I run three FB Pages for three golf courses.  In the past couple of weeks, I’ve had a related business (golf ball retrieval that sells used golf balls) like and begin posting links to their products on our pages.  I’d been deleting the links but today I finally deleted and banned, then I sent a message to their page from my personal account:

I’m not sure who you are but spamming golf course customers is going to get you banned from Facebook if you don’t watch out. Most pages that are kept up don’t allow spam ~ we report it as such. If you actually do work for our courses, it would be wise to call your course contact and request that you be UNBANNED from our pages ~ and ASK if you can post links to your products. This is pretty standard business procedure in the world of social media . . . if you don’t want so many spam reports that you end up with your page deleted by the media owners (Facebook, in this case). 

I don’t mind helping a business partner out, but the people that we have do our ball retrieval are not (to my knowledge) known as Absolute Golf. I’ve never entered a check or cash payment to this company in our books ~ so, again, call your course contact (there is only one and you should have his personal cell phone number ~ you will never find him in a clubhouse and employees never give out a cell number). Request that you be unbanned and allowed to post links on our pages. Until I come home and he tells me differently, I will have to keep your page banned from our pages due to the continuous unapproved links that you have been posting.

Dedi
Thorne Hills
Thorne Brothers at Lilac
Old Town Golf and Sportland

 What do you think?  Was I too rude?

@dedimasonI think you were direct, honest and kind. You demonstrated a willingness to partner, but were also clear about your course of action and the problem with this company’s actions.

Bravo!

I detect professionalism….no anger at all.  Very well written.  Thank you for sharing.  Great reference to have if / when I have similar issues. 

Good job on that. Very professional is you ask me..

@kimkline ~ They did respond a little while ago and it made me feel better.

“Thank you. Sorry that you considered it spam. I will not send out links on Facebook anymore. You were the first person that has informed me of this. I was just trying to grow my business and thought spam was computer generated emails. Have a nice day and if I can ever have the privilege to work at your course give me a call at [number removed]. I appreciate you informing me that I was doing something wrong.”

I was glad to see that they did not take it as rude.

@dedimason  I think you were correct in doing so.You were in no way rude, but very direct and straightforward.  I had to do some similar a month ago on the Basset Hound Rescue of AL website as one person posted a comment that was derogatory to rescue, not just ours, and 87 people jumped on with comments to which the original person replied.   Protecting a Facebook page and the client brand is critical stuff. Good for you.

Thanks for a nice letter template to use for future spammers!  I also loved this letter from Jack Daniels to a copyright infringer – talk about polite!!! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9427111/Jack-Daniels-sends-worlds-most-polite-cease-and-desist-letter.html

yepp, like @jasonreilly asked, how is that rude? 

If you need a less on rude, I can put something together quite quick.

@szaszabox You makes some good points. Still  @dedimason ‘s letter was appropriate and based on the response, informative. Seems like there might be an opportunity to partner with this organization in the future.

@pbcsky I agree! I am not even sure I would have bothered to answer, so a shorter reply would have done fine. But good for @dedimason to have taken the time and effort to come up with such a professional reply. Kudos!