Complaint Review: Facebook Ads

Last week I was informed by Pay Pal of a charge to my account for $146 in Facebook ads.  The problem is I had not run any ads.  Pay Pal would not let me dispute the charge through them because I had agreed to allow Facebook to charge for ads i.e. like a subscription.  They canceled that permission and I closed my Facebook ad account so they could not charge me anymore.

I started via Facebook support to dispute this and get my money back.  The first rep basically said your name is on the account and this is for ads from April 14-April 28th.  I would not have advertised at this time for a couple of reasons.  First, I sell lineup cards for baseball and softball teams.  I do some advertising from November - February, before the high school season begins.  I did my advertising through Google Ads this year because of a bad experience I had last year with FB and phony clicks.  The second reason is that I would not have turned my ads on in April because there is no youth baseball and softball because of the Coronavirus.  Nobody is going to order until things loosen up.

I went back on Facebook with their support chat.  I had 4 agents in about 2 minutes, only 2 of which even greeted me.  The chat would say "so and so is joining the chat."  Then nothing.  or maybe a greeting, but then another agent joining.

Today I finally got one agent who I spent over an hour with on the chat who I think was trying to help.  But later this afternoon she said she had escalated the complaint but they would not do anything because it was showing my name as the advertisor.  She pointed to where the ad originally was created in February of 2017 and had no end date.  I told her I had turned the ads off a long time ago and would only use them a little a few times.  I pointed out to her that if she is going on the ad date and the "no end date" time frame, why were there no ad charges throughout this year, especially in March.  She noticed that.  But apparently nobody with any authority has enough brains to realize something is wrong here.  I did not nor would I have turned those ads on in the middle of April.

With the pandemic going on and with government courts and stuff either shortstaffed or closed, finding a way to file a suit against Facebook would be nearly impossible I'm sure.  Somebody besides me turned on those ads.

Be very careful if you try to advertise via Facebook.  I will not use them again. I get more response to a post pointing at my business page on Facebook.  I'm sure they may try to shut it down over my complaints here.  But this is BS.  The agent today even admitted she saw what I told her....  if there was no end date why did they suddenly charge me for ads in April even though I haven't done any advertising (by their own admission) in the months prior?  Note in the screenshot that before the April ads that they have suddenly charged me for, there is no ad traffic showing since March of 2019.

Don't advertise on Facebook.