Help! My Facebook Account is Suspended. Learn what you should do.

You log into Facebook and you see the big red lock on your screen. It states:

🔒 Ad Account Disabled This ad account, its ads and some of its advertising assets are disabled. You can’t use it to run ads.

Your adrenaline spikes. Your heart starts racing. Your hands start getting cold and clammy. And suddenly you’re hyper-focused and hyper-aware that you have a problem.

But, yesterday everything was fine! What did I do wrong? Why does Facebook hate me? Why did my Facebook account get suspended for no reason? You ask yourself.

You’re screwed. Close your business. Forget advertising. You’re done. It’s over.Well, hold on there cowboy.Take a deep breath. Things are going to be ok. I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me in my career.

In fact, this is something that all Facebook advertisers will eventually experience.

Types of Facebook Account Suspensions

There’s many many kinds of Facebook account suspensions. I’m sure I haven’t even seen them all. There are 3 major kinds of Facebook Account Suspensions you can have. Each one of these come with their own sets of problems and resolutions and each carry different penalties.

1. Your business manager can get suspended.
2. Your Facebook Ad Account can get suspended
3. Your Personal Facebook Account can get suspended, or restricted.
4. Your business Page gets restricted

1. Business Manager Suspension

If you are seeing a business manager suspension, it means Facebook doesn’t approve of your business.

Check your Business’s account quality frequently to determine if you’re restricted or not. Often times, a business can get restricted because it’s not verified. Once you verify your business this can easily be rectified. If you’re verified you’ll see a Checkbox next to your business name.

If you see that your account is near restriction, try to mitigate it before it actually gets restricted.

If your business manager gets restricted it can prohibit you from performing business related duties on Facebook. It can affect pages, ad accounts and other assets within the business, but is typically isolated to the actual business entity itself. If you’re already verified and you’ve repeatedly had accounts that get banned, or been associated with bad-acting or non compliant accounts, your entire business manager can get shut down. This is usually permanent and really isn’t much recourse.

If there’s an option to appeal, you can try appealing the business manager, but you need to be confident you weren’t in violation of any rules that Facebook put forth. It’s your responsibility that you are always adhering to their new Commerce Eligibility Requirements. 

Though a business manager that gets suspended is fairly rare, they can be serious. If you’re not verified, it could be as simple as providing more transparency to Facebook. If you’re already verified and have had multiple ad accounts or partner accounts go down, it’s likely because Facebook doesn’t approve of your business or partner’s business practices.

2. Facebook Ad Account Suspension

Often times, there is an update. Or a sweeping new Facebook ads policy compliance standard. Sometimes the machines just get a bit too over indulgent with their powers and decide to start banning every Facebook account. I’ve seen even the most compliant ad accounts go down due to some Facebook policy updates and sweeping compliance changes.

It’s ok, it happens.Keep in mind, your business manager should still be intact, it’s just a single ad account that got suspended. Since each ad account is independent from each other, having a single account banned isn’t really a huge deal. Yes, there is history in that account, but you can still access your reports and the data will not go away.This is often a very frustrating process, but if you still have access to your Facebook Business Manager, there are still lots of things you can do.

Sometimes ad accounts go down because your business or personal account is not verified.

Make sure your business is verified and your personal account is verified before doing any appeals. Also make sure your billing information is up to date and working. Sometimes accounts get disabled because of a billing issue.Make sure your business is verifiedMake sure your personal account is verified.Try the following solutions to help recover your Facebook Ad Account.

1. Reach out to Facebook’s Business Concierge Support

Yes, getting in touch with Facebook can be very difficult.

The company does everything they can to separate themselves from their users.They really don’t want customers, users or advertisers reaching out to them in any capacity. Sometimes you will have a manual review option, but it’s always best to reach out to a rep first before taking additional action.

It’s always important to gather information as best you can about the situation prior to clicking on anything.

In other words, if there is an option to appeal the case, do not do it until you speak with a rep. You’d be surprised how effective this could be down the line.When communicating with the reps, it’s important to stay as polite as possible and stipulate that you are familiar with the Facebook ads policies. You can use the example email below:

Dear Facebook Support Team,

I am writing to request assistance with my Facebook account, which has been suspended. I understand that Facebook has policies in place to ensure a safe and positive experience for all users, and I am committed to adhering to these policies.

I am aware that my account was suspended for a violation of Facebook’s terms of service, and I would like to better understand what actions led to this suspension and how I can prevent it from happening again in the future. I am willing to take any necessary steps to ensure that my account is in compliance with Facebook’s policies.

