How We Got Out Instagram Back After Being Disabled

Can I just start by saying how INSANE this experience was?! Okay, cool. Now that we got that off my chest, let’s dive into the entire experience and my emotional rollercoaster that helped us get back our disabled Instagram account!

How did this happen?

Great question! I’ll start from the beginning….

We were running a giveaway for a $25 Amazon Gift Card. We thought this was going to be a good idea right after Amazon Prime Day and leading up into Black Friday & Cyber Monday. Boy were we wrong.

On the final day of the giveaway, some of our amazing friends (I don’t want to call you followers because let’s be real, we’re friends now) messaged us something weird. They said they had received a DM from an account with a similar name to ours saying that they had won the giveaway.

This gave them immediate red flags because we were actively promoting that the giveaway wouldn’t close until 11:59pm that night. The HUGE red flag was when the next DM they received from this fake account asked for their financial information! EXCUSE ME?!

We took immediate action and posted on our story saying, “this is not us and do not give them your information!”

….our profile was removed within 5 minutes of that.

What happened next?!

Panic ensued and I honestly didn’t know what to do. I was more concerned that people were pretending to be us and asking for others financial information than what the future would hold for our account.

I actually assumed that our account was just on hold or something while Instagram removed the accounts who were “pretending to be us”.

I quickly realized that was not the case. I tried to log back in and failed. A button popped up that said, “Click here to Learn More”. I clicked that button and saw the words, “temporarily disabled for pretending to be someone else.”

HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?!

Seriously, how did this happen? Even after this entire process we still don’t know. We can only assume it’s because the people who made the fake accounts reported our account as pretending to be them when they were pretending to be us.

Yeah… that was a confusing sentence.

What did you do?

For starters, I clicked the “learn more” button and it opened a window to this form. I filled this form out EVERY DAY 8-10 times a day at different hours of the day. I would wake up in the middle of the night and fill out this form. It became almost robotic.

There had to be other forms. There has to be other ways to get in touch with Instagram.

I thought every company had a phone number you could call to chat with a live person. Turns out, Instagram does not have that. They do have a phone number but calling it isn’t going to get you anywhere so I’ll save you the time now.

So I found another form. One specifically for businesses! I thought this was going to be how I got my account back for sure.

Now on top of the this form and the other form, I filled them both out 20-25 times a day. I did this for almost 10 days. Typing that out sounds insane but this account is a source of income for our family. We had a community and we didn’t want to have to start from scratch.

I was mentally preparing for that though…

Why did you think you would never get your account back?

When filling out these forms, with no rhyme or reason, Instagram would send me an email asking for “proof of identity”. Sometimes it would be a picture of me and my drivers license. Another time it would be a picture of me and a code and no matter what the picture was, it needed to have my head in it AND my hands holding whatever the item was.

At one point I was grabbing anything to prove who we were to get our disabled Instagram account back. I grabbed invoices, passports, birth certificates, and really any way for my identity to actually be stolen but to just receive an email with this statement:

“We can’t give you access to this account or continue with your request because we haven’t received an acceptable ID that matches the information listed on the account.”

It didn’t help that every blogger or influencer out there that I could find going through this situation all said the same thing.

They either got their disabled Instagram account back 3 days, 3 weeks, or 3 years later. Some never got their account back. These was not comforting words.

The problem with some of these articles I would read was that the blogger/influencer wouldn’t say why they were “temporarily disabled”. This is a huge red flag for me.

Most accounts are disabled for violating Instagram’s terms and conditions. You know, those really long legal documents that no one reads but accept and move on?!

So if you violated something there, you probably won’t get your account back. It’s Instagram’s way of keeping us safe and we appreciate that!

What happens if that’s not why you were temporarily disabled?

Join the boat. That’s where those forms come into play. The other thing we learned from reading countless blog posts was that you can actually chat with a REAL person via Facebook Business Support.

Now, this is not to be abused but this is THE ONLY way to chat with an actual person with Instagram/Facebook.

We chatted with someone 6 times total. We didn’t want to abuse this privilege as not everyone can just “chat” with someone on Facebook. The only way you can chat with someone is if you have ever ran ads with Facebook/Instagram before.

This is what worked into our favor as mentioned before, this is our business. We run ads for our partners and we run ads to help grow our brand. I highly recommend running Facebook ads for your blog if you have never done before. It’s very easy and with the low cost, you have a high return on your investment.

Now, if you haven’t ran an ad before, I wouldn’t worry too much. I read that you are able to place ad which will create an ad account for you. From there, you will be able to message Facebook Business Support.

This is where it changed for us. I chatted with the most helpful people who were able to point us in the right direction. The amazing support team couldn’t look into our specific request but they were able to provide the EXACT forms that helped us get our account back and for that, we are forever grateful for them!

So how did you get your account back?!

We explained our situation from the beginning. We were calm, nice, and respectful to the people we were chatting with as they are doing their jobs and our outcome really depending on them. I had no idea if they could flick a switch and we would be live or if they would pass us off to another person who was higher up.

That’s actually a general rule of thumb when you are speaking to ANYONE in customer service or even sales. You never know how they can help you especially if you are reaching out to them in need of help!

After chatting with a few folks, we ended up with this form to report someone who was impersonating us and this form to report that they were using our images and violating our copyright.

THIS IS WHERE THE GAME CHANGED!

Once we reported them for copyright infringement, someone from Instagram emailed us within 15 minutes. We sent our website in along with the original photo and proof that we owned our website domain.

THE FAKE ACCOUNTS WERE REMOVE 5 MINUTES LATER!

Once the fake accounts were removed, we followed up on the same email chain. We asked for our account to be granted access again.

We had to follow up a few times on this but it worked! WE GOT OUR ACCOUNT BACK!

I cried happy tears.

I’m serious. I screamed. I laughed like a crazy lady and then I cried in front of my ENTIRE family. I cried in front of my brother’s new girlfriend who I met for the first time that day.

Gabriel said I looked like I was having a multiple personality disorder because my emotions changed within 5 seconds of each other. The room stood still. No one wanted to say anything because I guess they didn’t know what to say. They didn’t know if I was okay or if I was actually at my breaking point.

I wish I we had this on video. I cannot explain to you the out of body experience I had when I was able to log back into our account no problem.

But that is what I want for you. If you are reading this post because you were “temporarily disabled” and you are trying to figure out how to get your account back, DO NOT GIVE UP.

I repeat, do not give up.

Fill out these forms. Message the Facebook Support Team. Email or DM us. Heck, comment on this blog post and we can set up a 5 minute call where I will try my hardest to help you out. I want you to get back get back your disabled Instagram account!

When you want something bad enough, there is NO stopping you in getting it. So keep going. You will be back one day. I can feel it!

Click here to watch our video explaining how we got our disabled Instagram account back!