How can I successfully reconnect Instagram Shopping after a failed setup?

[mikeatstnkyllc]

After a failed attempt to set up Instagram Shopping and endless talks with Facebook’s Support, I was advised to delete all connections and start from scratch.

I deleted the catalogs and shops on Facebook, deleted the Facebook Sales Channel on Shopify, and as a result the commerce account disappeared as well.

I recreated the Facebook Sales Channel, connected it to our Business Manager, set up Facebook Shop - all good.

But now…I’m trying to connect Instagram Shopping and it seems the app has remembered the Instagram account. Rather than starting set-up from zero, it only gives me the option to continue setup. And when I do, it’s telling me the account wasn’t approved for Facebook Shopping.

When I try to set up Instagram Shopping through Facebook’s Commerce Manager, I get the following:

“This Instagram business account is already linked to a Commerce account on Shopify. As of August 31, you’ll be able to finish setting up checkout on Instagram from your Shopify account.”

Is there anyone that has run into this issue or could lend a helping hand? Dealing with Facebook and Instagram is just a nightmare…

[PaalCoffee]

I’m having the same problem. Also struggling to get my Instagram account verified for shopping. Instagram support tells me the website linked to it doesn’t have products available for direct purchase. I have no clue why they say that. The website is a Shopify store, the IG is linked to my FB-page in Business Manager. The domain is verified. I’ve taken it all down and started from scratch - still same problem.

If anybody has a solution to this, please let us know.

[tomajuli]

Hello, have you figured out a solution? This has happened to me too, after messing up my first instagram review. Decided to start from scratch and ran into this error.

[ModestHut]

ok, so i’ve been dealing w/ fb for about 7 months and it’s a bleep nightmare. It’s unbelievable how ■■■■■■ they can possibly make it for a business who is trying to get by and just screwing them w/ issues that they have to tend to instead of working on their business. I have a wack but working cheat i found tho. Lmk if it works for anyone else. So instagram keeps saying im still connected to my old commerce acct which i’m not (but somehow it says i am). I have 180k followers on insta and needed to be able to tag my products like i did b4. Only way to add products as well as posting a product pic at the same time is to go to your fb page, go to publishing tools and create a post. Click on both fb and insta and if ur situation is like me (commerce acct passed w/ fb but screwed on insta) upload a pic and go tag your products. When you publish the post it goes to ur fb page as usual and also goes to ur insta. If u click on “view shop” in insta nothing will show up on ur side but the post shows up as well as the tagged products. If you click on the little shopping bag you can see the product that you tagged is now in your “shop”. Keep repeating the process so you can keep adding more products to your shop. It won’t be organized but it’s better than nothing. Everyoone else who comes to your insta, and views your shop can see your products but just not pretty like how u set it up in ur commerce acct. You can actually post a product post, get that product in your shop on insta, delete your post and the product will still stay in there. HMU if this works for you or if it’s only a weird bug i found just like all the other 10000000 bs bugs fb can’t fix for me. info@modesthut.com

[TripleSnakes]

I just encountered this issue as well – anyone else had any luck here?

[ModestHut]

How FB is screwing so many people

I have been working w/ fb for 7 months w the exact same issues. If u need help let me know…….this is kinda the origin story.

"

I can tell you the root issue. It all started when I was using the old shopify Facebook Shop app and somehow was able to set up shipping through fb and instagram through the old app. I then got an order and it showed up in fb but didn’t show up in shopify, which it was supposed to. The next morning I didn’t know what to do so I downloaded the Shopify app on my iPhone and for some reason was able to upgrade to the new FB/Insta app in Shopify right away! I was excited but when your setting up the new app it deletes old commerce acct and makes a new shopify commerce acct in FB. When that happened I couldn’t see the order that my customer bought that was through purchased through my old (yesterday’s) commerce acct. This is the time where I was able to talk on the phone and talk w/ 2 people on beans (screen share) bc they hadn’t seen anything like that before. I asked them to make sure they stay in contact with me just to make sure everything gets set up right after they go into the system and delete my commerce acct but once they did I never heard back. Ever since then I’ve been getting flagged for not following policies and weird things here and there and it has been destroying my business. I can see and hook up my catalog of 840 products to Instagram and tag my pictures and anyone can see all my products but my shop can’t be organized which is a huge mess. On my FB page I personally can tag pictures with my products in them and it looks like others should be able to see them too but no one can. So I don’t have a Shop ON FB which is killing me and I can’t use business suite and many other interesting content sharing and event tracking updates that ya’ll have made in the past months. I have 170k+ Followers on INSTAGRAM so for this not working for 5 months I’m about to have to close my business down. Please help me and I will give you whatever you need and cooperate with you in any way. If I could screen share or talk w/ someone over the phone it would make things much easier. THATS HOW IT ALL STARTED. I’m not sure why no one can help me out on this issue. Also, I’ve been flagged for not complying with monetization policies but on instant articles it says it’s a partner monetization issue but when I try to appeal it says I can’t because I’ve done nothing wrong and on the content side I have no idea what piece of content they are talking about so I can’t appeal something that I don’t’ know about."

