We all know that customer service seems to be significantly slipping in terms of its quality, consistency, availability, and results, as well as the user experience every day. This seems to be occurring on many digital platforms across the world.

Today however, I’d like to report on my personal experience with Facebook. Please, do yourselves a favor. Read this short blog and take it to heart. It could happen to you. I was the victim of a phishing scam several weeks ago. My Facebook account was hacked. I saw a charge on my credit card linked to my Facebook account which I didn’t make and had to cancel my card as a result. Facebook then temporarily disabled my account. I could not access any tools, help or support in my Facebook account. When I tried to log in and get help I was simply told my account was under review and I had only 30 days until my account was permanently disabled. I then began a serious campaign to contact Facebook and get them to help me. I emailed them at [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]. I wrote them an analog letter with complete documentation and had it delivered to their corporate headquarters. I reached out to colleagues who know people who work at Meta and I asked them to advocate customer service on my behalf. My colleagues did their part graciously and enthusiastically. They did reach out to their colleagues who work for Meta but were all told there was nothing that anyone could do to help me with the situation. Let me be very clear. I never did anything wrong. I never violated any of Facebook’s content guidelines. I have never posted anything on Facebook that was in any way inappropriate or in any way violated Facebook’s content policies and guidelines. I was the victim of a malicious, phishing scam. It’s ironic because I sell a lot of artistic content on Facebook and one would think that Meta would not allow one of their better subscribers who spends a lot of money an advertising on the platform promoting appropriate, legitimate content to have their account permanently disabled for reasons having nothing do to with them. My next line of approach concerned my own IT consultants who work for me managing digital content on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. I reached out to them and they in turn reached out to Meta and all got summarily rejected in their attempts to receive customer service about this problem.

Facebook ultimately permanently deleted my account and with it all of my contacts, my content, my artistic material that was available for sale, and never responded to my or any of my colleague’s attempts to have them provide normal customer service response to this error on their part.

So this is where we’ve gotten. This is the level of impunity that many digital platforms now substitute for customer service. Like I said at the beginning…it’s a cautionary tale.