Anyone experience this on Facebook Marketplace?

Question

We recently (10 days ago) closed on a triplex in PA and posted two of the units for rent on Facebook Marketplace. We received a dozen inquiries within a few hours and setup appointments to meet them and walk through the units. So far so good . . . . until mid-way through the showings. We received a call about the apartments and invited them to swing by and then they asked if they needed the $800 in cash or would a money order work. We had no idea what they were talking about and were told that the Facebook ad said they needed to pay $800 to see the unit . . . since neither unit was renting for $800, we were confused. They said the phone number was a CA number and the person was firm on the amount upfront. We tried to pull up the listing and found out that we were now blocked from Facebook Marketplace and the ad had been removed. We have tried reaching out to Facebook for an explanation but only received a message that their decision was final as we had violated their policy . . . not sure what we violated other than having someone clone / hack our account.

So the question is has this happened to anyone else and if so, any thoughts on how to get access to the Facebook Marketplace again since we use it often in renovation where we can sell or give away material rather than paying for a dumpster. Bizarre that someone woudl do that but welcome to the cyber world I guess . . . thanks in advance for any assistance or thoughts.

Joe Splitrock · Answer

@Andy Sabisch I hate Facebook. I have had this happen when trying to list houses. Appealing is a waste of time because, Facebook uses bots and has like 100 people moderating 20 million listings. You can't find a human if you tried.

It is hard to say the reason that Facebook blocked your listing. It almost sounds like someone duplicated your listing, then reported you as a fake. They also use keywords and posting behavior to identify scammers. The problem is I routinely see scammers posting, report them, and nothing happens. Yet, I legitimately post my stuff for sale and 20% of my listings get flagged.

I don't even like the quality of people responding on Facebook. I get lots of junk leads or unqualified people. I also get trolls commenting about my property being overpriced, even though I am usually under market if anything.

We don't list on Facebook anymore. Zillow and Apartments.com are my go to sites. Both of them lock the listing to the address, so if I have the property already listed, someone can't hijack my address. If you have a problem both of these sites have humans you can call to work it out. I also use watermarks on the photos.

Michael Smythe · Answer

@Andy Sabisch very common.

Many Property Management Companies won't advertise on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist anymore because of these issues.

Brad Larsen · Answer

@Andy Sabisch

Now ya know!  Yes, Watermark all photo listings!   Also, Matterport is a great service to help if you want to check them out.

Brad

Peter Tverdov · Answer

We had a problem last year with scams because of posting open house rentals on Facebook market place. The a-holes even took our property management sign off the building and took a couple $500 deposits from people. The applicants were told to transfer money to an account in the Dominican Republic (facepalm) and they did it. Multiple people did. Without seeing the inside of the property.

Nick K. · Answer

facebook market place is a joke! 1 out of 10 people are somewhat serious... or even real. I'd say about 50-70% are bots. And those are real the majority dont even know the price or the location or where the property is at and its in the ad... You get a bunch of "is this property available" messages. Zillow and the MLS are the only places I use...

Gail K. · Answer

Facebook Marketplace is notorious for having stolen rental ads being reposted.  Craigslist too but at least with FB Marketplace they seem to respond quickly to reports of this (I report at least two a day on my FB Marketplace).  This may have happened with you.

Watermarking photos can help but I've also seen ads from PM companies I know (who routinely watermark all their pictures) show up as stolen ads.  Still; this may help stop some.

As a side note I believe many of these ads are stolen because many people who follow and respond to them don't seem to be the brightest lightbulbs in the tree of life.  This is only from my experience from ads I used to post on FB Marketplace.

Scott M. · Answer

Not so common that this happens all the time to everyone but common enough that most are familiar with it.  Facebook/Craigslist in particular are two hotbeds for this sort of thing.  Watermarking photos with your info is good and put it in the middle of the photo, not at the edge so it can be cropped out.  Scammers everywhere!

Andy Sabisch · Answer

Good point on watermarking photos . . . easy to do and will do that in the future.  Is there a way to 1) contact someone that has a brain with Facebook and 2) can explain why we were cancelled / blocked.  Makes little sense as we simply made a new account to get access to the service but am curious as to what exactly happened and what the basis for the decision was.

Nathan Gesner · Answer

It's very common, more so on Craigslist. People will take your photos, create a fake ad, and then try to collect money from unsuspecting renters.

You can put a stop to this by learning how to watermark your photos. There are free services online if you're not doing a ton of photos.

Anyone experience this on Facebook Marketplace?

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