Unfriendly Facebook

Unfriendly Facebook
By: Jason Spencer
4.1.11

So some of you may be already aware of the perceived ego of Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, and I can now give you a perfect example!

As you can see on the left hand side of this page we have a Facebook Page for the site. (UPDATE: Now it’s the right side!) You may also know that on Facebook you can create what they call a “username” for your personal profile or a Facebook Page. Personally, I never really wanted a username on my personal profile, but I thought having one for the website’s Facebook Page seemed like a good idea.

When you have a Facebook Page you’re only really “logged in” as the page when you’re actually on it. Now they’ve changed this feature so you can set it to be your default account, but that would mean I couldn’t communicate as myself, but only as the website. That seemed silly, so I never tried it. Well there is an “Edit Page” button on the Facebook Page when I’m on it, just like there is an “Edit Profile” button one your personal profiles. So I clicked that button and was looking in the Basic Settings of the Facebook Page where I say a section for Usernames. It then said “Click Here to Get a Username,” so I did. Unbeknownst to me, I was redirected to a generic Usernames page that was not specific to my Facebook Page, but instead my overall account. So when I selected “soweweretold” as the username it instead applied it to my personal profile. I was mad. Furious, even. Now any visitor to facebook.com/soweweretold would be directed to my personal profile instead of the Facebook Page I had for the site!

So I decided that this could not stand, and it needed to be fixed pronto! I went to the bottom of the page and looked for a “Contact Us” section that every website on the freakin’ Internet seems to have. It did not exist. I decided to click the Help link and look there for contact information. That only seemed to give me an index to already answered questions. No luck there. So I thought, well surely there is an email address. Nope. Nothing posted anywhere.

I would like to say that I haven’t been on Myspace in forever and a day, but I do recall them having such an email address. One time my cousin’s account was hacked and Myspace suspended it, to her it looked deleted. So I emailed their support service and helped her get it cleared up with them. Her profile was restored and everyone was happy. The fact Facebook seemingly didn’t want people emailing them made me very frustrated.

So I then went to Google and searched for something like “Facebook Contact Info,” and I stumbled upon a phone number. I decided to call the California based company and explain my situation to them in hopes they would resolve it.

I got one of those automated messages telling me to push buttons or enter my party’s extension. The menu went like this…

For Customer Service, Press 1

I pressed 1, and heard the following message, “Facebook does not currently offer Customer Service.”

WHAT??

Well that being the most retarded thing I thought I heard, I redialed and listened further…

For Customer Service, Press 1
For Law Enforcement, Press 2

(I guess I could have claimed I found a Sex Offender using my website’s name)

For Businnes Development and Advertising, Press 3

Well, being that I’m trying to start my own business and use the name So We Were Told in association with it, I pressed 3. I was then told by the same automated system that they don’t currently offer phone support but I could email them at partners@facebook.com.

Really? They couldn’t just put that email address on the site? They made me call them, and then they tell me to email them. That seems a bit stupid to me.

So I email them and basically explain that I assumed since I clicked on “Get a Username” while on my Facebook Page that the name would be applied to that instead of my personal profile. I then stated that I considered “So We Were Told” my intellectual property since I own the domain soweweretold.com, and that I was in fact starting a business based on it.

I got a generic “We received your email, but we get so many we may not read it” message sent back.

I then found a way to change my username for my personal profile. Apparently they give you one “do over,” but now it says “soweweretold” is unavailable. Well of course it was. I had it. But I freed it so I could use it on something else! I then emailed Facebook again with that update, and ironically didn’t get the generic return email.

Three days later I still don’t have it.

So the lesson here is: Facebook is too egotistical to bother to help anyone other than Law Enforcement (because they have to) and their username system sucks!

If I am ever able to get us a Facebook username for the site’s Facebook Page, I will let you all know.

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