Fun and Fail
Some months ago, I logged in to my Facebook profile to throw a few targeted ads up. I’d done Facebook advertising before and found it to be moderately successful — enough that I aimed to do a campaign every couple of months.
Imagine my surprise when I logged in one morning to find this:
For some unknown and clearly arbitrary reason, the gods at Facebook banned my account for running “abusive” ads. The essence of the message above is: “You tried to post an abusive ad. We’ve banned you. There’s nothing you can do about it. Now go away.”
This is bizarre to me. The only campaigns I’ve run are simple and certainly not abusive. Naturally, the Advertising Guidelines they’ve posted don’t help an iota. Under Facebook’s rules, one can’t post an ad that contain “political agendas,” that “advocates against any organization,” or is “grammatically [in]correct and [doesn't] contain proper sentence structure.”
Good thing the web as a whole doesn’t have that last condition.
The ad I ran that appeared to trigger this ban was this:
I’ve read Facebook’s guidelines several times. The only thing I can think of that bugged Facebook was the use of the CBC logo. However, considering CBC has officially endorsed my unofficial CBC fan page as its own, it’s rather a moot point. Or perhaps it’s because I didn’t put a period after “corp” — even though most Canadians know the CBC’s nickname: “The Mother Corp.” But I can’t believe this ad is “abusive,” as Facebook claims.
More Arbitrary Facebook Ad Guidelines
Among the offenses that will get you banned permanently from placing ads on Facebook are:
- Using a ‘&’ instead of the word ‘and’
- Ending a sentence with an ellipse (‘…’)
- Running an ad promoting a political point of view
The Solution
Facebook should take a lesson from Google, which at least tells you why your ad wasn’t approved and gives you an opportunity to fix it. If Facebook were to just email and say “You should use a ‘.’ after ‘corp’,” I’d be happy to fix it. I get my ads run; Facebook gets money. Problem solved.
Instead, people create a second profile with a fake name and run ads under that name instead, pointing to the same destination page as the original banned ad. In fact, considering these banning decisions are made by actual human beings, there’s a good chance that one could post the exact same ad under a different name and have it sail right through the approval process. One person’s “abusive” is another person’s “mild irritant.” We’ve already seen this in the approval process of Apple’s App Store.
Unfortunately for Facebook, I’ve given up trying to get this ban reversed. Instead, I’ve put that money into Google ads and other online promotional means.
Just back from some engagements last week and thought I’d pass this funny little tale along.
I’ve got a few A/V requirements when I present, notably that I like my notebook right at the lectern with me, and that I like the podium (stage/riser) to be free of anything else like chairs, tables, and so on. I tend to move around a lot when I speak, so this helps make sure I don’t faceplant (which, amazingly, hasn’t yet happened in 13 years of professional speaking).
Fast forward to the evening before my presentation. I’m at the event’s reception, meeting the delegates and sponsors, and up walks my client. We introduce each other, go over a couple of last-minute details, and then she leans in and asks, very politely: “Um, so we were able to get you a clear podium, but I wasn’t sure why you needed one?”
I told her that I move around a lot and would just prefer that there’s enough room up there for me to wander. She gets this blank look on her face, then one of those “Oh-my-god-I-completely-misunderstood” looks on her faces.
Turns out, she thought a “podium” was something you stand behind (actually, that’s called a lectern), not something you stand on.
And this was the result.
I sometimes wish customer support staff should simply not be able to use canned response templates. More times than not, I find support people don’t read your email at all — instead they seem to glance at it, find a few keywords, and match it to a canned response they have. Prepared.
Here’s today’s exchange with NetNation/Hostway, the provider I used in the past (and still, sadly, retain some domain names with).
Enjoy this nonsensical response.
Their original email — 2:24 a.m.
The service(s) listed below are about to expire and require your immediate attention. You must renew or your service(s) will be deactivated upon expiration. Your service(s) and possibly your business will be interrupted. Domain: thirdtuesdayvancouver.com.
My response — 11:19 a.m.
I would like to renew this, but when I go to account manager (following your link) it doesn’t show me that domain. Help! I do not want this domain deleted.
Their “response” — 11:48 a.m.
