Unmanaged Facebook Business Page - Takeover

[Ham_and_Jam]

How do you takeover an unmanaged Facebook business page?

I have a bricks & mortar business, website and Google my Business Page, but never bothered with Facebook. However I have decided to put up a basic Facebook business page, and in the process found that we already have a page.

I believe it is either been autogenerated by FB, or even something I did a few years ago but didn't finish (you no after a few beers!)

I now want to takeover this page and have tried to claim it, but can't seem to get beyond 'you need to contact the admin of the page owner'.

Basically I have set up a new account in FB Business Manager, and in the settings I've requested access the Business Page that already exists on FB.

It says an email has been sent to the page admin, and I should contact them to approve this request.

Am I doing this correctly or is there a better way? How can I contact the page admin to approve the request if its not a managed page?

Appreciate any help and I am a complete FB noob, I don't even have an active personal FB page.

[wheelerc]

If the existing page doesn't have much in the way of content/followers, the easiest way is to create a fresh page, set it all up and then report the other page as a duplicate of your new one. They should then merge the two.

[Ham_and_Jam]

wheelerc said:

If the existing page doesn't have much in the way of content/followers, the easiest way is to create a fresh page, set it all up and then report the other page as a duplicate of your new one. They should then merge the two.

It’s not got a massive footprint, but a head start.

Seems crazy you can’t just claim a business page of a business you own. As much as Google can be a pain, they make it a pretty simple process to do this.

[wheelerc]

There is another way, but it is painful and takes time.

You'll need an Ad Account and to have spent on Ads in the recent past (30 days I believe). A few days after you have done that you will get a 'Support Chat' option in Ad Manager. Use that to talk to someone and explain the situation. They will ask you to confirm some details and send scanned ID, plus a signed statement. They will pass that on for internal investigation and if they are happy with everything you will get a link to regain access.

[Frimley111R]

Ham_and_Jam said:

Seems crazy you can’t just claim a business page of a business you own.

I think its really about the resources these huge internet companies have to deal with these things.

[Ham_and_Jam]

Frimley111R said:

I think its really about the resources these huge internet companies have to deal with these things.

With Google, you press ‘claim this business’. It then call the landline with a code which you enter in Google My Business. There’s no human interaction.

[Ham_and_Jam]

wheelerc said:

There is another way, but it is painful and takes time.

You'll need an Ad Account and to have spent on Ads in the recent past (30 days I believe). A few days after you have done that you will get a 'Support Chat' option in Ad Manager. Use that to talk to someone and explain the situation. They will ask you to confirm some details and send scanned ID, plus a signed statement. They will pass that on for internal investigation and if they are happy with everything you will get a link to regain access.

Thanks for that, although I’m not paying for FB ads. We are busy enough, so don’t need to promote at present. I just want to update and merge a simple business page.

[MitchMess]

Can you please share your experience? Did you get the FB page or ended up creating a new one? I have a very similar thing now and i am trying to do it through Facebook ads. Everything is so complicated... My friend recommended me to use https://savemyleads.com to track how many customers i got from FB and keep some statistics. Curious if someone else is using it too

Edited by MitchMess on Tuesday 28th September 21:37

[Ham_and_Jam]

MitchMess said:

Can you please share your experience? Did you get the FB page or ended up creating a new one? I have a very similar thing now and i am trying to do it through Facebook ads. Everything is so complicated...

Gave up, I hate FB.

Started to remember why I’ve never bothered with it.

[KevF]

MitchMess said:

Can you please share your experience? Did you get the FB page or ended up creating a new one? I have a very similar thing now and i am trying to do it through Facebook ads. Everything is so complicated...

It is like pulling teeth...I have 10 customer facing pages and 10 closed group pages. Two per store.

FB keep unpublishing one of the customer facing pages for going against their Community Standards but will not say which one (of many). Each customer pages is set up the same and carries the same information so I am baffled by what they are seeing on one page only.

I run adverts regularly and have tried the Support function. This gets you through to 'someone' on messager chat. However the give away is when they respond the Messenger tab shows up as 'playing' so in reality they are pre-recorded responses.

After 3 months of trying, I have now been on chat to 'someone' which has ended up with the following;

"]Don't worry. I have looked into this and under these circumstances, we will need to transfer this to our relevant team to further investigate the issue.
Facebook Business Support
Your reference number for this case is: #######. Our team will contact you as soon as a solution is made available. If you have any additional questions or issues in the interim, please raise a separate support ticket.
Our Internal Team's turn around time frame is within 24-48 business hours. But to set proper expectation, due to the current situation (repercussions of COVID-19), we are humbly asking for your understanding and cooperation if it would take some time for the request to be processed. In light of the situation, the expected time frame would be longer than usual."

So, time will tell but they have no rhyme nor reason for their actions and hide behind automated responses.