I can't imagine using a credit card for something like this, but if you do, isn't this exactly what the chargeback is for? They clearly don't recognise your credit card payment, so the chargeback can't reasonably get you in trouble either. If the notice the chargeback at all, at least they'll figure out that you did pay them after all.
I'd use the payment method you used before, because that always worked, and then chargeback the old payment that clearly didn't work. How are they going to side with Facebook when you've got all that documentation that they don't recognise that payment?
Amex might very well take the OP's side, and they'd be right to. Credit card companies typically want to protect their customers and are predisposed to help them in matters like this. However, they have absolutely no control over what Meta does after that. They can't force Meta to keep doing business with the OP, even if the reason for terminating business is "I want to punish OP for taking 40k from my account that I didn't think was there."
Editing to add: One avenue that would probably work fairly well would be to get a lawyer to send a mean letter to Meta's general counsel. $40k is enough money to make the hourly rate worth it, and an attorney will be happy to help further if Meta tries to be punitive.
Editing to add: One avenue that would probably work fairly well would be to get a lawyer to send a mean letter to Meta's general counsel. $40k is enough money to make the hourly rate worth it, and an attorney will be happy to help further if Meta tries to be punitive.
They can't force Meta to keep doing business with the OP
Why not? Why can't they just add something to their merchant agreements to the effect of "if a customer files a chargeback that's resolved in their favor, you may not retaliate against them in any way"?
I know from experience that attempting to chargeback any Meta owned business is immediate banning on the platform.
EDIT: I would strongly recommend you don’t do a chargeback and fix it some other way. It took me almost 200 days for Meta to restore my account and I was still out the money. If you need that account don’t charge back.
The other option is to file a small claims lawsuit if it's a small enough value in your municipality (some areas do allow claims to $10k, some even a little more). Or just have a lawyer send a legal threat with documentation.
You can do chargebacks, it's just that you are not likely to have business with that merchant again. No big deal, given that that merchant is proven to be not very reliable with your money, right?
The issue arises when there is no other merchant, in other words - when there is a monopoly, or something close to it.
Which is exactly the case with Meta. That's the issue. If you are in U.S., please ask your representatives to take some anti-trust action and split this company once and for all.
There's a fun story that goes around about the president of an unnamed tech startup using his amex to pay the company's payroll, until they told him to knock it off.
I'm definitely considering it but trying to make sure we fully, thoroughly exhaust all other channels. Totally agree that it wouldn't be "reasonable" to permanently suspend our account for a chargeback in this scenario, but it's hard to know what's reasonable at this point.
Sucks to say it but having to double-pay this invoice may still be a better scenario than having the business fully banned from Meta Ads.
In any case, I think the worst option is to let Facebook cancel your account and not doing the chargeback.
I'm not an expert on finances at all, but I'd pay using the old method, then chargeback. If they then cancel your account, they'd have to repay the new payment too, and I think someone there would start wondering why the hell they're cancelling you then.
It's not possible to pay by credit card again — just get a generic error when trying to open the payment form. So it would have to be by wire transfer, for which there are no chargeback protections.
Right, but, pay by wire to settle what Meta thinks is outstanding, and then initiate the chargeback process. At least during the pendency of that process, you’ll have that wire transfer documentation that seems to be the only thing Meta can comprehend, and you can (hopefully, fingers crossed, get back up and running).
I get that there’s a real risk here that you could wind up out another $40k at the end of the day and your problem still isn’t solved, but if losing access to the Meta market is as fundamental a risk to the business as I took away from the post, then it seems to me like job one is to ensure that the business survives and that the (admittedly unpleasant) process of getting trued-up on the $40k is exactly the kind of thing that your lawyer is for.
You're probably right. We can hopefully get back the money, but there's no getting back the lost revenue. Missed the wire cutoff for today but guess I know what I'll be doing tomorrow.
If you hold shares, there should be a shareholder relations department you can contact which often has the ability to skip multiple layers of bullshit.
(source: patio11 has mentioned more than once holding a handful of shares in companies he's a customer of to make him eligible to use that approach)
While a chargeback is effectively the right move, most large companies have extremely heavy handed responses to it even if it's to correct their error you've made good faith effort to resolve.
As I think someone else mentioned, that would be a no brainer if you had no expectation of every doing business with them again but I wouldn't do that in this case.
I saw a story on Reddit (posted it here as well) where someone did a chargeback for Google Ads and their Gmail got permabanned.
Chargebacks are not as powerful as you think. Do enough and you won’t win anymore regardless of how right you are. Uber, Amazon, Google, etc will straight up ban people who do chargebacks with no recourse.
Comments
I can't imagine using a credit card for something like this, but if you do, isn't this exactly what the chargeback is for? They clearly don't recognise your credit card payment, so the chargeback can't reasonably get you in trouble either. If the notice the chargeback at all, at least they'll figure out that you did pay them after all.
