A New Plymouth couple are crying foul after being locked out of a Facebook Marketplace account from which they run their business and generate their livelihood.
They said Meta offered no explanation for why the account was removed, and all attempts to contact the tech giant have fallen on deaf ears.
Dianne Dobson started up her decluttering and downsizing business, Arrange with Style, about five years ago after being made redundant.
She specialises in selling unwanted items on behalf of people moving house or shifting into rest homes.
But all that came to a crashing halt with a message: “Your access to Marketplace has been removed.”
“In the last two weeks, we had a message from Marketplace and they locked us out, and all of our listings are gone and all of our customers are gone, and we’d just like to know why.
“We’ve tried. We’ve messaged them every day for two weeks and we’re still waiting.”
Her attempts to get an explanation have been met with: “We are reviewing your request.”
“And it’s not just our livelihood, it’s all the people that we work for - they’re all expecting us to sell the items that we’ve listed.
“We’ve done nothing wrong at all, nothing. And if we had it would’ve been really good if they could’ve told us or could tell us what we’ve done wrong.
“I just want to get back up on Marketplace so our business can get up and running again.”
Tech commentator Peter Griffin said unfortunately, Dianne and Grant Dobson’s predicament was not unusual.
“So, something will have triggered a red flag in those transactions on the Facebook platform and they’ve deactivated that account, and that’s where the problems really begin, because you’ve got no way of sorting this out and you’re lucky if you can even use a chatbot to message them. So, it’s a very, very common problem.”
He said the most likely trigger was that suspicious activity had been identified on the Dobson’s account or a disgruntled client had reported it for breaking community standards.
Getting relief from Meta was nigh on impossible.
“They just haven’t invested in the customer service, even for people who are booking adverts on the platform. I’ve heard of many people whose businesses, with no notification, have been shut down and there’s no one to call, no one to message or email - it just disappears into a black hole.”
Griffin said in New Zealand, there was no recourse through Netsafe or any other regulator.
His advice was not to rely on Meta and for a business to have its own website.
“Sure, they are a very valuable channel to reach an audience and they are e-commerce-enabled, so you can make transactions through these platforms, but you’ve got to have your own website and your own way of doing e-commerce that’s not totally reliant on someone sitting in Menlo Park in California who really doesn’t care about you.”
That was cold comfort to Grant Dobson, who had given up fulltime employment to join his wife’s business.
“We are perfect for that medium and we’ve done nothing wrong. We haven’t listed anything incorrectly. We do everything by the book. It’s all out in the open, but it’s gone. They’ve closed the door on us.”
RNZ asked Meta to explain why the Dobsons had been locked out. It declined to comment, instead sending a link to its terms and conditions for using Marketplace.