We received a request that you no longer wanted this domain, so it was closed, and autorenew was removed. If this is no longer the case, please provide us with the last 4 characters of your account manager password, and we will re-open it, to enable renewal of the domain.
Do you have any experiences like this that turned frustratingly comical?
I make a lot of phone calls in the day. Note that I didn’t say I talked to a lot of people. Rather, and probably like you, I spend my day listening to a lot of corporate “please hold” messages. It’s gotten to the point that I can pretty much guess at exactly what they’re going to say before they plop me into the queue.
And I realized today that pretty much everything they say on those messages is a lie. Case in point:
“We are experiencing a higher-than-average call volume.“
Bullshit. I’m looking at you, Shaw Cable. You’ve had that on your “please hold” message since 1821. It’s not that you’re suddenly experiencing more calls, it’s that you’ve chosen to not add more staff. I mean, did suddenly — just before I called on Tuesday at 11:20 a.m. — hundreds of people flood your call centre to order the iPhoto slide show channel? Give me a break.
Some companies even have the audacity to take this one level further with “Because of overwhelming demand for our product, we’re experiencing…” Really Rogers Cellular? You’re doing that well? Because your financial statements are reporting the opposite — that, in fact, your bottom-line income for 2008 actually dropped as compared to the previous year. Yeah. Overwhelming demand.
“Our menu options have changed.“
No. They haven’t. Companies use this line because they want to rope people into listening to their whole spiel first — which often includes product ads. Menu options don’t change often. Even if they do, do you really have to leave that on your message for the next five years?
“So that we can route this call to the right agent, please choose from one of the following options.“
This is one of the oldest tricks in the books. It’s called the “Operator 123″ trick in marketing circles. You know those ads that say to call their number and ask to speak to operator 123? Here’s the secret: there is no operator 123. That was ad number #123 you just responded to and by asking for a specific operator, you’ve helped them track which ad you responded to.
That’s basically what’s happening with many of these corporate “please hold” messages. You’re going to talk to the same operator no matter what button you push. What you’ve done instead is logged a little reference in some tracking database what product you own or what your complaint is. And then, you simply get pawned off on whichever agent comes up next.
“Your call is important to us.”
Oops, excuse me — I throw up in my mouth a little. The paradox here is that the companies who dole out this rote, weak statement are the ones who seem to care the least about their customers — at least judging from their customer service. I mean, how do they know my next call is going to be important to them? Maybe I’ll just yodel for the first 30 seconds. That’s not going to be so important…
“Please choose from one of the following options.”
This would be great, if the options they’re offering have anything to do with why I was calling. Today, my financial institution called me seven times in the space of an hour. I was on an important call at the time and let it go to voicemail. Since there were so many calls in the space of such a short time, I wondered if there was something wrong. So I called their number.
Now remember, I am calling to ask why they called and if it were important. Which option would you pick?
- Check your balance, pay a bill, transfer funds, or change your personal access code
- Branch information or for our phone directory
- Loans, mortgages, or lines of credit
- Information on our new tax-free savings account or other investments and rates
- Visa questions including lost and stolen cards
- Personal or business banking needs
I guessed 6, only because it was the most generic. Of course, it was at the end.
Which of course, brought me to the most frequent lie of them all:
“To make sure you get excellent customer service, this call may be recorded.”
Um, what?! I’m going to get better service because a hard disk somewhere is recording our conversation? Get real. I have no doubt that if the call goes weird, you might be able to use it to train future reps on what to do, but the fact that you’re recording our chat won’t help me get anything. Here’s the real reason they record the call: Legal reasons. Organizations these days want a record of everything. Especially government and public sector organizations. It also helps them prove to you they were right and you are wrong, should it come to a dispute. But really, aren’t they always?
There are fewer and fewer companies which offer something as simple as this:
You’ve reached the customer support line of ABC Widgets. Please hold for an operator.
Would it be that hard?
Luckily, the Internet has a solution for everything, and some sites offer a tip sheet on which buttons to press to get through to a human being faster. For instance, when you call Tivo, just say “Live Agent” at the recording and it’ll blast you through. Not so easy at Dell Support where the secret code is 1, 7266966, 1, 4, 4.
This is actually on a car rental company’s contract. “Peace of mind” is the name of its insurance plan.
