Facebook, stop charging me

http://facebookisstealingfromme.tumblr.com/

by ibrahimcesar • 13 years ago

83 38 13 years ago

facebookisstealingfromme.tumblr.com

taude• 13 years ago

Just have your credit card retract the charges?

akcreek2• 13 years ago

Or start with PayPal and dispute the transaction. In the resolution center open a dispute and select, " I want to report a transaction that I didn't authorize". Paypal will contact FB and then decide the outcome. If they continue to not respond it will automatically go to you.

*Edited to correct grammer.

yuvadam2• 13 years ago

Of course Facebook is about money, it's a corporation, and making a profit is the only reason corporations exist.

akcreek2• 13 years ago

Nothing wrong with focusing on profits, but if they charge for a service it had better be authorized and the service had better be delivered. It appears they did neither in this case based off the info supplied in the article.

yuvadam2• 13 years ago

For sure, Facebook is negligently charging this man's credit card, and there's nothing wrong with focusing on profits.

But corporations love to talk about acting ethical, changing society for the better, wanting to "help connect people", and other random PR babble. But let's not forget that corporations are here to make $$$, full stop.

Mvandenbergh3• 13 years ago

One hates to be a pedant, but that's not strictly true. 501(c)(3) charities are also incorporated as are a whole range of government sponsored enterprises, local governments, and other organisations that are not about making profits.

acjohnson55• 13 years ago

Does "one" hate to be a pedant, or you specifically?

will_brown2• 13 years ago

Despite the name 501(c)(3), exempt Non-Profits are also about making...profits. It is a giant misconception that non-profits can not make profits, but the reality is that many do make profits. The difference with the non-profit is that there are no shareholders (owners)so profits are not distributed to anyone, instead the profits sit in the 501(c)(3) bank account until they are used.

Also, local and municipal governments are not eligible for 501(c)(3) exemption, they may obtain tax exempt status, as you reference, but it is under different section of the IRS Code.

niggler3• 13 years ago

Call your CC, fraud and chargebacks are standard. Especially if you can prove you didn't use or authorize the service in 2013.

coopdog• 13 years ago

I can imagine them banning his account as a 'standard response' to chargebacks. It might not be the end of the world for a personal account but potentially quite annoying for a business with an existing FB presence.

timdorr• 13 years ago

Actually, it looks like he's paying with PayPal. Even better. He can just stop the billing agreement with them and that will stop the charges.

ruswick3• 13 years ago

Obviously, this is an error that needs to be rectified. However, the way that the article regards Facebook's actions is an abject misrepresentation. He states that Facebook is "stealing" from him, when, in fact, no conscious theft took place. In all likelihood, this was simply a bug.

Moreover, he asserts that, given Facebook's actions (or lack thereof) regarding his account, Facebook is "about people's money." First, this assertion is itself pretty nebulous. Moreover, it implies that Facebook is willingly shirking their users and advertising customers for the sake of profit, evidence of which has yet to be seen. From everything that has been presented, it can be reasonably assumed that they simply made a mistake with these charges, and that no malicious intent was involved.

It's unfortunate that Facebook made an error that cost someone money, but this article is clearly perverting the story and making undefended, specious assertions to provoke outrage or drive pageviews.

Mahn3• 13 years ago

He's indeed overreacting. Apparently that works though, because it made it to the front page.

uptown4• 13 years ago

How much should they take from him before he's allowed to be upset?

niggler3• 13 years ago

"In all likelihood, this was simply a bug."

I never understood this mentality. "This was simply a bug" is acceptable for noneconomic trivial situations, but as soon as money changes hands the issues become serious. Contracts were signed, and its possible (I haven't seen the FB contracts) that terms were violate. And I'm pretty sure the courts won't care if it was "simply a bug" if FB doesn't refund the money.

ruswick3• 13 years ago

I'm not saying that what occurred was not bad, merely that it was not necessarily malicious and did not constitute theft.

thedufer• 13 years ago

A bug can cost someone money, yes. And it happens to the best of us. But having no way to get a refund (or even to get a response about whether they'll refund) certainly calls for outrage.

uptown4• 13 years ago

I never quite understand people that get upset when somebody writes a post like this. In the post he says he's tried to rectify the problem by contacting Facebook directly - and he's been ignored. So why not publish something publicly as another means of exposing the problem in a way that might get the resolution he hopes for?

From what I can tell - he didn't submit this story here. He didn't title his blog post with the same title used on HackerNews. He just related his personal experience with their latest marketing campaign about Facebook putting people first.

[edit]: The original title used on HN was: "Facebook is all about people. All about people's money." This has since been changed.

niggler3• 13 years ago

"From what I can tell - he didn't submit this story here"

The user that submitted the article is "ibrahimcesar" and the contact address in the post is "email@ibrahimcesar.com", so there's a nonzero chance the author submitted the story here.

tzakrajs• 13 years ago

Facebook is a publicly traded company. Of course they are all about the money - welcome to America.

onemorepassword• 13 years ago

Facebook is "about" people as much as Soylent Green is...

But nevertheless, culturally I would expect Facebook to understand human communication and the need for customer service better than Google.

loceng• 13 years ago

Why would you expect it? Because there's 800+ million people using it? As I keep saying, they don't actually understand social. They're looking at $ numbers, and that's all.

unclebucknasty• 13 years ago

Another related problem is that FB won't let you remove all credit cards from your FB account once you've added one and/or run ads--at least not through the site. I have yet to try contacting them.

I can see this logic if you have recently run ads that must settle, but even after months or years of inactivity, a card must stay on your account.

nano111• 13 years ago

They gave me $4.00 toward the purchase of a gift in the hope I would give them my CC#

helloamar• 13 years ago

Fake profiles = fake clicks, 3yrs back we were using Facebook ads for 5 months and we gained nothing out of it.

Facebook, stop charging me

Related Stories