I'd use the payment method you used before, because that always worked, and then chargeback the old payment that clearly didn't work. How are they going to side with Facebook when you've got all that documentation that they don't recognise that payment?
Amex might very well take the OP's side, and they'd be right to. Credit card companies typically want to protect their customers and are predisposed to help them in matters like this. However, they have absolutely no control over what Meta does after that. They can't force Meta to keep doing business with the OP, even if the reason for terminating business is "I want to punish OP for taking 40k from my account that I didn't think was there."
Editing to add: One avenue that would probably work fairly well would be to get a lawyer to send a mean letter to Meta's general counsel. $40k is enough money to make the hourly rate worth it, and an attorney will be happy to help further if Meta tries to be punitive.
This 100%.
That's a really good point and suggestion. I'll reach out to our attorney. (grimacing at the cost as I write this)
Best of luck to you. Please come back and let us know what happens (if you can).
Thanks. I'll update here if/when I can.
Why not? Why can't they just add something to their merchant agreements to the effect of "if a customer files a chargeback that's resolved in their favor, you may not retaliate against them in any way"?
This being said, if a merchant gets too many chargebacks the gateway or processor may terminate the merchant's account.
So Facebook will be forced to stop accepting credit card payments that they can't handle properly anyway. Seems like a good solution to me.
I know from experience that attempting to chargeback any Meta owned business is immediate banning on the platform.
EDIT: I would strongly recommend you don’t do a chargeback and fix it some other way. It took me almost 200 days for Meta to restore my account and I was still out the money. If you need that account don’t charge back.
The other option is to file a small claims lawsuit if it's a small enough value in your municipality (some areas do allow claims to $10k, some even a little more). Or just have a lawyer send a legal threat with documentation.
Thanks for the heads-up. Exploring other channels now. We can't risk having the account shutdown for 200 days (or even 30).
If you can't do chargebacks anyway, then what's the point of even using a credit card for this?
You can do chargebacks, it's just that you are not likely to have business with that merchant again. No big deal, given that that merchant is proven to be not very reliable with your money, right?
The issue arises when there is no other merchant, in other words - when there is a monopoly, or something close to it.
Which is exactly the case with Meta. That's the issue. If you are in U.S., please ask your representatives to take some anti-trust action and split this company once and for all.
In my experience with non-tech businesses, the point of using a credit card for large business expenses is to get credit card points.
There's a fun story that goes around about the president of an unnamed tech startup using his amex to pay the company's payroll, until they told him to knock it off.
I'm definitely considering it but trying to make sure we fully, thoroughly exhaust all other channels. Totally agree that it wouldn't be "reasonable" to permanently suspend our account for a chargeback in this scenario, but it's hard to know what's reasonable at this point.
Sucks to say it but having to double-pay this invoice may still be a better scenario than having the business fully banned from Meta Ads.
In any case, I think the worst option is to let Facebook cancel your account and not doing the chargeback.
I'm not an expert on finances at all, but I'd pay using the old method, then chargeback. If they then cancel your account, they'd have to repay the new payment too, and I think someone there would start wondering why the hell they're cancelling you then.
Pay again then chargeback previous payment. You have full right to chargeback extra money.
It's not possible to pay by credit card again — just get a generic error when trying to open the payment form. So it would have to be by wire transfer, for which there are no chargeback protections.
Right, but, pay by wire to settle what Meta thinks is outstanding, and then initiate the chargeback process. At least during the pendency of that process, you’ll have that wire transfer documentation that seems to be the only thing Meta can comprehend, and you can (hopefully, fingers crossed, get back up and running).
I get that there’s a real risk here that you could wind up out another $40k at the end of the day and your problem still isn’t solved, but if losing access to the Meta market is as fundamental a risk to the business as I took away from the post, then it seems to me like job one is to ensure that the business survives and that the (admittedly unpleasant) process of getting trued-up on the $40k is exactly the kind of thing that your lawyer is for.
You're probably right. We can hopefully get back the money, but there's no getting back the lost revenue. Missed the wire cutoff for today but guess I know what I'll be doing tomorrow.
It seems like a truly crappy situation, and I’m sorry you’re having to deal with this. Looks like a cool product.
If you hold shares, there should be a shareholder relations department you can contact which often has the ability to skip multiple layers of bullshit.
(source: patio11 has mentioned more than once holding a handful of shares in companies he's a customer of to make him eligible to use that approach)
While a chargeback is effectively the right move, most large companies have extremely heavy handed responses to it even if it's to correct their error you've made good faith effort to resolve.
As I think someone else mentioned, that would be a no brainer if you had no expectation of every doing business with them again but I wouldn't do that in this case.
I saw a story on Reddit (posted it here as well) where someone did a chargeback for Google Ads and their Gmail got permabanned.
Chargebacks are not as powerful as you think. Do enough and you won’t win anymore regardless of how right you are. Uber, Amazon, Google, etc will straight up ban people who do chargebacks with no recourse.
chargeback = perma ban