When someone else claims your Facebook business listing

Claiming a Facebook page for a local business is fairly simple, but it’s not quite as easy when you’re the rightful owner to a page and someone else has already claimed it.

I ran into this issue a couple times, and while Facebook makes it easy to report abuse or harassment, it took a lot of research to uncover how to report an unauthorized claiming of a page.

There is a brief answer in the support forum but there’s a little more to this process than meets the eye.

First Steps

First of all, if you know who the admins are, contact them directly and ask for access.

However, if you’re not sure who claimed the page, there is no way in Facebook to see who the admins are.

In this case, message the page and request that you be added as an admin. Be sure to leave your contact information so that they can tell you have a legitimate reason to be an admin of the page.

If this does not work, it’s time for next steps.

Intellectual Property

In short, you will be reporting the page as a violation of intellectual property/trademark because it is an unauthorized use of your brand.

You can either click the “Report Page” option on the page or go directly to the Trademark Report Form.

From there, you will have to fill out a form with your information.

Within a couple days, Facebook will respond to you. They will ask you to return, within one week, a notarized affidavit explaining that you the authorized representative of this business and should be given access. You must declare under perjury of law that everything in the affidavit is true.

Once you return the document, Facebook will respond and either grant or deny access to the page. If access is granted, Facebook responds with a disclaimer that it does not get involved in admin disputes and it is your responsibility to remove unauthorized users.

So keep an eye on your notifications. The second access is granted, log in and remove the unauthorized user.