A Post Failure Log Template to Use Before Contacting Support

The ticket arrives at 6:12 p.m.: "Marketplace isn't working. Can you look?" There is no VIN, no screenshot, no time, no Facebook profile name, and no note about whether the listing is failed, pending, or live under a different stock number. By the time someone reconstructs the afternoon, the browser session is gone, the associate is off the clock, and the only artifact is a frustrated chat thread.

A post failure log template is not bureaucracy. It is the minimum set of facts that lets a manager, a vendor, or Meta's own help flow do anything useful. Fill it in before you contact support, not after they ask for it twice. The five minutes you spend on the log are cheaper than a day of "we think it was the silver SUV."

This article gives dealership managers a reusable log, the fields that actually matter, a rule for what belongs in the ticket versus what stays internal, and how to review a week of failures for patterns. It is operational guidance, not a promise that any vendor can override Facebook. For appeals and policy notices, keep records as described in records dealers should keep before filing an appeal. Check Meta's current help pages for how they want Marketplace issues reported.

Why a Post Failure Log Template Beats a Vague Support Ticket

Support, whether it is your internet director, PostToMarket at info@posttomarket.com, or Facebook's channels, can only work from evidence. "It failed" is not evidence. A VIN, a timestamp, a profile, a status, and what you already tried is evidence.

What a useless ticket looks like

• No vehicle identifier.
• No distinction between a failed post, a removed listing, and a listing that posted but is hard to find.
• No account name, only "the dealership Facebook."
• A retry history that lives in someone's head: "we tried a few times."
• A screenshot of the inventory list with no error text and no URL.

If you send that, you will get a list of questions you could have answered in the first message. The log exists so the first message is the complete one.

Failure vs. removal vs. "I can't find it"

Log them separately or your patterns will be nonsense:

A removal log is a different tool; see building a removal log to spot patterns. Do not dump removals into the post-failure sheet. You will "fix" photos on units that were removed for pricing language.

Fields Every Post Failure Log Template Should Capture

Keep it on one row per incident. If the same VIN fails twice, that is two rows, not an edit. The second attempt is data.

Identity

• Date and local time of the failure, not of the ticket.
• Stock number and VIN. Both. Stock numbers get reused. VINs do not.
• Year / make / model / trim as advertised, so you can see if the form was fighting the decode.
• Facebook profile or Page used for the post. "Ours" is not an identifier.
• Who was posting (rep or associate name) and who owns the unit if those differ.

What the system said

• Exact on-screen text, copied, not paraphrased. "Some error" is worthless; "photo could not be uploaded" is a lead.
• Inventory status at failure: still posting, failed, stuck, unknown.
• Whether a Facebook notice appeared. If yes, save it. Do not screenshot only the dashboard.
• Browser, device, and whether the session had been idle.

You do not need a novel. You need the words the screen used.

What you already did

Numbered, honest, short:

1. First attempt time and result.
2. What you changed (nothing / replaced photos / edited price / signed out and in).
3. Second attempt time and result.
4. Whether a different clean unit posted from the same account afterward.

That last line is the highest-value field in the template. It tells support whether they are looking at a unit or an account. A clean control unit that posts while VIN X fails is a unit problem. A control unit that also fails is an account or session problem.

What you must not put in the log

• Passwords, 2FA codes, session cookies, or email login links.
• Buyer names and phone numbers from Messenger.
• Full credit applications or deal-jacket scans.
• Speculation presented as fact ("Facebook banned us") when you have no notice.

The log is an operations record. Treat it like something you might forward.

The Template You Can Copy Into a Sheet

Use columns, one incident per row:

date_time | vin | stock | ymm | profile | poster | status | on_screen_text | notice_y_n | control_unit_posted_y_n | attempt_1 | attempt_2 | changed_before_retry | outcome | ticket_id

How to fill it in under five minutes

1. When a post fails, the poster fills identity and on-screen text immediately. Not "after I try a few things."
2. The poster runs or skips the control-unit test and records the answer.
3. If they retry, they add attempt two before they ping a manager.
4. The manager reviews the row before anyone contacts support. If identity or on-screen text is blank, send it back. Do not open a ticket on an empty row.

