Paypal sucks
Monday, December 24th, 2007
As I was looking through my feed reader this morning one of them caught my eye. It was from Turk Hit Box who is having problems with paypal. Personally I have a love-hate relationship with Paypal.
Over the course of time I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with Paypal’s staff on multiple occasions regarding several issues. Each time I was treated as a valued customer with the problems addressed quickly and effectively. And if you believe that I’m the King of England too.
- Where’d my money go?
- A few years ago I bought a product called Fraps used for recording online video game play using Paypal. I received the product (instant download), my paypal account was charged the cost and I immediately setup a transfer of funds from my bank account to my paypal account to cover the money that had come out.
Long story short paypal claimed I never had the money in the paypal account in the first place to make a transaction (but still it went through) and that I had never transfered money from my bank. They finally after over a year of back and forth gave in about the money having been in the paypal account. It took them another 8 months to finally acknowedge that they had in fact received a transfer from my bank account. Then only after the bank president sent them proof over the course of 18 months. The best part is that during that entire time my account was frozen and they were making interest off of my money!
- Stop taking my money damn it!
- This is the latest incident I’ve been dealing with. Like an idiot I signed up for Paypal’s Payment Pro/Virtual terminal. The plan was to just try it out. Every month they charge me $30.00 and I can’t get them to stop. They take $30.00 out of my paypal account and if I haven’t left it in the paypal account they go directly into my checking account tied into the paypal account. Which almost always hits me for a $30.00 bank overdraft fee because that account I only keep $5.00 in and do my banking from another account.
The first time around shame on me for not having been more aware, but after 6 months of requesting them to remove Payment Pro from my account I’ve finally had to go to the bank to file an affidavit so the bank will refuse to consider their claims for money and cause me all kinds of overdraft fees.
By no means am I the only person who has ever had issues with Paypal. If you want to see a whole host of problems go take a look at Paypalsucks.com and you’ll be reading for days. I especially encourage you to take a look at the Paypalsucks forums.
A few things to keep in mind if you’re dealing with paypal:
- Document everything you do so you can find the information easily later
- Keep copies of every transaction you make, both buy and sell via paypal
- Throughly read their Legal Agreements
- Make sure to pull your money out of the paypal account and put it into a real bank account as quickly as possible after every transaction
- Realize now and not later that paypal is NOT a bank. You have no consumer protection.
- Checkout other alternatives just in case. There are a lot out there, but I’ve heard (as in read) good things about Google Checkout (never used them personally)
- Be patient. Paypal takes their sweet time in resolving issues. And why wouldn’t they, the longer your money sits in their bank accounts the more money they make.
All that to say my Paypal account is still open. It has to be they owe me over $180.00 in bank overdraft fees not to mention the $180.00 for unauthorized withdraw they owe me for not shutting down payment pro. My bank has advised me not to shut down the account before the issue is resolved or it might cause just as much hassle. In the meanwhile they (the bank) are taking care of the fees, but who knows how long that will last. If you’re considering dealing with paypal be aware of the risks. When everything is going smoothly it is great, but when you run into issues they can get real ugly real fast.