Facebook ads are scams or ripoffss 19 May 2020 at 11:17AM in Praise, Vent & Warnings 14 replies 541 views

Greenalien95

It seems as if a considerable proportion of the adverts on Facebook are either scams, or blatant ripoffs.

Recent examples : -

Wire brush attachment for strimmer for £39.95 - twice the Ebay price. 

Solar powered rodent repellent devices - a little research shows that these simply don't work.

Bulb planter - for £29.95 (they sell in Lidl for £2.99!) 

Giant sized inflatable model airliner with 12 foot wingspan - the video footage shows an amazingly detailed model, with semi rigid wings, however if you fork out your £29.95, you eventually get something rather more resembling a lilo with smaller lilos stuck onto it.

Every advertiser has a different website, which often vanish after a few days.

Facebook clearly don't police their advertising and won't take responsibility for what is sold, so best advice is don't ever buy anything from these adverts - and if you think it looks like a useful item, at least check it out on Ebay and Amazon first!

JJ_Egan

Just landed on Earth ??

Facebook = scams .

Problem is that they target  a specific consumer group just like Groupon etc .

oldagetraveller1

Flux capacitor for my time machine, £200. That's a total rip off, I can buy one on eBay for half that!

Twitface, wonderful place to leave well alone.

shaun_from_Africa

3 out of the 4 items you give as examples are not scams or rip off's.
Any seller is legally entitled to advertise goods at whatever price they wish and it's up to any potential customers to make a decision as to whether or not to purchase those goods.
If someone can buy something from Lidl for £2.99 and sell it to others for £29.95, I would say that they have a very good business plan and more fool the buyers who spend £27 more than they have to.

DoaM

Actually, if the sell price is markedly higher than the general market price then that's the very definition of a rip off. So caveat emptor.

Not a scam though - I agree with that.

hollydays

A friend asked me to purchase some shoes with my PayPal account. Had to really dig to find the company name. it and found it was linked to a huge number of Chinese scammers. They have lots of sites . I was amazed anyone would consider buying off Facebook.

askeym

I spend quite a long time very day blocking adverts I neither want or asked for, 15 yesterday, 20 the day before and about 10 today.

DoaM

I've given up doing that - I just skip past them. (Blocking ads doesn't mean you won't get any - it just means they'll serve you up different ones).

[Deleted User]

askeym said:

I spend quite a long time very day blocking adverts I neither want or asked for, 15 yesterday, 20 the day before and about 10 today.

If you are blocking ads in that quantity each day  then your actions are needlessly causing you even more hassle. The more you block, the more you will receive as you are just revealing yourself to be someone who actually reads such ads. 

Unless the ads are offensive in some way best advice is to simply scroll past them. 

Although Facebook is "free", it still has to be profitable in order to continue and that means advertisements. 

When you watch ITV, CH4 or CH5 do you not accept that their ads are the reason you are actually able to view the programmes?

If Facebook ads are so abhorrent to you, I suggest you fully delete your account. 

[Deleted User]

Moglex said:So your way of coping with life is that if any single thing annoys you about something, you stop using it completely?

I'm not the one blocking 45 individual advertisements over just three days, of course. All I did was point out the futility of that action which will just result in more ads. If user "askeym" cannot abide the ads and won't simply scroll past them then he really has no alternative. 

Perhaps   you can suggest  a better solution?  

SidneySmutt

Area to avoid - Facebook