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> We immediately stopped the campaign and reached out to FB via a form (they have no email nor telephone) telling them about the issue, we included screenshots

> We immediately stopped the campaign and reached out to FB via a form (they have no email nor telephone) telling them about the issue, we included screenshots and other relevant information. We never heard from Facebook. How is that even legal?

Silhouette 13y ago
How is that even legal? Whether it's legal doesn't matter very much in practice if you lack the means to enforce your theoretical legal rights. For small sums, it's not worth the time to go to court for most people. In the US legal system, it's probably not worth it even for quite large sums, if you're likely to get stuck with paying significant legal bills even if you win. For serious money, it probably becomes worthwhile to take action in apparently black and white cases like this, but I suspect many advertisers using Facebook ads (and Google etc.) are small outfits that never really spend serious money. They can effectively be mistreated with impunity regardless of anything the law says, unless they have recourse to something like charging back the payment for the campaign and relying on repossession of the funds being 9/10 of the law.
- a3n 13y ago
  If the loss is small enough, small claims court can be worth it for the plaintiff. IANAL. https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=honda+%22class+action%22+%22small+claims%22+battery https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=honda+%22class+action%22+%22s...
  - Silhouette 13y ago
    That assumes Facebook exists in your jurisdiction so there is a legal entity you can actually take to court, though. A significant difficulty with small claims processes, at least where I am, is that because you typically don't involve lawyers on either side so you can keep the costs down, you can also have difficulty even figuring out who you actually have an actionable complaint against if you're the little guy and you're up against a business with a non-trivial structure.
antr 13y ago
"move fast and break things" seems to apply to customer service too. is it legal? surely not, but given that our overall ad spend was much larger we didn't have the time/couldn't be bothered to chase FB. As some colleagues see this: "the bright side is that in the long run we have saved money, as we are no longer going to advertise with FB" We thought of creating a post about this experience on our company's blog, but given that we are not a "tech focused" company, and this post wouldn't fit with our clients/blog readers interest, we decided not write about it.
- trendoid 13y ago
  Anything that shows a big corp doing bad to small corp will attract interest. Go ahead and write a blog with evidence and all. I am sure it will raise eyebrows on atleast HN.
- grey-area 13y ago
  We thought of creating a post about this experience on our company's blog It's worth doing it for you and for others who are buying advertising. If it doesn't become popular, no big deal. If it attracts attention, it might be more profitable than the €2000 spent on FB for very little time spent, maybe you'll even get a refund. I'd personally like to be able to persuade clients not to spend so much on FB advertising - superficially they look like they are returning likes and hits, but if you look into it, they're pretty useless - our referrals have actually gone down while advertising. This sort of blog post would be enormously helpful in persuading them.
downandout 13y ago
Bad customer service is usually not illegal. However, credit card companies are legally bound to issue a chargeback and refund the money if you inform them that you did not get what you paid for and the company refused to work out a mutually acceptable compromise. In this case, he should have disputed the €2,000 charge.
- Chronic26 13y ago
  You should try Bing.
- sheetjs 13y ago
  On the other hand, I'm sure that FB has something in the terms or customer agreement saying that the locations are recommendations and that the ads may be shown anywhere, even if you only request a certain region.

Silhouette 13y ago

How is that even legal? Whether it's legal doesn't matter very much in practice if you lack the means to enforce your theoretical legal rights. For small sums, it's not worth the time to go to court for most people. In the US legal system, it's probably not worth it even for quite large sums, if you're likely to get stuck with paying significant legal bills even if you win. For serious money, it probably becomes worthwhile to take action in apparently black and white cases like this, but I suspect many advertisers using Facebook ads (and Google etc.) are small outfits that never really spend serious money. They can effectively be mistreated with impunity regardless of anything the law says, unless they have recourse to something like charging back the payment for the campaign and relying on repossession of the funds being 9/10 of the law.

a3n 13y ago
If the loss is small enough, small claims court can be worth it for the plaintiff. IANAL. https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=honda+%22class+action%22+%22small+claims%22+battery https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=honda+%22class+action%22+%22s...
- Silhouette 13y ago
  That assumes Facebook exists in your jurisdiction so there is a legal entity you can actually take to court, though. A significant difficulty with small claims processes, at least where I am, is that because you typically don't involve lawyers on either side so you can keep the costs down, you can also have difficulty even figuring out who you actually have an actionable complaint against if you're the little guy and you're up against a business with a non-trivial structure.

antr 13y ago

"move fast and break things" seems to apply to customer service too. is it legal? surely not, but given that our overall ad spend was much larger we didn't have the time/couldn't be bothered to chase FB. As some colleagues see this: "the bright side is that in the long run we have saved money, as we are no longer going to advertise with FB" We thought of creating a post about this experience on our company's blog, but given that we are not a "tech focused" company, and this post wouldn't fit with our clients/blog readers interest, we decided not write about it.

trendoid 13y ago
Anything that shows a big corp doing bad to small corp will attract interest. Go ahead and write a blog with evidence and all. I am sure it will raise eyebrows on atleast HN.
grey-area 13y ago
We thought of creating a post about this experience on our company's blog It's worth doing it for you and for others who are buying advertising. If it doesn't become popular, no big deal. If it attracts attention, it might be more profitable than the €2000 spent on FB for very little time spent, maybe you'll even get a refund. I'd personally like to be able to persuade clients not to spend so much on FB advertising - superficially they look like they are returning likes and hits, but if you look into it, they're pretty useless - our referrals have actually gone down while advertising. This sort of blog post would be enormously helpful in persuading them.

downandout 13y ago

Bad customer service is usually not illegal. However, credit card companies are legally bound to issue a chargeback and refund the money if you inform them that you did not get what you paid for and the company refused to work out a mutually acceptable compromise. In this case, he should have disputed the €2,000 charge.

Chronic26 13y ago
You should try Bing.
sheetjs 13y ago
On the other hand, I'm sure that FB has something in the terms or customer agreement saying that the locations are recommendations and that the ads may be shown anywhere, even if you only request a certain region.