Happy Monday friends! There has been SO much going on this past week and I thought that for today’s post, that I would share exactly what I have been up to. As I’m sure many of you have noticed, my Instagram account is no longer functioning (I’ll get into that below) and as you can imagine, that has been a big pain point in my business. I’ve been trying to focus on the parts of my business that I can control but it is definitely difficult not being able to connect with my Instagram community and share my content. Let me share exactly what has been going on.
What Happened to My Instagram
I first started my Instagram account in 2016 as I aspired to be a fashion blogger (it’s so crazy to think about now). Over time, I decided to shift my focus to reselling while still maintaining some fashion components throughout. Over the course of 4 years on the app, I gained over 17,000+ followers. These are people that I communicate with on a daily basis. exchange reselling information with, and throughly enjoy talking to.
That all changed on the morning of Friday, February 12, 2020. I woke up to an email from Instagram at 6:30 AM stating that my Instagram account was disabled for “violating community guidelines.” I remember staring at my computer screen and being both surprised and confused! Out of nowhere, Instagram temporarily disabled my account and provided me with no information what I did wrong exactly or how to re-activate it. Gotta love Instagram!
So what did I do next?
I went on YouTube and tried to gather insight from others on what to do. As I stated earlier, Instagram does not give you any information about what to do if your account is disabled. Upon watching a TON of videos, I learned that when this first happens, you have to verify a security password and then wait 24 hours before starting the appeal process. 24 hours doesn’t seem to bad, right?!
After waiting the 24 hours, I received an email from Instagram stating that my account was disabled for violating community guidelines/ policies. To the best of my knowledge, I had done no such thing and was extremely annoyed that they have bots that can easily just go in disable accounts. The next step in this process is to fill out any and every appeal form available to you. Many YouTube videos had links to these forms and I have been filling them out daily in hopes that somebody will read one and respond/re-activate my account. Note: You will more than likely not receive an email back ever.
To make this process even more complicated, there is not a single customer representative that you can speak to regarding this matter (or so they make it seem). After watching some more YouTube videos, I learned that if you run an ad on your Facebook Business page, then you have access to a Facebook Business Help Center. So I paid $5 to run an ad on my Facebook Business page in hopes that I would get access to this feature. After the ad was approved, I received access to it and thought that finally, I would be able to get this resolved. And as you guessed… that did not happen!
The Facebook Business Center Help Chat
Over this past week, I have reached out to someone in the chat feature about 5 or 6 times. (You cannot be too aggressive with it or they will actually block your IP address.) I received a ton of conflicting information and not a single person was able to actually help me which is the most frustrating part of all. I have to say, they do a very good job during the chat of making you feel like they are going to help you only to then advise you a few minutes later that they only focus on Facebook and Facebook ads and have limited access to Instagram (which is 100% not true by the way).
Many people on YouTube have said that you have to keep trying this chat feature until you get someone who is willing to go above and beyond to help you which can take a while. Some people are able to get their account back in a day while other people have had to wait months. There is no consistency in their process and you are 100% at the mercy of whoever is reviewing your request at Instagram.
What To Do Now
All of this to say that I have no idea how long it is going to take to get my account back. I was told by the latest representative that I spoke with that there is no definitive time frame which is the most frustrating part of all. At this point though, all I can do is continue to fill out form after form and reach out to someone in the chat daily. They say that if you fill out too many forms it could overwhelm Instagram and affect your appeal process but I don’t care. I am going to fight as hard as I can to get this account back up and running. I worked WAY too hard to give up and start again from scratch.
**Please continue to follow along and now more than ever, PLEASE sign up for my emails below so that I can stay in contact with you and share reselling related info with you.**
This entire process has been very eye-opening for me in so many ways. On Wednesday, I am going to share with you some things that I have learned from a business standpoint as a result of all of this so stay tuned for that.
If you don’t already, be sure to check out my Instagram for more Reselling Tips at @ RecycledRosesGuide (Click HERE)
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Baci,
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