Facebook Needs to Improve Their Advertisement Policies

Like many, I spend a fair amount of time on Facebook, and one of the largest annoyances (and there are many) is the advertising. While many of us use ad blockers, they don't work on Facebook. The only thing worse than advertising is awful advertising, and Facebook deserves the awful advertisement trophy.

While we're sure that Facebook has employees who approve submitted advertising, they either have a very loose approval policy or are, well, stupid.

On the flip side, advertisers can target their audience by age, location, interests, and more. Because of this, even the little guy can afford to buy ads to promote their products, and that's a good thing. But, many people take advantage of advertising to sell mediocre products at best or entirely fake.

I don't know if it's the advertiser's poor targeting, but my Facebook ads are easy to scroll by or poorly targeted. For example, today, I saw ads for BMW (not a fan), Samsung Galaxy (iPhone user), Wayfair (not a fan), miracle car sprays (scam), and many more.

Frankly, I rarely see an ad worth clicking.

Other ads mislead you. I see a lot of automotive ads, and often the headline does not match the picture. We call that click-bait.

Well, they finally suckered me in. I saw a great deal on a supposedly $1,000 bodyboard with an electric motor for a limited 1,000 run at $89.99. Others I spoke with saw the same ad. It was time to buy something on Facebook, see what happens, and write about it.

If it's too good to be true, it probably is.

I placed my order on their website, sat back, and waited for my new board to arrive with "fast shipping" from California.

After three or four weeks, I knew it was a scam. California to New York takes, on average, five days to arrive. I then had to check my credit card statement and put in a dispute for the charges. Here's where it gets interesting.

About a week after I filed the dispute, a small package arrived from California. Because I didn't order anything, I was hesitant to open the package. With my luck, it probably would have been seeds from China.

Here's what I received.

As I stared at the package, I tried to figure out who sent me this and why they thought it was funny. My friends and I often pull small jokes on each other. Recently I bought a license plate frame that said Princess with lots of fake diamonds and put it on my friend's pickup truck. It took him two weeks to discover it, and of all places, in a Home Depot parking lot.

Then, the light bulb finally went off.

Odds are the scammers sent me these pool floats so they can show they indeed did ship me a package. It's not a bad bet. If the bank feels they have proven their case, I'm out $89, they still pocket about $85, and they have my address and possibly my credit card information to send me some of those Chinses seeds.

Facebook needs to start looking at these advertisements. The advertiser should not have the ability to delete comments in any advertising campaign, allowing immediate responses from customers when an ad is a scam or misleading.

They also need to stop asking us if we saw an ad, and it was effective. That's your job.

Most likely, I'm out $89. Feel free to click an ad on MajorGeeks or whitelist us. Maybe I can make some of that $89 back.

Update: Because I used my personal credit card, I did get a refund. I've heard reports that people who used PayPal and other payment services didn't have the same luck.

Similar:
Why You Shouldn't Share Giveaways on Facebook
How to Stop Facebook’s Targeted Advertising
How to See Less Alcohol, Parenting, Pets, and Political Ads on Facebook
How to View and Delete Your Off-Facebook Activity
How to Manage or Delete All the Apps, Websites and Games That Facebook Can Access