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I fought the PayPal and I won

jessesingal.substack.com

51–60 of 349 posts

Re: I fought the PayPal and I won

#52
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Dutch support is really very good. Before they had local support it was even worse. But the dutch support, as far as I have used them (quite a lot from begin ‘20 to begin ‘22 as I tried to convert my account), they were professional and nice, but have very little power and need to talk to their US counterparts all the time (which, I presume, is why the weeks/months fly by over something I would assume is a suppor…

I'm glad your experience was better than mine. I had to get a lawyer involved after the Dutch support told me I would be refunded if I returned an item, and then after I sent it back, denied the refund.

Well, my story didn’t end well, but at least they were nice and courteous. Maybe I just got lucky there but my experience with US support was random phone hang ups, infinite queues to ‘I will just fetch this info, moment sir’, people being short, blaming me, barking insults etc.

I guess you found out as well, like me, the US has the last say in any matter and they don’t really listen to their overseas colleagues if their flagging algo/AI says ‘nope’.

Did the lawyer work? If it did, I am happy that at least it seems possible to go against them. I will never touch them again though.

Re: I fought the PayPal and I won

#53

PayPal is such a weird company. I was a loyal customer for 20 years until I wanted to convert my account from business to personal (I closed the business) and the site refused to do so. after months of calls with support, it became clear that no one was able to do this (something locked the flow and no one was able to see what; I guess my account was so ancient, it has some db flags no longer used but still checked b…

I lost access to a PayPal account I had used for years, because one day they decided they needed to know the CVV of a long-expired credit card, and refused to let me log in without it.

Surprisingly, customer support was very helpful and let me transfer out the (minimal) balance in the account to another, completely unconnected PayPal business account I happened to have. Which is even more disconcerting, because it meant they were sufficiently convinced about my identity to let me transfer money out, but not enough to let me login in. Insane.

I'm still (very, very occasionally) using that business account today, even though the underlying business also ceased to exist years ago. I wonder when the banhammer will drop?

Re: I fought the PayPal and I won

#55

I haven't been using PayPal since more than 5 years. For quick transfers I can use Revolut. For buying something I can use card. For easy payment integration with Web apps there are countless tools. So I am wondering what use cases PayPal still serves, use cases which aren't already better covered by better means. Why pay heavy commissions to PayPal?

I certainly put Revolut in the same category as PayPal. No morals, anti-consumer policies, very little protection.

Re: I fought the PayPal and I won

#56

PayPal is such a weird company. I was a loyal customer for 20 years until I wanted to convert my account from business to personal (I closed the business) and the site refused to do so. after months of calls with support, it became clear that no one was able to do this (something locked the flow and no one was able to see what; I guess my account was so ancient, it has some db flags no longer used but still checked b…

I lost access to a PayPal account I had used for years, because one day they decided they needed to know the CVV of a long-expired credit card, and refused to let me log in without it. Surprisingly, customer support was very helpful and let me transfer out the (minimal) balance in the account to another, completely unconnected PayPal business account I happened to have. Which is even more disconcerting, because it me…

Maybe for your account they registered the wrong number as well?

I could’ve gone on using it if I hadn’t told them. But in NL this is an issue (hence I tried so hard); bank accounts to companies need to be closed asap when the company gets closed and you definitely cannot pay or receive money with them as that will anger the tax office.

Re: I fought the PayPal and I won

#57

PayPal is such a weird company. I was a loyal customer for 20 years until I wanted to convert my account from business to personal (I closed the business) and the site refused to do so. after months of calls with support, it became clear that no one was able to do this (something locked the flow and no one was able to see what; I guess my account was so ancient, it has some db flags no longer used but still checked b…

I lost access to a PayPal account I had used for years, because one day they decided they needed to know the CVV of a long-expired credit card, and refused to let me log in without it. Surprisingly, customer support was very helpful and let me transfer out the (minimal) balance in the account to another, completely unconnected PayPal business account I happened to have. Which is even more disconcerting, because it me…

Does "very very occasionally" mean you use it frequently or infrequently?

Re: I fought the PayPal and I won

#58
post #6

I haven't been using PayPal since more than 5 years. For quick transfers I can use Revolut. For buying something I can use card. For easy payment integration with Web apps there are countless tools. So I am wondering what use cases PayPal still serves, use cases which aren't already better covered by better means. Why pay heavy commissions to PayPal?

I only buy from merchants that offer PayPal (there are few I trust by card, like Amazon). And the reason is that whatever it happens, I can always get my money back with PayPal. It happened 3 times in last 5 years that seller took the money and never shipped anything. I got all them resolved very quickly.

That's BS. Had a seller screwing me over who "sold" me a VR headset.

He gave me a UPS tracking number which belonged to a package that was delivered to another city, another person, was part 1 of a 3 package delivery and weighted 28kg, pretty heavy weight headset. The only match was the zip code everything else had nothing to do with me.

So I complained to Paypal, gave them all the data that showed that the tracking number wasn't from the right package and still PayPal let the seller keep the money.

Re: I fought the PayPal and I won

#59
post #6

I haven't been using PayPal since more than 5 years. For quick transfers I can use Revolut. For buying something I can use card. For easy payment integration with Web apps there are countless tools. So I am wondering what use cases PayPal still serves, use cases which aren't already better covered by better means. Why pay heavy commissions to PayPal?

I only buy from merchants that offer PayPal (there are few I trust by card, like Amazon). And the reason is that whatever it happens, I can always get my money back with PayPal. It happened 3 times in last 5 years that seller took the money and never shipped anything. I got all them resolved very quickly.

If you live in the US, you could use Privacy for this (privacy.com). Not only do they allow you to create a separate card for each merchant, pause/unpause/close/set spend limits and so on, but their support is so nice that half the time they'll just give you credit instead of making you bother with a proper chargeback. And you can do that over email.

Works even with merchants that don't support PayPal. Everyone supports good old card numbers.

Re: I fought the PayPal and I won

#60

It's worth knowing that in the UK PayPal is covered by the Financial Ombudsman service. They wouldn't be interested in accounts being blocked as in this case but they were very helpful to me when PayPal made a payment that I did not authorize and then refused to put it right. I don't use PayPal any more. Their support staff are impossibility hopeless so any kind of problem with your account will cause you a world of…

The Financial Ombudsman Service is one of the few UK organizations that is anyway effective. If only all other regulatory authorities were half as good?

One problem I have found with some UK eCommerce sites though is that their payment gateways are often broken with Brave/Chrome and the paypal payment option is an easy way of bypassing this issue.

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