What to do if you get banned from Facebook Marketplace?

I'm sure that I'm not the only land investor who relies heavily on Facebook for marketing my properties and building a buyer's list. I also list my properties on the other free sites like Craigslist and Zillow, but I have by far the most success finding buyers on Facebook. I was listening to a podcast recently and the guest was explaining that he had his FB Marketplace account frozen, seemingly for no reason. Has anyone ever had this happen to them before, and if so, if there is anything that can be done about the ban? I've heard some people talk about buying seasoned Facebook accounts that would have access to marketplace, but I don't know if that's a viable option. Would it be a good idea to start my own backup Facebook account and start seasoning it myself in case I ever have my Marketplace account frozen?

I've heard the idea of buying seasoned FB accounts too. Never done it before though.

If you're worried about this, it might be reason enough to open a couple of "backup" FB accounts, in case this should ever happen to you. Hopefully you'll never need them, but if you do, they'll be ready.

For what it's worth, I posted this question in our Facebook Group and got some interesting feedback from others who have dealt with similar issues.

It sounds like you're not alone in this issue. Several people have reported similar issues with getting banned for seemingly no reason, and no matter what they do to try and work through the proper channels and communicate with the powers that be at Facebook, it's not getting them anywhere.

One person responded and said (I'm paraphrasing a bit here):

There are instances where another FB user will just report you because they think the listing you put out is confusing. It can also happen [getting banned] if you are working with a VA and they are located outside of the US, because FB doesn’t want you to use your account in multiple places and/or countries.

So, in terms of WHY people are getting banned, both of these things made some sense to me. Even if the reasons are dumb or unjust, at least it makes some logical sense (people aren't just getting banned for no rhyme or reason). It sounds like there is probably a bit too much power in the hands of other FB marketplace users who decide to complain about the listings they see. And as for the issue of having a VA outside the US, maybe consider having them use a VPN, so their location isn't so obvious.

Another person responded and said:

I had 1 guy call me out for alleged "bait and switch", where I indicated the price of the seller financing downpayment instead of the full cash price. I think he reported it too, resulting to a temporary suspension of the specific ad. I corrected it to the full price and facebook put it back up for me.

Sounds like pricing inconsistencies can cause issues too.

It also sounds like some people are just giving up on Facebook altogether because they either don't trust Facebook, or it just takes way too much work to "feed the beast" and deal with all the tire-kickers and games that FB forces you to play.

When I think about the issue, on one hand, giving up on FB seems like an extreme measure, especially if it plays a major role in finding buyers... but on the other hand, there are still a lot of non-Facebook ways to get properties sold. Even if FB is the biggest artery of business for some people, sometimes it could serve us all well to be forced into finding other solutions. It's never ideal to be 100% reliant (or even mostly reliant) on a single source of sales leads.

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Regarding the VPN idea, while that can be a helpful solution, it's actually better to have your VA sign in remotely (from wherever in the world they are) to one specific computer in one specific location, and do all of the FB Marketplace posting from that device.

A VPN service can definitely make it look like a computer is coming from a US location (instead of, say, the Philippines or India), but even then, that VPN location could still be coming from New York, Chicago, California or elsewhere in the states, which still poses the problem of having one account signing in from multiple places, even if they're all from the same country.

If you really want to squash this bug of having one account accessed from multiple places you'll want to do it all from the same machine, every time, by having your assistant sign into your computer remotely and then doing all of the FB activity from there.

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