The Dreaded F Word, Facebook!

     In the world of business in 2012 customer service and customer satisfaction should be the number one goal of every business. Whether it be a internet business, a small town local business, or even mighty corporations such as Facebook. Always keeping the customer in mind when problems arise and making sure their experience after the problem is fixed or not fixed should take place in some kind of communication between customer and company. I have learned a lot from successful businessman over the years in handling problems when they come up with their product or service and making sure their customer is happy after the fact. Companies such as Facebook should have the same mindset when you are playing "King of The Mountain" with young guns such as Twitter and Pinterest.

     To say I had a bad experience with Facebook would be the understatement of the year. Last Friday my account was hacked by what it looks like from an expert hacker and a very bad shoe salesman . I know! I know! It seems to be happening to a lot of people lately. Why all the fuss over being hacked by a shoe salesman? It isn't the problem with being hacked. It is issue that arose after being hacked. Let's go through the all that happened since last Friday. When I got online Friday and started going through my e-mail, I saw I had a e-mail for a password change on Facebook. I knew right then somebody was playing with my account. So I clicked the link that I had not requested for a password change. It took me to Facebook where I verified it was me and I had not requested the change. In the meantime of doing this, my e-mail was hacked. When I got to Facebook, it told me somebody in the Philippines was trying to access my account. No big deal, I changed the password. So I went back to my e-mail and I could not get on. So I went through the steps of recovering my account on Hotmail. By the time I did, vital e-mail had been deleted including information about my Facebook account. In the time I was recovering my e-mail, all the information about my Facebook account was changed. I tried to log in to Facebook with my old info. and the name Sally Howarsd, even misspelled, was the name on my account now, but I didn't have Sally's password to get onto my account. Friends and business partners started calling and e-mailing me about my account. I was still thinking no big deal. So I logged in with my wife's account to get an outside view of my account. My e-mail, password, profile photo, profile name, family photos deleted, taken the admin options off of pages I administered, and the hacker started sending out shoe pictures to all my friends and followers of those pages I was in charge of. Still no big deal! Facebook has policies in place if your account is hacked and taken over by another person. I tried changing the password to the account, but the e-mail with the account was not mine any more. So I started a report on Facebook that my account was hacked. I got e-mail instructions on how to recover my account, but here is the problem. Facebook told me I didn't exist in their system. I used the help section (which is horrible in the department of help), e-mail recovery, Facebook name recovery, and even had friends vouch that this was my account. I sent reports over the Facebook system and hundreds of e-mails to a couple of addresses I found on google to report what was going on. Only auto generated e-mails were sent back to me.  Still no steps were taken by Facebook. I sent in picture verification to Facebook to try and recover my account. Still nothing from Facebook, but I did not exist in their system. That is fine with me, I am about 80% Twitter now anyway for my personal social interactions. Really the only personal reasons I use Facebook anymore is catching recent updates of friends on the news feed and for sending out birthday wishes to friends and family.

    Business reasons are the ones that worried me. I get paid by a few companies to administer their Facebook pages and I administer my own pages for businesses and websites that my wife and I own. Here is where it gets upsetting to me. Businesses that my wife and I have pages for on Facebook, the admin options for these pages were gone. I know what you Facebook geniuses are gonna say, they have a way to recover those admin options. Yes, you are right and wrong. First, I tried to recover the admin options of my wife's clinic. I logged in with her account and chose the option of being the owner of this business. I verified the info. of the business, but next they asked for the e-mail associated with that business. I gave them my wife's e-mail which is the e-mail address to the clinic and my e-mail which is listed on the site. First, they said it couldn't be my wife's e-mail because that is the e-mail on her user account and it had to be a e-mail address with business name in it. I tried mine and they said it couldn't be used because it wasn't on my wife's account. I could also send in the business license and verify it that way. Who wants to send their personal info. such as their business license across the information highway? Are you telling me Facebook doesn't have archives to verify my admin ownership of these pages? Isn't that what Facebook is really doing anyway? Aren't they archiving personal information on people to sell to advertisers and to sell in the future to the highest bidder like My Space did? Trying to communicate with Facebook is like sending a message in a bottle to a friend in Antarctica. They may get it! They may not! And even then in auto generated e-mails they tell you they may or may not look at it. Wow! Thanks for making me feel important, but how do you make one customer feel important in a world of one billion users? If you get multiple reports and e-mails (like close to a hundred) from one person it is probably a problem there. The big thing to me is, I am not just a regular user on Facebook. I also spend advertising dollars with them for pages I am the admin of. The next thing I say is not a accusation, I ended one of my pages advertising campaigns Thursday. It is just strange the next day all this happens. You may ask why I didn't call Facebook about my issues. Ha! Are you being serious. I want you to try and call Facebook. No matter the option you choose in their automatic operator choices, you won't get anywhere.

     There are a few positives that came out of having to start fresh on Facebook. I don't want to be a total Debbie Downer. Do you know those friends that send you those annoying applications request everyday? You know who I am talking about. I totally culled them from my friend's list. Instead of having to put those request on ignore, I just did away with them completely.  Second, you know those friends that sometimes completely take up your news feed with annoying pictures or chain status updates. You know the ones I am talking about! Click like if you  are against animal abuse, with a picture of a mangled dog. I don't have to click like to tell others I am against animal abuse. I will just keep donating dollars to non-profits that help these problems. Then there are those that seem they never go to bed at night and your whole news feed is taken up with generic photos or copied quotes that they share all night long while the rest of the world is sleeping. Totally Gone!

    Finally, how do you get on top of the social media world with such poor customer service? I don't know. I mean it doesn't cost much at all for a small customer service desk at least for small businesses that are spending money with you each day. My goodness, outsource like the rest of the corporate world. I know some Indonesians customer service representatives that will work for for fifty cents an  hour to answer calls and e-mail's. It is not much for a company that makes over 10 million a day.