Is this Paypal experience customary?

What he got was a counterfeit, a fake that was broken.

He started the refund process, but I was pretty miffed that my reputation with my kid got mixed up in these poor business practices. So I emailed management and asked that they apologize to the kid.

It took almost forever to get them to figure out that I was not asking for a refund. I was asking for somebody to explain what happened, apologize, and take steps for it not to happen again.

He finally got a refund, although whether it was from my actions or his nobody knows. He said it came in three chunks, as if various departments were each pitching in a bit.

I thought my point was pretty clear: as leadership, when you take your company and allow its reputation to suffer like that, this is something you are responsible for and need to take action to fix. The money has nothing to do with anything. But they only have certain predefined channels that they seem to be able to communicate through. Anything outside of those channels causes a weird org fault.

I've worked with call centers before, and it continues to amaze me the strange place we are putting humans. They're paid to answer the phone, but after that? They're basically little robots, paid to execute a predefined program, adding in a bit of human-sounding noises now and then to make things slightly more palatable to the person on the other end.

> Inappropriate automation and human/machine confusion bedevil call centres. If you could solve your problem by filling in a web form, you probably would have done. The fact you’re in the queue is evidence that your request is complicated, that something has gone wrong, or generally that human intervention is required.

> However, exactly this flexibility and devolution of authority is what call centres try to design out of their processes and impose on their employees. The product is not valued, therefore it is awful. The job is not valued by the employer, and therefore, it is awful. And, I would add, it is not valued by society at large and therefore, nobody cares.