Oculus / Facebook Cautionary Tale

[PieEater]

I preordered a Quest 2 a week ago and thought I'd get my Facebook account ready. Full disclosure I set up an account years ago but never used it as I'm not into social media and couldn't remember my credentials. I registered with a new email address and set up the account ready and within an hour Facebook had disabled my account. There is no way to contact Facebook to ask them to reactivate your account other than their forms which don't allow you to explain the situation only give your name and upload a form of ID which I did. 2 days later I tried logging back on and found a message that my account had been permanently disabled and that this was irreversible. There was no explanation only that I had apparently broken one of a series of rules the only one that I could see applied to me was regarding multiple accounts not being allowed. Again there is no way to contact Facebook directly and without an account you can't access the support forums for help.

I was so frustrated that I even contacted Oculus support who bizarrely told me to set up a new Facebook account, so I had to tell them that was against the rules and was why I believed I was in this position. They then told me to use the Facebook support forums which again is not an option.They were unable to give me any other support. So I've had to cancel my order.

I just wanted to make forum members aware that if they do buy into the Oculus / Facebook infrastructure there is a danger that they may end up not being able to use their devices and not have any way to regain access. This is a totally ridiculous situation and something I have decided I can't ever support even if I was able to. Buyer beware.

 

[PieEater]

@melmac No I wasn't using a VPN.

Regarding setting up a fake account for use with an Oculus device if this ever does get disabled you have no chance of recovering it as Facebook wants photo ID as part of the request. If they can tie the fake account back to your account you can wave goodbye to that too.

Regarding contacting Facebook for support this can only be done via predefined forms which don't give you any option to add additional information to support your request. This really isn't customer support as you have no dialogue with anyone.

 

[PieEater]

Have you tried recovering your original account? That would seem like the more sensible one to try and recover?

They have linked the new account to the old account so both are permanently disabled, so that's not an option.

 

[PieEater]

Had a Facebook account for 13 years, never had an issue.

Good for you, I'm sure the majority of people will be exactly the same, but if Facebook decide for whatever reason they don't like something you've done you potentially will permanently loose your ability to use any Oculus device you may own. Chances are it will never happen but it can.

 

[PieEater]

Online companies don't like getting rid of good customers. Even malware advertisers can get back on advertising networks again and again, because they pay good money. If a partner, or someone else important, complains, then they'll get the heave-ho maybe, but otherwise, what makes money stays. Facebook aren't going to instaban a decent active account.

You're making a mistake comparing Facebook with a commercial organisation, you are not a customer of Facebook you are a service user it is a totally different relationship. Facebook have a totally captive audience, they can and do make up their own rules because you as a service user have no choice as to whether to accept them or not especially if you are tied to them via a Oculus headset as you can't just say you'll stop using their service without losing access to your hardware. The real frustration for me is that unlike any other online organisation I have dealt with there is no channel open to me that I can use to attempt to resolve the issue that I have. Any commercial organisation would legally have to have an accessible dispute resolution channel but with Facebook they have made it impossible to communicate outside of their predefined forms which they have purposefully made to be as obtuse as possible so they can be automated and dealt with by their software.