I am also writing to request that the suspension placed on my account be lifted. I value my Facebook account and the connections I have made on the platform, and I would like to continue using it in a responsible and respectful manner.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to receiving your response and working with you to resolve this issue.

Sincerely,

Your Name

Once you open the case, you should monitor your ticket in your support inbox.

2. Reach out to Facebook’s Partner Support

If you’re a Facebook Partner, you will have additional benefits with Facebook support. If you’re not a partner, you can apply to become a partner and then reach out to the FMP support.You can access your FMP support here: https://www.facebook.com/business/fmpsupport. Otherwise you can try going to the standard help desk route: https://www.facebook.com/help.

2. Reach out to a rep you’ve worked with in the past.

Often times, if you’ve advertised for any length of time, Facebook’s reps should naturally reach out to you. They will want to work with you.

If you’ve received emails from them in the past, you should still have access to their business emails. It’s not an ideal route, but this is certainly an option.

3. Open a New Facebook Ad Account

Sometimes when an ad account gets suspended, the easiest route is to just create a new account from scratch. Importing and exporting your data is fairly straight forward, but you should really cut ties with your old account and start fresh. Maybe your old account got suspended for a billing issue or something that is easily avoided. Maybe it’s just the content. Maybe it’s just a glitch. In any case, it’s important to have a backup account. We’ll go over this later in the article when I start talking about prevention.

Check out the video on how to open a new account below.

Also, be cognizant that if you’re new to Facebook Ads, you will have to have some history before you can open a lot of new accounts.

In my case, I have access to over 2500 new accounts. And no, I am not opening an account for you. You will need to figure this out yourself, but I’m here to support and guide you with best practices.

4. Appeal the Existing Account

As a last resort measure, you can manually appeal the account. You can typically find this when you first get notified of the account being disabled. Sometimes you can’t appeal it yourself and you just need a rep to help you out. Either way.

3.Your Personal Facebook Account can get suspended, or restricted.

Well this is certainly one of the most suckiest situations to occur with Facebook Ads. This prevents you from, well, functioning in the Facebook ecosystem. This happened to me 2 times back in October. I was on the ads manager and I tried to publish some ads, only to get this warning:

This Feature is Temporarily Blocked: You recently posted something that violates Facebook policies, so you’re temporarily blocked from using this feature. For more information, visit the Help Center.<br /><br />To keep from getting blocked again, please make sure you’ve read and understand Facebook’s Community Standards. (#1404080)

Uhhh….My ads are in draft mode and I cannot publish? Indeed, I investigated my account and it was suspended. You can find your current account status by following this link: https://www.facebook.com/account_status/.

Of course this situation can really impact your business if you’re a media buyer or agency. Well, it certainly did to me. So I reached out to Facebook to endlessly search for a solution, and they gave me a typical response like this:

I have attempted to contact you however I was unable to get through. We would be more than happy to provide you with further assistance.

Upon checking here, I can confirm that your account and Business Manager are currently on a temporary feature block. We understand that you may have had good intentions or may have not known about our policies on acceptable behavior, and we also understand that this block can be frustrating. To help keep Facebook open and welcoming, we try to prevent people from unintentionally misusing Facebook, even if you felt that what you did was acceptable.

We highly advise to slow down using your account and continue complying with the policies and you do not have to worry as this block will eventually be lifted automatically by the system.

I would like to share this helpful link with regards to a temporary block in Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/help/116393198446749

Thanks for your tremendous understanding and patience while we are in the midst of checking on your concern.

For any other issues, please feel free to initiate a chat support session at the following link: facebook.com/business/help You may receive a quick automated survey via email and it will be evaluated based on the service provided by the related agent only. I hope that I was able to address your concerns correctly here and during our chat conversation.

Thank you for your time and we wish you and your business well!

And another followup email:

With regards to your concern with temporary feature limitations that you are experiencing on the account as you have mentioned.

Please note that the said restriction caused was due to you’re repeating the same action very quickly over a short period of time. This is how our spam detection systems normally work. Following rapid usage, our systems temporarily prevent you from repeating the action. After the cooldown period is over, you can resume normal activity.

