Facebook, stop charging me | Hacker News Reader

Facebook, stop charging me

facebookisstealingfromme.tumblr.com

83 pointsibrahimcesar38 comments

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

No one says he's not allowed to be upset, Facebook DID do a mistake here, and it is legitimate to be angry about it. But calling names and posting a public tantrum about it is not the way to get it fixed; Facebook is not "stealing", they just did a mistake they need to correct, and if they don't react there are ways to request a chargeback or report fraud.

Who called anybody a name?

Figuratively speaking. "facebook steals, facebook doesn't care about people, all facebook cares is money" is stretching it a bit for what should essentially have been "facebook makes a mistake involving money and neglects to correct it".

And that would get no one's attention. I think he did the right thing, otherwise he would still be ignored and still be receiving charges.

But according to his post, he did try other ways first.

The problem here isn't that a mistake occurred. Mistakes do happen and on occasion its something you'll have to deal with. Most reasonable people don't blow up over minor errors.

The problem here is that the company in question apparently offers no realistic means of providing customer support. When you're providing a free service, I can understand not wanting to spend money offering some form of customer service.

But when you're charging money for a service, not having any customer service that can help you isn't nice at all, to put it mildly.

"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.

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

Don't know what jurisdiction you're in, but fraudulent transactions[1] == "theft" in the colloquial/moral sense where I'm from. Malice is not requisite to defraud.

[1] I charge you for services but do not provide them.

Where I'm from, theft requires intent. Fraud requires intent. If money is lost through unintentional error, there may be legal repercussions, but it will almost assuredly be a civil suit. I don't see how it would be untenable to charge anyone at Facebook with an actual crime for this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft

It's not entirely simple, because when they realise the mistake, they have to correct it. I don't know how to unpack the question of whether Facebook has realised the mistake, and I don't know what Facebook's internal state is.

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.

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.

"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.

Yup - you're right. I must have misread things initially.

Just have your credit card retract the charges?

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

More or less everyone, I imagine.

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.

Right, but municipal bodies in some places are still organised as corporations.

True, but they are still out to make a profit, it goes without saying that if they do not at least generate enough revenue for expenses they can not continue to exist at that rate in perpetuity - but the reality is profit is required to create Trusts to pay pre-existing liabilities such as bonds and pensions, not just cover overhead - in fact we are seeing major cities file bankruptcy setting new precedent in bankruptcy law. See, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-03-31/news/sns-rt-us...

I can not help but like your spelling of organised with an "s", I think I am dropping the "z" and using "s" from now on. Wish I could give a 2nd +1 just for that.

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

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

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