The "Disabled" Saga, Part One

Warning: This post is rather long and slightly venting. It won't hurt my feelings if you don't read it all... I am, however, trying to find ways of laughing through this...

After posting a few comments about how much I love Stephen's hot chocolate around 2pm on Saturday, November 7th, I laid down for a nap hoping that when I woke up I would feel less exhausted than I had all week. At around 4:30pm I received the following text from my friend Mindy:

You disappeared off facebook :(

At first I thought that she was referring to the fact that I'd been logged out of Facebook chat, so I ignored it until right around 5pm, when I woke up and went to my computer. Sure enough, my Facebook had been logged out, so I tried to log in and see if Mindy was still available to chat. When I tried to log in, I was sent to the following screen:

I figured I must have typed in my password in the wrong way a few too many times... So I clicked the little red "here" to view this FAQ page:

Right about now the panic started setting in. I started asking myself questions like, "Oh crap, who did I piss off... and how?" or "I wonder if this is some kind of glitch..." and then "Did someone hack into my account??" I read through the Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and could think of no way that I could - or would - have breached this agreement. I wondered why this is happened, but their FAQ "Can I see the content that got me disabled?" states "Unfortunately, for technical and security reasons, Facebook cannot provide you with a description or copy of the removed content." Really? So my account's disabled, but I can't know why... Okay, this must be a mistake. Perfect, there's instructions for "I think my account was disabled by mistake."

I sent the following appeal to disabled@facebook.com:

My name is... My birthdate is... My login email address is... To my knowledge I have not done anything that was not in compliance with Facebook's Statement
of Rights and Responsibilities. I am very concerned as to why this happened, especially being as the only way I was notified is that one of my best friends was not able to find me on Facebook. Can you please explain to my why my account has been disabled? I have never had any complaints with Facebook, but now am quite concerned.

Sincerely,

To which I received the following autoresponder:

Hi,

The Facebook Team has received your inquiry. We should get back to you soon. In the meantime, we encourage you to review our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (http://www.facebook.com/terms.php) for more information.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

The Facebook Team

Done and done. So, my appeal sent, I thought for sure that after a few hours, maybe even a day, my Facebook account would be up and running again. I went to a party with a few friends that night, made jokes about my being "diabled" and therefore unwanted/unloved, but was not particularly surprised when I didn't hear anything on Saturday night or Sunday. I came in to work yesterday morning and - amidst texts from other friends and family wondering where my Facebook had gone - I had still not received any futher information from Facebook.

I would like to take a minute to hear a message from our sponsor, Facebook, and why I use it. First, Facebook is an amazing way to stay in contact with people I would not for other reasons be in contact with. People move, change contact information, but Facebook is still there... In fact, I keep in contact with most of my friends of years past through Facebook. I don't really have any other contact info for them! Second, due to the economic down turn, how it has effected the company I work for, and all that jazz, I've been working in a call center since September... and Facebook has in many ways been my sourse of sanity. I can play games, catch up with old friends, and lots of other things while I sit staring at my computer waiting for my phone to ring. On the weekend and on vacation I can go for days without looking at it... but at work, I go stir-crazy!

So, yesterday I took over 80 phone calls in a 10.5 hour period. That's almost 8 phone calls an hour - average - but in reality that last hour or two I probably only had a handful of calls. So in this call center, that's REALLY busy! But even on a crazy-busy day like yesterday, as with all call centers, that also means I had a lot of dead time. By late morning, I was starting to stress that Facebook wasn't working on my appeal, so I followed up with a second email:

Facebook,

My account has been disabled for almost 2 days now. It is becoming increasingly concerning to me that the only notification I have received is an automated response stating you received my appeal. I would like to have confirmation that someone is looking into this. I've been an active Facebook member for several years now and I have never, to my knowledge, breached compliance with the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, especially not to the degree that would have terminated my membership without warning. I have read and reread the Statement and can find no clause that I have ever broken. The only thing I can now think of is the possibility that my account was compromised in some way and some other entity or individual was able to hack into it. As you can imagine, this is even more concerning to me. Please contact me as soon as possible to let me know what is being done to resolve this matter. I find it particularly distressing that other people I know can use vulgarities and post offensive and occassionally even nude pictures, or obtain accounts that are clearly not personal accounts, which are all violations of the Statement, when I have never done anything in breach of this Statement and yet it is my account that is disabled. It is also particularly frustrating that you can not inform me as to why or how I am not in compliance with or have violated this Statement.

Please contact me as soon as possible to inform me what measures are being taken to resolve this issue and ensure it will not happen again in the future.

This email did not even elicit the same autoresponce email I received on Saturday after I sent in my original appeal. Nothing but digital-crickets. I satisfied my sanity by watching episodes of The Office seasons 1 and 2 during my downtime.

Last night Kimmy created a Facebook page - oh, the irony! - called Jessi Hales wants her Facebook account back, including a brief explanation as to what's been happening:

I don't know how many of you noticed, but Jessi's Facebook profile was disabled sometime last week for an unknown reason. The Facebook team is being difficult and will not respond to her emails answering her question of "Why?". Please join this group if you miss having Jessi on Facebook and let's show the Facebook team that she didn't deserve to be disabled. I know this is a little on the cliche side but it's worth a try....and invite all your friends/people that know Jessi. THANKS!!

Feel free to join this group if you haven't been disabled!

I called my mom and filled her in on what I'd been going through on my way home last night as well... She suggested that I try to find a phone number to call in and expedite the process. First this this morning, I tracked down Facebook's contact information (gotta love whitepages.com).

Facebook Inc.
1601 S. California Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94304
P: 650.853.1300 | F: 650.543.4801

I attempted to contact them via phone this morning:

"Thank you for calling Facebook... If you are a user looking for Customer Care, please press one. Otherwise press zero for an Operator or wait for the beep to leave a message." If you press one, "We're sorry, but Customer Care is not available by phone at this time. Please email us at..." If you press zero, the operator will send you to 'Customer Care' the first time, but recognize your phone number the second time you call, and let you roll over to voicemail.

We'll see how my fax turns out:

Appeals Department Manager,

On Saturday, November 7^th, 2009, at 4:32 pm MT, I received a message from a friend of mine wondering why I had “disappeared off Facebook”. You can imagine my surprise when I attempted to log in to my Facebook account and found that my account was disabled. I followed the link to find out more information, read through the FAQs posted and the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, and then proceeded to send an email to disabled@facebook.com according to the posted appeal process – since “I think my account was disabled by mistake.” That email was sent on the same date at 5:10pm MT, to which I received the following automated response from the Facebook Team: “The Facebook Team has received your inquiry. We should get back to you soon. In the meantime, we encourage you to review our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (http://www.facebook.com/terms.php) for more information.”

It has been almost three days since I submitted the initial email requesting more information, and I have not received any further information or response. I have tried the phone number, including the step that leads to “customer care” which apparently doesn’t exist.

As mentioned in my phone message as well as both emails I’ve submitted, I do not believe I have breached the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. You can look through past posts and any information I have posted to my account and you will find that I am conservative and will refrain from posting anything that might offend any of my friends and associates. I am simply requesting the reinstatement of my account as it existed at the time it was disabled on Saturday.

Please contact me to validate any information, or – even better – to let me know this issue has been resolved and will not happen again. I also expect a detailed explanation of why this even happened.

I'll update my blog as the saga continues.

The best part is, if they ever reactivate my account... I'll probably still love Facbook and use it every day. Ergo, they win. As the saying goes: The person [or entity] with the least emotional involvement in any relationship has the most control.