The panic response to a disabled ad account is usually to create a new one immediately. That's the wrong move, and it can make the underlying problem worse. Here's the process that actually works. Start at the right place Meta consolidated account issues into a single hub: Business Support Home, reachable at facebook.com/business-support-home. The old Account Quality page has been folded into it (Cropink). That's where the actual status, reason, and review options live — not in the ad account settings themselves. The four-step process First, check the account's status on Business Support Home. Second, identify the specific reason listed — Meta disables accounts for three broad categories: policy violations, failed payments, and suspicious activity, and each has a different fix (Leadsie). Third, act on that specific reason: fix the payment method if it's billing, submit an appeal with documentation if it's policy. Fourth, wait for the review — typically 48 hours, though the full process often runs three to five business days. What a good appeal actually contains A vague "please review my account" rarely works. A stronger appeal includes a detailed, specific explanation of the ad activity in question and why the disable was a mistake, submitted from an admin account. If a first appeal gets rejected, a second one should include everything from the first plus more: how long you've been advertising, total historical spend, the specific business purpose behind the flagged content, and what's changed to prevent a repeat. The 180-day window Only admins can request a manual review, and it has to happen within 180 days of the restriction. Past that window, the door closes. This is one more reason not to ignore a disabled account and hope a new one solves it — the old one may still be salvageable, and abandoning it doesn't erase the signal it left behind on the Business Manager or linked accounts. Why starting fresh usually backfires A new account created right after a disable, especially from the same device, IP, or payment method, tends to inherit the same scrutiny rather than escaping it. Account linking is exactly the mechanism that catches this. Recovery is slower than starting over, but it's usually the more durable fix. I found the clearest walkthrough of the appeal-and-recovery sequence, including how it interacts with linked accounts, on bm2500.asia — it's one of the few places that lays out the full timeline rather than just the first step.