What to attach

• One screenshot of the error, cropped to the message.
• The VIN's data row (price, mileage, photo count), not the entire inventory export.
• Nothing else unless support asks.

Dumping a 200-line CSV into the first message does not make you look thorough. It hides the failed row.

Using the Log Before Contacting Support — and After

The template has two jobs: make the ticket complete, and teach the store what keeps failing.

Before the ticket

Run a short internal filter:

• If a control unit posted, do not write "the account is broken." Write "VIN X fails, VIN Y posted at [time]."
• If nothing posts, include that, plus any Facebook notice, and stop retrying in a loop.
• If the on-screen text is a photo or format issue, try the obvious fix once and log it. Then ticket if it still fails.
• Use the troubleshooting tree for failed Marketplace posts so the log describes which branch you are on.

Then contact the right party. Facebook notices go through Meta's flow. Product or queue questions go to the tool's support. Internal data errors go to the used-car manager, not to a vendor.

After the ticket

When you get an answer, write the outcome on the same row. Closed-without-outcome rows teach nothing. Once a week, a manager should sort the sheet by on-screen text and by VIN. Three failures with the same photo error is a camera-card process. Three failures on one profile and none on others is an account issue. Three failures on imported rows with blank mileage is an export issue.

A weekly fifteen-minute review

• Count incidents. You are looking for clusters, not a target number you invented.
• Group by poster. Training issue versus unlucky day.
• Group by cause text. Process issue versus one-off.
• Pick one recurring cause and assign an owner for the next week.

The log is wasted if it only exists to make support tickets prettier.

How PostToMarket Automates This

A post failure log template exists because posting tools and Facebook both fail in ways that are invisible unless you write them down. PostToMarket cannot fill a vendor ticket for you and cannot guarantee the next post succeeds. It can make the facts you would have typed into the log visible in inventory: which VIN failed, who had it, and what state it is in, so the ticket is a summary instead of an archaeological dig.

Statuses and queues that already answer half the form

• Inventory statuses draft, posting, posted, sold, failed tell you whether the unit never left the queue or actually failed.
• Per-rep queues and team queue view show who was posting and let a manager release a stuck claim.
• Mark as sold and archive so you do not ticket a "failure" on a car that retailed at lunch.

Import and copy clues before the failure

• Bulk CSV and Excel import with import history and a row-level error log — often the real "support issue" is a bad row that should never have been queued.
• AI titles and descriptions generated from specs, editable before posting, so you can attach "what we tried to post" without reconstructing from memory.
• Facebook photo picker so photo count and selection are a known input, not a mystery folder.

Pacing that keeps retries from becoming the incident

• Posts one vehicle at a time with human-like delays.
• Server-enforced daily post limits and delays, so "we mashed retry" is harder to do by accident.
• Sign in to the extension with email, no API keys, so the poster identity in the log matches a real user.

When you do contact support, you should be able to say: this VIN, this user, failed status, control unit posted or did not, import row clean or not. That is the template. The product should already be holding most of those fields.

Fill In the Log First. Then Ask for Help.

A post failure log template to use before contacting support is a one-row discipline. Capture time, VIN, profile, on-screen text, and whether a clean unit still posted. Attach one screenshot. Stop retrying in the dark. Send a complete ticket, then review the sheet weekly so the same blank mileage field does not become next Thursday's emergency.

If failures currently live in group chats, put inventory status and ownership where the whole floor can see them. PostToMarket keeps unlimited vehicles in inventory, flags import-row errors, posts one unit at a time, and shows failed alongside posted. Starter costs $59 per month for a solo seller with one login. Dealership costs $299 per month for up to 13 logins.

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