Facebook has no problem with scammers paying for car lift ads!

This is probably not a surprise for anyone, but I wanted to put it out there – specifically for the type of business I’m in.

I work for an e-commerce business selling two and four post car lifts, motorcycle lifts, tire machines, wheel balancers, etc. There is no brick and mortar – no stores – we have warehouses all over the country we distribute from. We are the manufacturer and only seller of our products, and the majority of our business is done on our direct website, but we also sell on Amazon and Ebay.

We’ve been hit HARD by scam ads on Facebook. Before I knew about the trademark/copyright violation report, I reported them hundreds of times with a reply from Facebook saying it didn’t go « against community standards » blah blah.

Finally I learned how to do a full report on trademark and copyright violations, and now I watch them like a hawk. Unfortunately every single time one pops up, I have to manually go in and fill out the whole report including our business name, trademark cert #, email, a link to the fraudulent ad(s), etc. and wait for them to take it down. This is totally unacceptable.

As the sales manager and only one on the front lines, I’ve heard from countless victims of these ads. It’s hard to understand how people can fall for this stuff sometimes – with the smallest amount of research, it’s not hard to figure out they are not legit. Seems the price, which is clearly half of what it should cost, would be the first clue.

Whatever you do, when shopping for products like this, NEVER EVER do it on Facebook. META just does not care as long as the scammer pays for the ad. Go straight to the brand – and if that brand has dealers, ask them for a list of AUTHORIZED distributors.