Off Topic - facebook guru help desperately needed

[Notes_Norton]

First some background. I'm new at FB. One club I gig at asked me to get an account so they could link to me, so I did. I use a VPN on my computer (I don't know if this is a factor or not). Occasionally they tell me my account has been locked, and I go through the steps and get in. Today is different. I don't know what to do now.

* I log in with my username & password

 

* I get the account locked message, I click the link, they give me a CAPTCHA to fill out, which I do successfully

 

* They e-mail me a code which I copy and paste into the box

 

* It says wrong code, so I have them resend, and I paste that one in, it says Error, I say resend code which they do

 

* Copy and paste the new code get:

Bob, your account has been locked

We saw unusual activity on your account. This may mean that someone has used your account without your knowledge.

Account locked June 11, 2024

To protect you, your profile is not visible to people on Facebook and you can't use your account.

What can I do?

Try coming back on a phone or computer you’ve used to log into Facebook before.

 

* I'm using the only computer I've ever used to access FB, so I don't know what else to do.

I've googled, and can't find any help that pertains to this problem.

Can anyone help?

If I didn't have messages that I need to respond to, I wouldn't care, I'd just forget about facebook, it's not worth this problem I've been trying to fix for a couple of hours now. Aaaaaarrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhh. I'd just shout some great obscenities and move on without FB. But I don't want to be rude to people that I have no other way of contacting.

 

Thanks

[Philbo King]

Typical facebook twilight zone...

Most people just create a new account.  Pro tip:

Number them so you can tell which account is oldest.

[Notes_Norton]

Thanks. I wonder if that will affect my business account https://facebook.com/thesophisticatsband

 

Bob

[Stokely]

If I get a duo thing off the ground with a buddy, one thing I'm already not looking forward to is dealing with Facebook and it's ilk.

Granted if we play occasionally at the farmer's market that will be ok, we both have main bands.   He likes FB so I'll leave the nonsense to him  

[MathOfInsects]

It definitely sounds like the VPN is at least problem-adjacent, but you also might try typing the code without copy-and-pasting. It’s possible there’s something else coming along for the ride when you do that.

 

 

[Notes_Norton]

Tried without VPN, tried typing instead of pasting. Nothing seems to be working. I'm getting sorry I ever rejoined this piece of %)#*@

[Notes_Norton]

Tried again after a long rest, now I'm getting Error Performing Query over and over again.

 

If I didn't have messages waiting for me, I'd just forget about FB forever. Sadly, I don't have the e-mail addresses of the people messaging me.

 

I hate to seem rude, but those people may think I'm ignoring them.

 

Does anyone know how to contact FB tech help?

[MathOfInsects]

Can you just make a new personal account? It's dead easy, even for newbies...

[Notes_Norton]

I can do that, but I really want my sophisticats account, not my personal account. I already have followers.

I've been at this for hours, and I'm just about to say screw it. I lived fine without facebook before.

[jazzpiano88]

Once you get everything sorted out, I can recommend one additional thing.

 

Enable two factor authentication.     Every day I see friends being hacked and they all have this in common - no  2-factor protection.

 

[Notes_Norton]

Thanks.

I was doing that with my e-mail address, but they didn't believe it.

They would send me a code, I'd type or paste the code in, and they would tell me it's the wrong code, or just give me an error message. 

 

So they asked for me to send them some positive ID, which I did. They sent me a letter telling me I could access my account again, they sent the e-mail, I carefully typed in the code, they gave me an error message, I clicked for them to send a new code, I pasted that one in, got an error message and they locked the account again.

I don't need this BS. I've wasted hours of my life on their buggy system. Other than the owner of a club we gig at is requesting this, I'd be outta here already.

[Notes_Norton]

Well, it looks like a lost cause.

 

They keep telling me to unlock my account, and I jump through all the hoops.

 

||: Then I get an e-mail saying I can use my account again, but when I log, via their instructions, it tells me my account is locked and asks me to jump through all those hoops again. :||

 

To add insult to injury, they send me 4 or more e-mails a day reminding me to unlock my FB account.

