Small businesses across the world have been left outraged after they discovered a hidden setting on Instagram.
Many businesses missed out on hundreds of opportunities as their direct messages were set by default to 'all requests'.
Despite the setting suggesting that their inboxes were open to all requests, this is not actually the case.
In order to receive requests from various other pages, business accounts must change their messaging settings to ‘top requests’.
Sharing the news on Twitter, one businesswoman said: “People with creator/business Instagram accounts, be sure to check the “top requests” section on your DM request tab cause I’ve just found over 150 DMs from the past 2+ years cause I had it set to “all requests” and thought they were all there - I was so wrong,
“Now I feel like an arse, sorry if I denied your DM”.
The tweet was widely shared as people tried to get the word out to other businesses.
One person said: “tell me why mine just updated today and now i see 80 requests from accounts with 600k+ followers that i’ve missed over the last 3 years..happened to my friend too..instagram really fumbled the bag FOR me”.
A second said: “Oh my god there are so many old messages from brands I missed wtf”.
While a third commented: “The way I just discovered 100s of messages thank you but now I also feel bad”.
Business owners expressed their devastation after coming to the realisation that they had missed a number of appointment requests from clients.
One makeup artist said: “I am FUMING. I’ve just done this and found about 100 unread DM requests. I am SO sorry to anyone that’s ever messaged me that didn’t get a response.
“There’s makeup request’s going back as far as 2018.
“WHAT A STUPID DEFAULT FEATURE @instagram”.
One tattoo artist said: “Also seen this… and checked mine.. So so sorry to anyone I haven’t replied to, I didn’t know this section even existed! I will get back to everyone today”.
