PayPal: an agony in five fits
Read this if you’re a Schadenfreudian.
So a couple of weeks ago I got an email from PayPal informing me of a charge to my account from iTunes. I have never used PayPal to buy anything from iTunes; I have not even authorized PayPal as a possible form of payment to iTunes. Moreover, when I checked my iTunes account I discovered that there was no charge corresponding to the amount PayPal had indicated. It seemed pretty clear to me that someone had gotten access to my PayPal account information, by means I cannot imagine. So I immediately filed a notification with PayPal, changed my password, and — this was a royal pain in the neck — de-authorized my debit card and ordered a new one with a new number. The “iTunes” charge wasn’t a large one, but obviously the person who had my financial information could use it to buy from anywhere that uses PayPal.
My first (unsigned) response from PayPal: We have completed our investigation of your claim and have determined that this is not an instance of unauthorized account activity. At this time, your claim has been denied. Through careful research, it has been determined that the correct course of action would be to cancel the Preapproved Payment Agreement from your Profile. The merchant will be notified of this change and will no longer be able to make charges to your account.
Ahem. I have no Preapproved Payment Agreements, as even the most cursory glance at my Profile would have shown. “Careful research” my ass. Plus there remained all the other inconsistencies noted above. I wrote back pointing these things out, and while waiting for an answer tried to cancel my account. This was not allowed. Then came
Response 2 (from “Rex”): I personally checked the account and understand the frustration regarding transactions that was unauthorized going to iTunes. PayPal previously placed a temporary hold on this transaction because we had received a notification that the funds might be fraudulent. While the transaction was in temporary hold, neither the seller nor the buyer could access the money. After further examination, PayPal has now completed the investigation of this transaction. We would like to inform you that the suspicion was confirmed and we have therefore reversed the transaction back to the buyer. Unfortunately, due to data protection we cannot disclose any further information in relation to the investigation.
Excellent. Someone has defrauded me but you won’t tell me how it happened. Good thing I canceled that debit card. But I still wanted to cancel my PayPal account, since the company is obviously incompetent and untrutstworthy, so I wrote again to say that I didn’t appreciate that option being blocked.
Response 3 (from “Sarifah”): I personally checked your PayPal account and showed no security flags or limitations that are in place. Given this, I am certain that the email notification you received was not sent by PayPal and is therefore fraudulent. Please go over the article I have included below to help you in verifying the authenticity of the email notifications you receive and ultimately protecting the security of your account information.
This was immediately followed by
Response 4 (from “Kathleen”): In researching your account I saw that there are outstanding payment authorizations. Please try again after the authorizations have been settled or voided.
Ah. In other words, you have discovered precisely the opposite of what your predecessor discovered. Presumably you disagree with Sarifah’s “certain” judgment that the previous PayPal employee emails, all of which came from precisely the same location (I checked the details), were themselves fraudulent. Even as I was replying to that effect, I received
Response 5 (from “Matthew”): I understand that you are trying to close your PayPal account and are receiving a message stating that there are pending transactions. We are aware of this issue and I sincerely regret the inconvenience it has caused you. Our technicians are working to resolve this matter. We appreciate your patience and understanding.
One week has passed since that reply. In the meantime my account has not been refunded the fraudulent charge, I still cannot cancel the account, and no one has answered any of my subsequent emails. They don’t have any functioning credit card numbers from me, so I don’t think they can do me any further harm, though I’m sure they would if they could.
I did get an email asking me to evaluate the help I received from Sarifah. Apparently no one cares about the help I received from Rex, Kathleen, or Matthew. I have not replied.
I had a similar experience with PayPal a couple of years ago on an eBay auction. The other guy dropped the claim, and they marked it as such in my account but they gave the disputed charge back to the other guy anyway. I had the same experience with their tech support; it was an endlessly revolving cast of people all claiming that ‘I won the case’ so there was no problem. Eventually I gave up on the charge and just stopped using PayPal. I realize bankers are in low esteem nowadays, but the difference between PayPal and my credit card when I’ve had problems is night and day. Now that PayPal processes credit cards directly, I imagine every PayPal account in existence is one customer support email from cancellation.
Anyway, the postscript is that your post finally got me to go and close my account for real, and I had cash left in it from years ago that I had forgotten about. Thanks.
— Bo · Feb 13, 05:39 PM · #
Ouch! You have all my sympathies. I’ve heard a lot of PayPal horror stories even though my usage of the service has always been satisfactory (but I scarcely use it, maybe I would sing a different tune if I used it routinely).
— PEG · Feb 13, 05:43 PM · #
My brother in law had a problem where someone broke into his PayPal account through what seemed to all of us as frankly absurdly lax security. He sells a lot on eBay so he had a lot of money in there. The person used his PayPal not only steal money but took information from the account and stole his identity, and opened— I’m not kidding— an online gambling server.
The whole thing was a huge pain in the neck for him to sort out and it don’t me the lesson “don’t use PayPal.”
— Freddie · Feb 13, 06:09 PM · #
just had a 3-month ordeal of my own with paypal, the details of which are too boring to recount. but suffice it to say that they froze $4000 of my money for no reason. your experience with customer service is tragically typical.
— josh · Feb 15, 04:46 PM · #
that sucks. Remember that paypal is owned by Ebay, which also owns Skype.
For some reason they do not deem it necessary to have good customer service. Either this is because it’s too easy for them to get away with it or because there may be some fraudulent people that have made up stories in the past to cancel accounts.
If I were you I would file complaints with the Better Business Bureau and the FCC. You can look them up online. Maybe if enough people do this Ebay will be forced to change its ways.