There is zero help available, no phone, no chat, no e-mail that I can find. Everything controlled by the bots, and they aren't equipped for a glitch in the system.

I wonder how long they will keep telling me to unlock my account, and when I try it doesn't work. I gave it 25 tries and I'm going to try anymore.

 

If the social media contractor for a venue I gig at didn't ask me to join, I would be less hassled right now.

 

Oh well, life's lessons have been worse than this one.

 

Notes ♫

[Philbo King]

"Being popular on social media is like having a seat at the cool kids table in the cafeteria at a lunatic asylum." - source unknown

[Stokely]

Yeah FB royally sucks.  As does the owner and his "I'm not responsible for bad people using my product for bad things" stance IMO.    If I was a musician making a living doing it, I'd do my best to hold my nose and maintain something on it despite my distaste for it.

I recently quit the Nord and Logic groups because they were full of abrasive ignorant aholes.   Aka, social media users when there is no good moderation.   More than half the posts and 3/4 of replies were just noise.  I'm only on FB at all due to marketplace (which so far is worthless) and my neighborhood's group (which has been useful) and one friend who only uses Messenger-- and it keeps trying to suck me in to other topics.  I regret it every time it succeeds.

[Notes_Norton]

I still can't get unlocked. 

 

||:Your account is locked. Do this and you will get unlocked. OK. Now you are no longer locked. Go ahead and log in again:|| repeat ad infinitum.

 

There is zero human help.

 

It's obviously a glitch in the software, so the bots keep thinking they are solving the problem when they are not.

 

I've tried everything I can find, probably spent more time on this than I should have, but now I think it's time to give up.

 

Sigh

 

 

Notes ♫

[Notes_Norton]

Follow up:

Since I can't get help without logging in, I went to FB, found a "locked out of your account” group and this guy has been 'working' with me for a couple of days (I'm being careful).

 

Today he springs we need some debugging tools. That's fine until he tells me that I have to buy the tools, but I can resell them.

I tell him that I'm on Facebook, and I'm supposed to be the product, not the customer, and it's not worth one penny for me to get this free account back. That ended the conversation.

I'm posting this, just in case someone else here runs into the same space. I think we are all savvy enough but a little extra warning does no harm.

It seems my days on FB have been numbered.

[Stokely]

Yeah I'd stay far away from that.  Losing money for "tools" might not be the worst thing that would happen.

If you want to stay at it, I'd try (if you haven't):
- brand new FB account, using a new email (gmail accounts are free, I have a few)
- use a different browser (I use firefox for my work's Workday login, Chrome won't work for whatever reason)

 

[Notes_Norton]

I made a second account with another nortonmusic.com address, to find help, and ended up with the offer to buy tools. (I'm not paying). Another guy said he could fix it for $50. (Thanks, but no thanks). And on that account, I'm getting quite a few friend requests from people I don't know. I suspect they are from the help page, since I haven't posted anywhere else.

I'm not into making friends with anybody who asks. I would think the majority are legit, just looking for friends or biz contacts, and some might have something illicit in mind. Most people in the world are nice, but one has to be careful, there are a lot of dark alleys on the 'net.

So my ultimate solution will be to cancel this temporary account, let the old account stagnate, since I can't tell FB to fix or nuke it, and eventually start another with a new e-mail address. Since I own the nortonmusic.com domain, I can create up to 250 email addresses with my web host.

 

But I'm in no hurry. There is a Sophisticats page the venue can link to, I just can't post on it or update it. Trying to get this fixed has wasted way too much time. I could have learned, sequenced, and recorded a new song backing track for my duo, or made a lot of progress on the last volume of The Real Book for Band-in-a-Box.

 

This entire Facebook experiment has left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Every business is supposed to be in the customer service business. I'm OK with automating routine things, but for someone to have an out-of-the-ordinary problem, there should be some help. Especially since, as I suspect, the Facebook system error caused the problem in the first place.

 

Live and learn.

 

Notes ♫