“Poof”: Another Vancouver small business owner gutted after Instagram deletes account
A local curated vintage store owner that is heavily dependent on Instagram to make an income is rethinking her business model after the social media platform deleted her account.
Charlie Plante from Muzi is warning small businesses that rely on Instagram like hers, “You can just lose it all in a blink of an eye.”
Early Monday morning, around 12:15 am, Plante received an email from Instagram that read, “We removed or disabled access to your account because content you posted doesn’t follow the Instagram Terms of Use. Our policies prohibit posting fraudulent or misleading content or content that otherwise doesn’t follow the law.”
Courtesy Charlie Plante
Plante told Daily Hive she initially thought the email was a scam and deleted it.
But later in the day, when she went to check her notifications on her account, “I was completely locked out.”
It’s been days since the account was disabled and despite several attempts to contact Instagram, Plante said she could never talk to an employee.
“I spent hours with my partner trying to speak to an actual human being.”
She says one of the most frustrating parts is she does not know what Instagram is referring to because it didn’t list an example of why it pulled down the account.
3,500 followers to zero
Plante started an account for Muzi on Instagram in January 2021 and shortly after opened a storefront located in Gastown.
Muzi is a highly curated vintage store focusing on ’90s and 2000s fashion.
Plante gained just about 3,500 followers and gained a loyal clientele in two short years.
She says she’s used her account to post about new inventory and sell items daily.
View this post on Instagram
Usually, Plante will inform her potential customers of new stock that’s delivered every Wednesday through Instagram, but this week she had no way to reach them.
So, she says this incident has caused her to miss one of the more profitable days of the week.
Plante created a new Instagram account, but as of Friday afternoon, it has a little over 900 followers.
More than just a business
For her entire life, Plante says she’s been an avid thriftier and for years, she was reselling clothing before creating Muzi.
But when her business launched, it picked up steam thanks to Vancouverites, who’ve found that her store offers reasonable prices for trendy vintage clothing.
“I felt like I was finally getting into this really good groove where I felt like ‘Okay, this is my career. This is gonna last forever.’ It’s just getting bigger,” she says. ” Then I woke up to essentially my worst nightmare which is just losing communication with all of my followers that I have spent two years building. I honestly still can’t believe it.”
Instagram lacking support for small businesses
Plante is calling this incident a “cautionary tale.”
She says she never imagined this happening, especially since she says she didn’t feel like she get enough of a heads up.
“I wasn’t like a ‘three strikes in you’re out’ situation. It was just completely ‘poof’ overnight, no warning, nothing,” she says.
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Plante’s top priority now is to shift her business model and says this turn of events has taught her a hard lesson.
“I learned that I don’t own my page or my content on Instagram that can be taken away from me at any moment.”
The local business owner says she feels Instagram has proved that small businesses cannot rely on the social media platform because of its lack of communication.
“You can just lose it all in a blink of an eye,” she warns.
View this post on Instagram
Just late last year, Mine & Yours, a luxury consignment business, had its Instagram account expunged from the platform with no warning.
It told Daily Hive its experience highlighted how little control companies have over their own social media accounts.
And earlier this year, a small Vancouver business that designs custom jewellery, Anita Sikma Design, said its Instagram account was recently taken over in a disturbing scam.
The business owner said she started a fresh account when multiple requests to Instagram’s Help Centre went nowhere.
Daily Hive has reached out to Instagram, but it did not respond about why Plante’s @shopmuzi account was deactivated.
Instagram, however, says it is working on recovering the account after Daily Hive contacted the company.
With files from Sarah Anderson and Megan Devlin
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