— itsme · Feb 15, 05:27 PM · #
As soon as John McCain mentioned Meg Whitman in his campaign, I went ahead and closed my PayPal and e-bay accounts. What was once a good idea is now a cesspool of scam artists and ebay “storefronts” They had a good run, but in the past 2 years they have absolutely sucked. Get OUT of Paypal and Ebay while you can.
— jeem · Feb 15, 06:12 PM · #
I tried to set up an account to receive “donations” what we call a TRUST – meaning that we do not touch the money donated and it ALL goes to the intended cause with no administration cut. When signing up for a “non-profit” account, the only option, no rules or limitations are revealed. After doing so they put a hold on your account and then make you submit a long list of documents to re-activate the account. This comes after you have spent dozens of hours setting up or configuring the account to your site. I figure I wasted close to 100 hours on this. My advise is to STOP using Paypal for everything.
— James · Feb 15, 06:30 PM · #
I have always refused to open a PayPal account or deal with Ebay because I have heard all the horror stories. The fun part is getting an e-mail saying there’s a problem with an account I NEVER had and hitting the SPAM button with howls of evil laughter.
The roommate uses it for MyLots payouts and nothing else and has them mail her a check when she wants her money. So it’s easy to monitor.
— Rusty · Feb 15, 06:35 PM · #
Paypal customer service sucks.
But if buying with ebay we dont have a choice.
It would be nice if ebay took google checkout or anything else.
for a long time i was paying for ebay items with a money order (a pain in the ass) but now ebay does not allow money orders…so the only option is paypal.
We are all stuck between a rock and a hard place
— Jay · Feb 15, 06:52 PM · #
I myself came to the conclusion that there must be a hook attached to the “cheap” operations of PayPal – and maybe that’s exactly it: cheap. Not inexpensive. I try to use PayPal as little as possible, and in effect I also don’t use eBay anymore. Period.
A company that wants to handle MY money and doesn’t even have appropriate customer service doesn’t get my bucks. For sure, the same thing might happen with bank accounts, too – but every (EVERY) friend of mine had some really bad experience with PayPal, and I’m sure they have at least 100x more interactions / transactions with their banks than with PayPal.
Bottom line: PayPal is cheap in every way. You get what you pay for. Sucks.
— Thorsten Claus · Feb 15, 07:27 PM · #
PayPal is supposed to resolve problems where a seller sends you a box of broken glass instead of the lamp you paid for. Well, they don’t resolve anything. From what I can tell, they don’t even do anything. I followed the instructions, contacted seller, PayPal, returned broken glass to seller, contacted PayPal, seller, PayPal, etc., over and over again and — you guessed it — nothing happened. I’m still out a bunch of money and the unscrupulous seller won.
I’ve found, on the whole, that most eBay sellers are honest. But I only buy cheap things on eBay now, so I won’t get stuck with a substantial loss if the sale goes bad.
— Mary · Feb 15, 07:34 PM · #
Well Paypal, Ebay are the same . They want tot make money but will not take care of their customers when they have to rectify errors or fraud. I cancelled my Paypal and Ebay accounts two years ago and still receive transaction notifications and promotions> Well I have no credit or debit card listed with them so I do not care; for dealing with them is a pain in the neck
— john heraux · Feb 15, 07:45 PM · #
I sense dissatisfaction.
— Matt Frost · Feb 15, 08:29 PM · #
Frozen and never to be seen again several years ago… OVER $4000
Business reputation ruined, Business Closed
Thanks Paypal
— Paypal Sucks · Feb 15, 09:06 PM · #
I JUST CANCELED MY ACCOUNT. HOW DO YOU DO IT?
1. LOGIN
2. CLICK PROFILE, NOT THE DROP DOWN MENU, JUST PROFILE
3. SELECT CANCEL ACCOUNT ON THE LEFT
4. CONFIRM ACCOUNT OWNERSHIP BY OKAYING PHONE AND ADDRESS.
5. SCHEDULE AN AUTOMATED CALL FROM PAYPAL
6. ANSWER PHONE AND WRITE DOWN PIN THEY GIVE YOU.
7. ENTER SECURITY CODE PIN ON THE WEB
8. CLICK CONTINUE
9. TELL THEM WHY YOU’RE LEAVING
10. CONFIRM THAT, YES, YOU WANT TO CANCEL
11. CONFIRM AGAIN, THAT, YES, YOU REALLY REALLY REALLY WANT TO CLOSE YOUR ACCOUNT.
12. VERIFY THAT YOUR ACCOUNT IS CLOSED.
NOW WASN’T THAT EASY?
NO MORE PAY PAL.
— DAI · Feb 16, 03:04 AM · #
I looked into using Pay-Pal many years ago, and thank God I did.
Between the lines it’s a win-loose club, and you do not get to pick which side you are on, you are automatically in the loose side. There is room for only one win, and that is ??? yep Pay-Pal
They always win, and you always loose. A money making scam in there favour.
So you must be a looser to use it: and for the blind that only becomes clear when there is a problem. Then try and get your money they quite happily freeze, : You do not have a hope in hell.
— IcanSee · Feb 16, 03:54 AM · #
Paypal is the worst. They cost me $1,000 and admitted in an e-mail they never even looked at my claim.
— bonanzaman · Feb 16, 04:42 AM · #
So, for those of us who need to process online payments, what would you all suggest as an alternative? I’ve never had a problem with paypal, but if there is a critical mass exodus from their accounts, I need to find an alternative method of payment.
Anyone?
— michael lee · Feb 18, 05:39 PM · #