ANOTHER EMAIL

"

So this has been my issue for 7 months that I’ve been trying to get fixed and I’m still emailing fb trying to explain the issue but maybe u can help. I’m ok with my commerce acct being deleted and thats actually what FB had to do the first time I had issues. I set up my shop thru shopify and when I first connected I was somehow able to set up fb/insta checkout w/ the old app that they had. So when I got an order fb sent me an email letting me know but it didn’t show up on shopify’s side. I tried to update the fb/insta app on shopify on all three browsers and for some reason it wouldn’t let me. So the next day I dl’d the shopify app on my iPhone and on that I was able to update to the new fb/insta app. Only thing that I didn’t know at the time is that whenever you go through that process it deletes ur old commerce acct and makes a new one. So now I had an issue bc everything was hooked up correctly but now the order that I had from the previous day disappeared bc it was under my old commerce acct that was now deleted. I was able to screenshare w fb twice and they saw the issue and understood so they deleted my commerce acct so I could restart again and also canceled that order. Ever since then I’ve had so many bugs and issues (all to do w/ my commerce acct) that it’s killing my business and driving me crazy. I feel like I spend 50% of my time dealing w/ fb/insta issues instead of working on my business now. When I try to delete my catalog it says I can’t bc of integrity policies that I crossed but I’ve done nothing wrong. I just sell home decor and furniture and am a small business (just me)! "

[Kitler]

I’m in this same boat. My IG store was suddenly disconnected 3 weeks ago and I’ve jumped through every hoop that I possibly can to get it all working again. Today, after receiving the email once again that my shop was invalid, didn’t have any products and my website doesn’t exist and I could appeal it I just told them GFY and I’ll just put “link in bio” as this is easier than spending another minute trying to solve this issue. Good luck, everyone!

[migreen06]

Hello,

I am having the same issues. Did you ever figure out how to fix it?

[ModestHut]

So i’ve had the same issue for 8 months now and I kept having hope bc I have 179k followers on insta and fb would tell me, “oh yah, we can disconnect that instagram for u in 7 days if you just send us ………”. I always would send everything to them since i’m the only one on the acct and run the whole business but after 8 months nothing has changed. I actually started a new instagram page and fb page and business manager just to see if things would work and they work perfect. It actually pisses me off bc i have a brand new insta acct w/ 100 followers that works perfect w/ fb page, insta and shop but my main instagram is stuck to this damn rejected commerce acct. They said one thing i did wrong was merge the old page that was in that old comm acct w/ a new fb page i made but someone from fb helped me through that process and told me it wouldn’t mess up anything. I got two emails today……one saying,

"Hi Barrett,

I hear you Barrett and I would also like you to use your preferred Instagram account for your Shop to continue what you have started. However, regulations are put into place on our platform.

I know that this is a tight spot to be at, and we want to extend as much help as we can, however, we’re bound with the limitations of what we can only cover in these kinds of instances. We’re with you in this current predicament that we’re facing, and we regret that we are not able to proceed any further with your rejected Commerce Account.

We greatly apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you.

For anything else, please do not hesitate to reach out to us and we’ll be glad to assist.

Thank you for contacting Commerce Facebook Concierge Support. Have a great day!

Thanks,

Ann"

THEN I GOT ONE SAYING THIS…….

"Hi Barrett,

Thank you so much for your continued patience in bearing with the investigation.

Regarding your issue, we have confirmed with our specialist team that we will be able to remove the Instagram @ModestHut (ID: 17841410467873730) account from the connected Commerce account.

