Brisbane small businesswoman’s fight after Facebook account suspended

A Brisbane woman using Facebook ads to promote her activewear brand and was suddenly shutdown had to take on the behemoth.

Brisbane businesswoman Liz Henderson had been running her maternity activewear company The Ten Active for a little more than a year when suddenly she found herself in a battle with one of the biggest companies in the world – Facebook.

Ms Henderson had been using the platform to post ads for her brand until last month when her account was disabled – a move the social media giant now says was an “error”.

But three weeks after the suspension, Ms Henderson was still waiting to find out why her account was abruptly shut off.

She said the ban had also torpedoed her advertising plans for a separate business strategy consultancy that has now been “aborted at the starting gate by this strange ban”.

“You’re not allowed to use Facebook Products to advertise because you didn’t comply with our Advertising Policies or other standards. Your personal ad account was disabled,” a message on Ms Henderson’s Facebook account said.

“It’s very frustrating for small business owners … they’re effectively killing my business,” Ms Henderson told news.com.au.

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Ms Henderson realised there was a problem when she tried to use these two harmless pictures in ads for her maternity activewear company.

It turns out Ms Henderson’s account was suspended ‘in error’.

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Ms Henderson said she hadn’t been able to find out why her account was suspended or get any help.

“They don’t tell you exactly what’s wrong, it just says it violates their policies … Every time I go in I request a review, you go into a black hole, you don’t hear anything.”

When news.com.au contacted Facebook about the issue last week, the company said “our teams are investigating what happened”.

On Friday it said there had been a mistake and Ms Henderson’s account should not have been disabled.

“We made a mistake and disabled the ad account in error. We apologise this happened and have reinstated the account. While we’ll never be 100 per cent perfect, we are always working to improve our processes,” Facebook Australia head of communications Antonia Sanda told news.com.au.

“The rejection was as a result of a technical error and unrelated to the content of the ad,” she added.

Ms Henderson said no one from Facebook had apologised directly to her but accepted the public apology.

Facebook would not comment on what the error that led to Ms Henderson’s account being disabled was.

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Liz Henderson's account was disabled in error and wasn't restored until almost three weeks later after news.com.au pushed Facebook to explain her suspension.

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While Ms Henderson’s account is back up and running the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman says this is not an isolated case.

“Small businesses have contacted my office on a number of occasions regarding issues with advertising on social media,” an ASBFEO spokesperson told news.com.au.

“The vast majority of those complaints are about the difficulties small businesses have in actually speaking to someone. Many of the small businesses that come to us say they have tried for weeks with no response from the social media platform at all.”

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to news.com.au that there was no phone number to call if you have a problem on Facebook but said there was “self-serve, free guidance for all businesses that use our tools”.

One of those is a “chat concierge” and the other is an email address.

Ms Henderson said she “had a frustrating chat exchange with a Facebook agent through their business support who basically said I am in the queue, it’s with their internal team, they can’t help any further”.

WHY FACEBOOK SHOULD CARE ABOUT SMALL BUSINESSES

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg credited small businesses with helping his company bring in tens of billions of dollars this year alone. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

Small business advertisers are important to Facebook. While more than 1000 big businesses joined a campaign that boycotted advertising on Facebook in protest about its enforcement of hate speech policies earlier this year, small businesses quietly kept at it, helping Facebook rack up more than $25 billion in revenue in just three months to the end of June.

“We’re glad to provide small businesses the tools they need to grow and be successful online during these challenging times,” Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg said at the time.

The ACCC released figures on Friday noting that for every $100 spent by advertisers last year, $53 went to Google and $28 went to Facebook.

Ms Henderson said getting help from Facebook was like going into a ‘black hole’. Picture: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP

Council of Small Business of Australia CEO Peter Strong said Facebook – and other market dominating digital platforms that profit off advertising – need to get better at customer support.

“You can’t dominate to the point that (digital platforms) have … with that dominance comes responsibility,” he told news.com.au.

“Facebook has been really good for a lot of businesses because of the way it targets local areas or people with similar interests, but it’s becoming something we need to watch more,” Mr Strong added.

He said Facebook needed better appeal processes for when its automated systems lock down the accounts of its users and customers.

“There should be a process … they should be given a warning and told why, maybe given three days to respond.”

He said the current system was “like walking into your shop and finding that it’s been locked by the landlord and you’re not allowed to go in there, you can’t run your business”.

While her account was suspended, Ms Henderson wished she could talk to someone at Facebook who could explain what she had done wrong. But it turns out she did nothing wrong and that person doesn’t exist.

“There’s probably not enough human touch in this business,” Ms Henderson said.