I manage ad campaigns for more than one client inside Facebook, so I’ve used different credit cards to make the purchases. Yesterday, a client told me she was finding all sorts of strange charges on her card, and after digging into the issue, we discovered that Facebook had been billing her for ALL Lava Row client campaigns.

Not good.

During the setup process of Social Ads, Facebook gives you the option to use an existing credit card already associated with your account, or to enter new c.c. information. (Evidence below!) By entering new info at the exact point of purchase, you kind of assume the charges will go to that card, correct? Apparently not.

What’s odd is that Facebook allows you to associate multiple cards in your account settings (shown in the screen grab above), but I received this message from their customer support team:

Thanks for your email. Unfortunately, we don’t currently have a system set up that can bill more than one card per account at once. We sincerely apologize for the confusion. If you wish to switch credit cards, you currently need to pause all your ads, pay off the remaining balance, and then remove the old credit card from the Account. We hope to create a system where billing multiple cards is possible in the near future.

WTF? Let’s recap: I can save more than one card in my account, but Facebook tells me they can’t bill to more than one. Then, I enter correct, new credit card information at the point of purchase, and they decide to charge a completely different card — one used for previous orders. Even though they gave me a choice during ad setup, and there’s no verbiage to indicate otherwise.

Lesson learned: Don’t try to manage multiple campaigns for multiple customers across multiple payment methods on any platform. Charge it all to your company card, then invoice the client. This is probably common sense to most businesses, but hey — I’m in Year One, making mistakes and getting smarter because of them.

Still, the situation is unacceptable. Facebook: You just gotta charge the right card, and you can’t roll out system-wide changes without addressing user interface.

UPDATE, December 14, 2007: Facebook has removed the charges from the wrong card and applied them to the correct card. Excellent.