However, since the Commerce account is owned by another business. Due to legal/privacy concerns, we need you to provide a screenshot showing that you owns this Instagram account.

An example of proof is a screenshot that shows the primary email on the Instagram account is the same as your business email. This will help to prove your have the ownership of the Instagram account."

So i’ve pretty much given up hope but of course when someone emails me saying they can disconnect it i’m going to give them everything they need. It’s so much bs bc it has everything to do w/ the fb/insta shopify app the bleep up connections and rejects commerece accts or makes new ones for u when it was supposed to replace it. Anyway….good luck and if u have specific questions just email me at info@modesthut.com

[ModestHut]

well, holy ■■■■■ I know this won’t give much help to people but all of a sudden my Instagram w 177k followers that was stuck to a rejected comm acct bc of Shopify’s app magically transferred into a commerce acct that was approved that was also hooked up to my FB page. It has been 10 months dealing w/ FB trying to figure this out and now my insta has a shop and I can tag things and it’s great. Only thing is that I populated the products through my pixel and not through the Shopify app and I’m extremely scared to go through the onboarding process w/ Shopify’s app. Right now, I’m just gonna leave it as it is and if anyone has any questions just let me know and I might be able to help. I’m basically an expert now.

So magically my instagram transferred out of my rejected commerce acct and into an approved comm acct. Just as usual, another thing happens that doesn’t make any sense but it finally benefits me for once. The only thing is that I still don’t have access to branded content bc of a lack of presence which is bs obviously. I also would like to have something in a written form saying that if I go through the onboarding app that fb made for Shopify and things disconnect and commerce accts get rejected for no reason that FB will help me fix the issue right away and won’t make me wait 10 months like they did on this one.

[migreen06]

That’s great that it’s working now!

I would like to think I may have had something to do with it but probably not… We had the same problem that everyone described here since December. Each time I spoke with customer support at Facebook, I was told the same useless info that they would escalate the issue to their technical support team and then it would never get fixed. I finally had enough, I made a new ticket with Facebook literally 3 to 4 times a day every day for 2 straight weeks.

Then, someone named Akmal with FB support just so happened to be assigned to my FB support chat. He claimed he could fix it for me and I told him that I have already been told that over 50 times and he probably wouldn’t succeed. Three days later he emailed me and told me it was fixed. It actually was finally fixed!! That was about a week and a half ago.

Since then, because of the ridiculous amount of support tickets I made, I have been contacted by FB support dozens of times with an update from someone claiming that they were still working on it. I responded to each of them with Akmal’s contact info and told them they needed to speak with him so he can teach them how to do their job.

[ModestHut]

so maybe it had something to do w it and I’ve been emailing people from FB telling them not to touch anything bc now my main issue is fixed. Now the only thing is that my other issue isn’t fixed, which is branded content. Insta says I’m not eligible bc i don’t have enough followers or a presence even though I have 177k followers. So I know it’s bs but no one will take that seriously either. They tell me that I used to have a page that had a content violation (that i had no idea about) and then I got someone from FB to help me merge that page to a new page bc it was during the time when I was trying everything to get everything hooked up and at the moment Instagram was making me create a new page so that it could connect to a FB page. Long story long, it was a FB concierge that I asked if it would mess anything up if i merged the two pages and he said NO and once they were merged I’ve had no branded content since.

[migreen06]

I don’t have any idea of how to fix that but if you think it is some sort of mistake, I suggest you do what I did. It seemed to work. Just make a new ticket over and over again until someone can actually help you. Good luck! Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.

[lizagarza]

Thanks for sharing your solution.

Could you tell me where you are submitting a ticket? Or possible share Akmal with FB support contact information. I can’t seem to figure out how to contact facebook at all.

i keep getting this message and have been dealing with it for a few months.

"this instagram account is already connected to a commerce account. To continue using Instagram shopping u

need to delete the connected commerce account. contact facebook to help you resolve the issue."

Glad you got your issue resolved.

[ModestHut]

the best way to “try” to fix ur issue would be to go to ur commerce acct then in the overview go to “learn more” in the bottom right and click “contact us”. That way u will be talking w/ a commerce “expert” but good luck to you. If you try and delete a catalog and it says “violated integrity issues” it might be a long and annoying road for u like it was for me.