By the time I got to know that my Facebook account was hacked, I was wondering how to recover I decided to reset my password because this is the only thing every technical blog teaches you to do. As soon as I logged in to the dashboard, numerous promotions hit my face. Shockingly, someone has used my credit card to pay and run the Facebook ads from my account. I thought resetting the password would help, but I was wrong, as the scenario was much more serious than I imagined.
So, I rushed to contact Facebook support so that I could close all the ad accounts, but what happened next was even more painful than the hack.
First, I tried to get rid of those spam ad accounts on my own, but I was not able to do so, even the Facebook support team denied it by saying they couldn’t delete them either. I was not satisfied with their response, however, this hardly bothered them.
Facebook is not a novice in the market, it is one of the foundation stones of what we call social media nowadays. There are billions of users who rely upon FB for their personal and financial details. Unfortunately, there are not enough resources to deal with hacked or compromised accounts, all they can do is; reset their password. Nevertheless, no way is accessible to restore the money or information they have lost after the hack. Facebook customer care is not reliable in such cases, and getting help from a live person over the phone can only happen in your dreams.
No doubt, Facebook is expanding its territory gracefully. Even though they are regularly hiring technical staff to improve the services and range of features, there is no effort that can be seen in the field of customer service, and that is highly disappointing.
The next thing that you should be aware of is Facebook customer service is a scam. Scammers have created various helplines that act as a Facebook support team and steal the information of users. The web is full of such scams. Some of them are helpful and clearly state their third-party status, but numerous such helplines are looting the money of Facebook users. This is all happening due to the poor accessibility to Facebook’s technical support. You may remain stuck with the automated response for hours, and the frustration prompts you to find other helpful resources.
We are all aware of the Facebook Help Center, the only official web platform available to fetch help. Even, the help center doesn’t offer you a direct way to reach a live person. Rather, it keeps you tangled in the FAQs, chatbots, and forums – no real human Facebook representative who can offer personalized support is needed. This is not expected from the world’s largest social media platform.
I spent weeks resolving the matter, and every time I made an inquiry to FB, they responded dull. I pleaded with them to delete the ad accounts which were consistently sucking my money. After a week or so, I had a word with an FB representative, and he promised me to delete all ad accounts within a week. But nothing happened the entire week and even after a week. I again contacted the FB support team, but a new representative told me it was fine to have those accounts because he couldn’t even understand that I was a victim of hacking. He thought I was running the account intentionally. I was so frustrated that I shouted at him, and then he stated that no one could delete the account as no one had the authority to do so. WOW!!!! I was so angry that I wanted to sue them, but somehow I controlled my anger and cut the phone line immediately.
I tried many other things, but nothing helped. Furthermore, I got to know the truth by the end that FB is lacking in customer service and all it is focused on is making grants from the stored information. FB is not even transparent, and the internal system is a mystery to a regular user. The victim of hacked accounts is not being helped, and thus they depend upon third-party support, which further plays the scam game with them.
Here is a bitter truth that we all need to gulp; For Facebook, we all are a product to make money unless we are paid advertisers on the platform. FB is more compassionate with its advertisers, as it wants to sell the stored information for promotional activities. So, it is clear that this social media site is more interested in making money from users’ information with targeted Facebook business ads, instead of offering an active support platform and ensuring customer satisfaction
Not just customers, the platform is delivering poor ads help support as well. They are stuck with a technical glitch, but their whole focus is to motivate advertisers to run more and more ads so that more money can be made. There are many cases in which advertiser has urged FB to offer better support services.
Jillian York, Director of International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, recently said, “Generally speaking, [Facebook’s customer service] is not very good”. So, it is evident not only regular users by many big names in the market are pointing out the Facebook customer service for not being expectedly remarkable. “If you know somebody at the company, or you know someone like me, who has access to people at the company, it can be fairly easy,” she added in her statement.
York said, “I understand that they might be concerned about being overloaded because they do these things so badly, but I think they really need to invest in reasonable customer service. By choosing to keep their systems free and how they exist right now, they’re making a statement about how they don’t really have to help anyone”.
Recently, an FB advertiser stated his problem by saying “I am using Facebook ads to promote his business in the local area, but recently my account was locked due to suspicious activity. He waited for the FB automated tool, to resolve the issue, but nothing helped. Then, he reached FB support via messenger through the account of his friend, and then his account was unlocked. He tried to reach FB to understand the reason behind the lock but got no response. He stated that he was feeling trapped and lost in the world of FB.
Now, let’s see the statement made by Joseph Ridout, a spokesman with Consumer Action, “Facebook is a company that’s infamous for its poor – and at times seemingly non-existent – customer service”. He added, “None of this [$5 billion] settlement appears to be dedicated toward improving that customer service or making the user interface more manageable for people who experience problems”.
He also said, “I wouldn’t say that they’re not capable of dealing with consumers’ privacy issues, I would say they’re more than capable of it, but they’re totally uninterested because it’s not a profitable activity”.
This was my experience with FB when my account got hacked. If you had the same experience, raise your voice so that it can reach Facebook and FB improves its customer service that can actually help users and doesn’t sprinkle salt on the burn.
I tried many other ways to recover a hacked Facebook account, but the situation didn’t get favorable. However, you should definitely try every possible solution instead of letting go.
