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facebook trolls on advertising posts

Ben23

Active member
Messages
153
Location
Stockton on Tees
Anyone else get this? I've been getting the odd one latley, all seem to be from the same family or the same guy making several accounts. 

mainly jumping into posts replying to prospective customers with ridiculous offers of "I'll do it for £20" or offering such pearls of wisdom as " pour coke all over your drive, leave it for 10 mins then rinse off, better than pressure washing"

beginning to boil my **** a bit as while competition is to be expected, tactics like this baffle me as no one wins.

Not rising to the bait with replies I just keep banning the offending accounts, my worry is if they are messaging my customers directly which would be really poor.

anyway has anyone else come across this? if so how did you deal with it?

Cheers

Ben

 
If I understand it correctly, you are giving prices directly within a reply to a question on one of your FB ads, this is a big no no simply reply to inform them that you will pm them to discuss a quote this avoids the idiots or revealing your prices 

 
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No I never give out the price directly on the post, I only ever message with prices as far as I'm aware I havent anyway. if you could link me the one with me giving a price that would be great as I'll get it down asap

 
Anyone else get this? I've been getting the odd one latley, all seem to be from the same family or the same guy making several accounts. 

mainly jumping into posts replying to prospective customers with ridiculous offers of "I'll do it for £20" or offering such pearls of wisdom as " pour coke all over your drive, leave it for 10 mins then rinse off, better than pressure washing"

beginning to boil my **** a bit as while competition is to be expected, tactics like this baffle me as no one wins.

Not rising to the bait with replies I just keep banning the offending accounts, my worry is if they are messaging my customers directly which would be really poor.

anyway has anyone else come across this? if so how did you deal with it?

Cheers

Ben
You could do a few things. tell him that if the driveway is of any considerable size, coca cola would prove to be rather an expensive way of doing things. And im pretty sure it wont remove moss beds from in between the pavers. 

As regards the £20 quid remark, tell him to crack on & come and do yours for 20 quid, see how far he gets on that one ?

if you stand up for yourself with a bit of humour involved, there are a lot of people who respect that.

Or you could just keep blocking him if at all possible ?‍♂️

 
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This is why we won’t have anything to do with social media advertising , I know a lot use Facebook and Do well from it , I have several friends that are on there and have had nothing but people muck them about wanting a cheap job doing or a one-off then they cancel saying got a cheaper quote nothing but time wasters , May be its dependent where you are in the country I don’t know ?.. but I wouldn’t use it , don’t want cheapskates for customers ????

 
You will get messers wherever you advertise, facebook and gumtree are more notorious for messers but it’s learning how to detect and avoid it is the key. I dont attract many messers but you’ll inevitably get them from time to time its just the way the dice rolls we’ve all got to deal with it. 

The online world has devalued a lot of work through price comparison websites, and window cleanings no different. People can text ten different companies for quotes in no time if they want to. Its only because people keep agreeing to work for very poor rates that people think thats what the actual market value is. 

A lot of customers assume a 21 year old arnold schwarzeneger is going to be doing the job. Reality is most of us are a fair bit older with various aches and pains who just cant be busting a gut in the same manner as someone of that age. 

I think we would all rather have fewer, better paying jobs than countless poor paying ones. Cheap prices cause all sorts of problems and dont do the world any favors (black economy, cash only, going bust, rushing which leads to accidents and mistakes etc)

I had 3 missed calls off the same mobile number within half an hour of each other yesterday, no voicemail, no follow up text. Just “power ringing” to put me on the spot. I knew it meant alarm bells. I asked for a text with details, no details given.

i also had a message off someone else (much more genuine and appreciative) for a window clean on a small house 5 windows 2 doors, 7 miles away on the other side of the city (i have no work in the area) and the closest round to it is full.

so a specific journey would have been involved. I said a rough estimate would be £45 but would need to confirm on arrival. They said thanks but i’ll decline as i’ve had another quote for £10.

Fair enough, chances are they may live around the corner from each other.

i said sorry it’s not economically viable for me to travel that distance for a £10, and i am particular when it comes to detail, if the other guys let you down let us know we’ll still be here. She said thanks etc. what can you do ?‍♂️ Cant let it get us down, we’ve all got to be realistic with ourselves the cost of living is no joke. 

 
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Cheers for the replies, think I've nipped this particular one in the bud now, been a couple of years since I heavily used facebook paid ad's but they sent me a £30 freebie so I thought why not.....now I remember why not. got to say though for the spend the results have been pretty great this time round.

I dont know what its like around the various parts of the UK but here we get a flurry of startups every year that are soley PW and they invariably get more and more desperate as the spring moves on, leading to pisstakes on established business pages and general underhand goings on. I've lost jobs to the lidl petrol pressure washer brigade offering to do it for £50 a few times and then gone back and done the same job  for a realistic rate later to do it properly.

Let me say now that I have nothing against startups or competition, theres no way any one company could do it all anyway, just a shame to see people trying to mess with other compaines rather than letting their own work speak for itself and market it accordingly

Been a while since I had to moderate my page for these idiots but I guess the campaign was worth it, not going to renew it though as I cant be arsed with the messers and my repeat business and referrals are enough for the next couple of months at least.

I think I may have just needed to vent so my apologies if this has been an irritating topic for anyone. happy Friday and let the good times keep rolling!

Ben 

 
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Personally FB is IMHO is not a great shop front... Better still get yourself a vid camera and learn to use a basic video editor (if you don't already?) and make a video for each job you do post it on YT, link these from your website..... Pick an area of say 10,000 housholds and leaflet it every 8 weeks during the season .. with a half decent website/leaflet my bet is your phone/email will be running red-hot with good customers ?

 
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