Hacker News Reader

Comment by toss1 | Hacker News Reader

IANAL, but you might have an interesting lawsuit there --- they are allowing you to setup a campaign that costs money, then locking you out of control. It would require a reallyy GOOD business litigation attny, but could get results.

In any case, getting an attny to look at potential causes of action in your state and sending their legal dept notification of intended action is likely to get FB's attention much more quickly than a user request.

Your state Attny General office may also be helpful, again, depending upon what state you reside/work.

(Of course, as mentioned in earlier comments, the simplest situation may be to cancel the ccard, and make sure that they don't transfer the charges to the new one if you have it reissued in a new number).

View on HN

Thank you so much! I will cancel my card. I should have used some other payment method. This one seems too risky.

What other payment method would you propose? To me, credit cards are the least risky, because chargeback exists. ACH/direct debit is scary as hell; if you are a business you have only 24 hours to notice and halt a fraudulent/disputed charge (consumers have 30 days). And if you think Facebook customer service is bad, PayPal is even worse; not to mention that you must either choose to keep a balance with them (which they may freeze on a whim) or allow them to direct debit your bank account (see above).

> What other payment method would you propose?

I've successfully used pre-paid VISA Cards in the past, precisely because I was worried about Facebook doing something like this (had it happen to a friend who was running a WordPress blog feat. cat videos and bought some ad campaigns using his primary credit card, then he got locked out and a nightmare ensued).

By using pre-paid cards, you limit your maximum loss in a worst-case-scenario to the amount on the card, which also you are in control of, since you know how much you want to spend when you purchase said card.

Only acceptable caveat is that the cards have about 5% fee upfront that you pay when you purchase it. (ex: 100% visa prepaid card costs about 105$). On the bright side, you can walk away from a mess like this without wasting a lot more time and money on litigation, lawsuits, cancelling cards etc etc.

Of course, for this to work, you should set limits on your spending, instead of running an endless campaign.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com