Permanently Disabled Facebook Account: Can you Recover?

I am NOT going to make you read all of this post for answer, so here it is: 

YES, IT IS POSSIBLE TO RECOVER after receiving the message 'We have permanently disabled your facebook account ... No further appeals are possible..."

Now you can read on for information on how we went through the process or simply move on and carry on - best of luck to you!

Where We Live and What We Do

We live in Thornton, New South Wales, a pleasant suburb of Maitland, near Newcastle from where we run our businesses, Sydney Business Web and Hettie Rowley Art. We serve the local community and also offer services across Australia.

Hettie is an award winning artist who sells her work, commission paintings, portraits etc and also holds art classes for students of ages 16 to 90! She is extremely talented. I am a former professional engineer with extensive web and business skills. Together, we run Sydney Business Web - I make things work and she makes sure our designs are 'easy on the eye' so to speak,

The Criticality of Facebook

For small and medium businesses, Facebook is not a 'nice to have' - there are times when it's your lifeblood. I am not exaggerating - when Hettie wants to set up a series of classes in and around Thornton, her first and best way to recruit students is on Facebook. Similarly, when I want to post business development news for Sydney Business Web of interest locally and indeed nationally, where do I post - Facebook is critical for engaging local business.

Yes, the entity formerly known as Twitter  -  X  - is increasingly important - and we use it - just as we use Linkedin but none of those other platforms come near the importance of Facebook I'm afraid. 

Permanently Disabled Facebook Account

Around 17th February, I was busy answering a South African friend's post when suddenly I received a challenge (presumably from a Facebook AI) and was instructed to submit a video of myself which I did in short-order. Just a routine check, I thought. More the fool me!

Just a few hours later I was informed that my Facebook account was permanently disabled for unspecified violations and that I had 180 days to download my data and leave forever.  After that time the account would be deleted forever. I was SHOCKED! Nobody human to appeal to  and around twenty years or more of posts and correspondence with friends and family around the world - gone!

Being Cut Off from Friends Family and Business

I have been a citizen of the UK, South Africa and Australia . My wife is formerly South African. We live in Australia.  We both have friends and family with whom we only communicate on Facebook - we have come to depend on it heavily.  Before you condemn us for allowing this to happen, to become so dependent, ask yourself how else we are to communicate with them all - except with the one tool they all use - Facebook! I do not blame Facebook for its monopoly status - that's what haPPENS WHEN YOU ARE THE BEST AT WHAT YOU DO.

Compounding the problem, I manage several clients' Facebook affairs through my account so not only was I locked out from my own business but also from my clients' accounts.

What we did to get our Facebook accounts restored

We could not find any accessible human help through the normal channels available to us - once the great AI god locks you out, there is no one to talk to. It's a desperate situation, But we didn't give up! 

Before we tell you how we got our Facebook Accounts Restored, we'll tell you what we still had access to. We could NOT log into any Facebook account -  not our personal accounts and not our business accounts - but we DID have access to:

1) Our Instagram accounts

2) Our Facebook Business Area business.facebook.com

This may seem strange - but that's how it  was: we could not log into Facebook because our accounts were disabled - not suspended but disabled permanently - but I still had access to the area in which I could advertise and we both could still log into Instagram.

We both upgraded our Instagram accounts to paid accounts

Instagram paid accounts come with the subscription-indicated support access so this seemed a smart move - possibly. What happened next was extremely frustrating.

You Have Asked for Help Too Many Times

We subscribed to META verified through Instagram and in so doing gained access to human support agents. Unfortunately, using the "connect to an agent" button repeatedly returned a message "A problem has occurred try again later". When we did try again later the response was "you have reached your chat limit".  At the same time we were sending emails to just about every email address for Meta we could lay our hands on. This went on for weeks. By now we were getting desperate and then - after about 5 weeks total...

The Magick Zuckmail 

We received an email around 28th March from Meta Support.  We believed it was genuine based on the header and other indicators we checked. NOW we thought we'd get some help.

But although we responded promptly, politely and enthusiastically - NOTHING. I dutifully replied to their email every day - NOTHING!

The Turning of the Tide - An MP Helps

By now, at our wits end and having tried so many things we resorted to a last hope - our local MP Meryl Swanson.  Hettie heard about a possible route through the local Federal MP for our district Thornton/Maitland.  We put together a report detailing the timeline and all our efforts to get the issue resolved and sent it to her. Ms Swanson's office was extremely responsive and helpful. 

Two days later - our accounts were restored - Hallelujah!!! Now we cannot be certain that it was our MP's efforts that helped, but we would be surprised if it wasn't!  But on the same day that our accounts were re-enabled, we did receive the long-awaited offer of help from Meta support. Now obviously, I am not going to divulge the contact details of those persons, which would not be ethical or professional, but here are the contents of all 3:

Hi Hettie ,
 Thank you for contacting the Meta Pro Team. My name is xxx, and this is within reference to case ID: xxxxxxxxxxx.

Hope you are having a good day!

Thanks for contacting meta pro team, Hettie we already have an active chat going on if you want we can close the chat and continue the conversation on the email.

You’ve been a very patient customer. Thanks for contacting Meta Pro Team, always happy to help.

Thanks & Regards,
 xxx

Then this one:

Hi Hettie ,
 Thanks,
Hettie after reviewing your account xxxxxxxI found this Facebook account to be active.
 xxxxxx
Regards,
 xxxxxx | Meta Pro Team

So at last, the Meta support team really was on our case - but it had already been fixed - which is one reason I suspect our MP's intervention may have moved things along. The final email from Meta support was an invitation:

Hi Hettie ,
 Thank you so much for the confirmation.
 Please let me know if there is anything else many [sic] I assist you with?
I would also like to invite you to check our BluePrint platform, which offers free online courses that can help you expand your digital marketing knowledge and improve your online business: https://www.facebook.com/business/learn
Thank you for contacting the Meta Pro Team.

I never received any of these support emails, just another one stating my account was disabled and rapidly thereafter another saying they'd looked at it and determined it should be re-enabled - I can only assume that's how the machine works! And boys and  girls, was I RELIEVED!!!??? 

NOTE ON APPEALS:

The appeals we submitted on being suspended initially were videos of ourselves at our desktops. This is the ONLY  appeal option we were offered. After submitting those, our accounts were permanently disabled within a few hours. Only the Good Lord and Facebook know why that would be - we are simply who we are.

Conclusions

IMPORTANT NOTES