Regarding my girlfriend’s Facebook account

(Note: I’ve updated this. – Fish)

To whom it may concern:

My name is Clint, and I’m emailing regarding my girlfriend’s account. Before you immediate write this email off as “We cannot correspond with you because this is not the email of the disabled account”, continue reading.

Her account was disabled April 17th, 2009.

For the mathematically challenged, that’s 52 days ago.

Here’s the kicker – you didn’t even tell her why. Not a word, not even a hint, or a -wink wink nudge nudge-.

Instead, when she emailed that same day regarding the matter she was merely greeted with a stale, carbon copy response from a anonymous entity “The Facebook Team”, offering an empty-handed promise of “We should get back to you soon.” Ha. Ha ha.

Fast forward to a week ago, when she, again, emailed from the same (correct) address (for records sake, the date on the email is May 31st, 2009), offering yet another appeal for information and a bid at having her erroneously disabled (but I’ll get to that in a moment) account revived. Perhaps, one might assume, that 6 weeks might constitute as ’soon’ in whatever fictional Mickey Mouse world Facebook seems to be operating within. Mind you, as Facebook has been around for 5 years, 6 weeks is roughly 1/50th of that time-span. Likewise, when I think of ’soon’, I too think of 1/50th of my lifespan – which is 5 months. This ratio tends to serve me well in life – for instance, that term paper due ’soon’? 5 months from now. You see where I’m headed here.

You can only guess what response her second email garnered. If you guessed “stale, carbon copy response from an anonymous entity offering an empty-handed promise (again) of ‘We should get back to you soon’”, well, you get a cookie.

After all, a cookie is more than my girlfriend has got. You know, as opposed to an explanation for the defamation of her character you’ve caused in revoking everything to do with her and her account in the blink of an eye over 6 weeks ago, leaving family, friends, and co-workers to merely question the same thing my girlfriend has every day for 6 weeks – “what did I do wrong?” At this point, one can only ascertain that Facebook’s ideal outward appearance of customer service and satisfaction consists of sticking one’s index fingers in their ears and saying “Lalala, I can’t hear you!”

Let’s see. As per the website directed to her upon a fruitless login, we have the following potential pitfalls for why her account was disabled:

1: Registration with fake names or impersonation: I think I would know if this were the case.
2: Unsolicited messages or harassing messages to people they don’t know, or posts advertising a product or service: Again, I think I would know if this were the case. After all, I’ve only been seeing her for upwards of 3 years.
3: Code of Conduct breach concerning graphic or otherwise sexual posts: I think I would DEFINITELY know about this, thank you very much.

My noticeable omission here is the “violation of Facebook’s Terms of Service”, which is quite vast and itemizations of each potential infraction is, frankly, a waste of my time as as well as yours, whoever ends up reading this email.

If it ends up being read at all.

I’m willing to bet I’ll simply receive an email stating that I’m not emailing this from the correct address, and her account will further slip into the abyss of “Facebook’s victims of draconian law stating we can do whatever we want as we have no public shareholders to appeal to”.

So prove me wrong, Facebook. Send her, or I, an email regarding why, specifically, her account was disabled, and when, specifically, her account can and WILL be reactivated. Hope to see that stale, carbon copy email soon (i.e. See you in 6 weeks).

Begrudgingly,
-Clint

**Author’s note: Yes, I did email this to Facebook, with the exception that the title of the entry is the title of the email, yet the email listed her email address instead of “my girlfriend”.

EDIT WITH UPDATES: I got back two emails:

Hi,

The Facebook Team has received your inquiry. We should get back to you soon. In the meantime, we encourage you to review our Terms of Use (http://www.facebook.com/terms.php) for more information.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

The Facebook Team

And:

Hi,

The email address from which are writing is not associated with a Facebook account. We will not be able to assist you with your request until you respond from the email address that you use to log in to your account.

When you respond, be sure to write your login email address in the subject line and include all of our previous correspondence so that we can refer to your original inquiry.

If you are unable to access your login email address, please visit http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=746

Thanks,

The Facebook Team

Then, today, Tricia got a response from Facebook stating that, yes, her account had indeed been disabled in error and apologized and restored her profile.

I’m the FUCKIN’ man. :D My email did the trick, and I’m QUITE happy.