We’ll share some details to shed some light regarding the feature limits. Normally these types of block are just temporary and brought upon actions that could potentially disrupt a users experience in Meta, some examples of those actions are:

1. Inviting users too fast in bulk 2. Messaging too many users in a short period of time 3. Use of third party that automates any actions

If this is a temporary feature block, we would like to share with you these information:

1. Temporary blocks can last from a few hours, a few days, or a few months. 2. Feature blocks exist to ensure that fake users/bots do not take advantage of using the feature and to keep the platform enjoyable for all users. 3. Feature blocks must run through its advised time, and we cannot lift the block early. 4. Advertisers are advised to slow down the behavior and to even stop using the features for a few days.

To keep from getting blocked again, advertisers have to slow down or stop this behavior. Otherwise, their accounts could be permanently disabled. Please see this Help Center link for more details about Blocks: https://www.facebook.com/help

Having that said, we can only wait until the restriction gets to be lifted by the system.

Should you need other assistance apart what have discussed, you may initiate a new chat via this link: facebook.com/business/help

We hope the above information clarifies everything and we want to thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. You may receive a quick automated survey via email, and it will be evaluated based on the service provided.

Thank you for contacting Meta Pro Team. We wish you and your business well. Have a good day ahead of you!

So basically, it’s a whole lot of nothing. There is nothing reps can do for you. There is nothing that can be had. There is no solution, except waiting for the predetermined time to get the ban lifted. And no, I didn’t do any of those actions, it was a glitch in Facebook’s system that decided to attack me at full force for posting ads.

Nonetheless, the situation ended after about 60 days of not being able to use Facebook. In the meantime, I was still able to manage the accounts and I was still able to access the business side of the accounts.

This means that we were still spending. Well, as luck would have it, I got another email from yet another department and another rep.

During our call he asked me if there are any issues I’m experiencing and I mentioned my current issue.

His response was simple: “Just use another account, like your wife’s account”. I was floored. A Facebook rep is telling me to use another account.

Now, I don’t like violating policy and I am not interested in circumvention, but it was wild hearing it from a rep:

There you have it. From Facebook’s own reps, they recommend to use a different account.

Of course, I didn’t go this route, I just waited out my penalty in Facebook jail. but this is certainly an option.

So, if your personal account gets suspended, “you can use your other personal profile for access the ad account (only for temporarily).” 

In this case, you can wait or follow the instructions provided by the Facebook rep above.

4. Your Business Page Gets Restricted

When your Facebook Page suddenly gets suspended, your ads can all get rejected.

However, that doesn’t mean your account is suspended. It means that your page is suspended and has violated something that Facebook doesn’t like.

And, usually it’s a transparency issue. Recently, Facebook got all hot and heavy about YOUR transparency with ITS users. This now means you have to sell your soul to Facebook by providing additional documents. This may coincide with a business verification, but not always.

The process to mitigate this is usually pretty straight forward. Rarely, have I gotten a page suspended permanently. Follow the below steps to mitigate a suspended page.

1. Verify Your Identity

If it’s an identity issue, just confirm your identity and you should be good.

2. Appeal with the help of a Rep

If you’ve already done this and it got suspended again, then don’t do the automatic review process through Facebook for the page. Instead, submit a manual review through your Facebook Rep., or the support channel.

3. Minimize Rejected Ads

A page can go down for many reasons, but if it’s due to too many rejected ads on your page, then you need to tread lightly. Your ads can get rejected for a variety of odd reasons, and sometimes they make sense.

Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes you truly violated Facebook ad policy. In this case, if they reject some ads and they don’t restrict the page, make sure that you only submit one ad at a time for approval. Getting too many ads rejected will shut your page down, so you’re better off getting one rejected at a time vs. 30.

If your ads get rejected again, DELETE or EDIT them to keep your rejected to approved ratio low.

4. Create a new page

If, after confirming your identity and appealing your page, your page is still restricted, then you may just need to create a new page. If you’re working with a client, have the client create a new page, not you. Don’t be associated with a suspended account if you can avoid it.

Well, I hope this long-winded article helps you better understand the Facebook suspension landscape. Please leave me some love below!

Dealing with Suspensions and Bans

Each Facebook suspension or ban should be handled differently and on a case-by-case basis. It’s important that you stay calm throughout the process and understand that this too shall pass. This is just a temporary situation and your business will survive and will get through this.

After seeing dozens of bans throughout my tenure with Facebook ads, it becomes an expected part of marketing. If you’re banned, you’re passed the prevention stage. I recommend you check out the steps you need to take to help prevent your Facebook account from getting suspended in the first place after your account is reinstated.

Because of the multitude of violations and bans out there, it’s next to impossible to help you on a personal level. However if you drop a comment about your situation below, I’ll do my best to address it and help guide you through the confusing web of chaos.