company to behave this way towards a small business.

Honestly I think the best way to get this resolved is making a lot of noise. Eventually someone at FB in the right place notices and fixes it. So you&#x27;re doing the right thing.<p>Oh and a letter from a lawyer.

Stop giving FB $40k, or any money. You&#x27;re only feeding the beast, which won&#x27;t make it stop.

Your product looks awesome!

This is totally unacceptable on the part of Meta. Hope you get it resolved.

I can’t believe how shoddy the CC payment is. And “the ad platform is known to be buggy”. Are you serious? I’m sure they hire only the best