Facebook are set to introduce a customer complaint button to brands that advertise on the platform and if the ad receives enough complaints then the tech giant will band the advertiser.
US tech site Verge is reporting that the new feature will roll out today and is part of Facebook’s fight to combat “bad shopping experiences” on the platform which, it believes, also reflects badly on it and users’ experience.
It has less to do with misleading advertising and more to do with things most online shoppers worry about – poor quality products, long shipping times and customer service.
And its Facebook that will be doing the prompting. Once you’ve made a purchase via a Facebook ad, you’ll be sent a notification asking shoppers to rate their experience.
Facebook will then notify the actual business of the feedback and warn repeat offenders that they will need to lift their game. If the service doesn’t improve, Facebook will limit the number of ads the brand can run and will ultimately ban them for good if it sees ongoing negative criticism.
However, as the Verge article notes, most people only tend to fill in online questionnaires when they want to complain, so any feedback would tend to be negative and may not a true reflection of most shoppers’ experience.
“That might just amount to another process that scammy businesses have to work around,” Verge noted. “But given all the troubles Facebook has had with trustworthiness over the past couple years — particularly when it comes to political advertising and page owners — any step to get rid of people abusing the platform is a meaningful one.”
