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PayPal CEO writes personal response

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Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#71

Post by rhizome »

dbecker wrote: post #64
rhizome wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, this "fix" only came about outside of their entire customer service mechanism (AFAICT). How many more disenfranchised customers are going to get "a direct line" to @davidmarcus? My guess is "none." This is a pure PR maneuver. The proof is in the pudding.

The idea is that Paypal will use this to event to understand how their systematic mistakes, and to fix them. That way, others won't need a direct line to the CEO. Of course, they should have developed mechanisms to take customer feedback seriously before. And they should have fixed this long ago. But there's nothing wrong with learning from your mistakes so as not to repeat them.

Nobody's saying that "learning from your mistakes" is wrong. How do any of us know what "the idea" of this is, whether we'll hear anything more at all after this one person is taken care of? The funniest thing is that for all of the years that PP "should have fixed this long ago," this one event is what is to be used to understand their problems? What happened to all the other years? What happened to paypalsucks.com? There's are extensive lists, continually updated, of incidents like the one in this story.

The only leeway I give them is openness to the future, but from the past to the present, they are a seriously bad company for entrepreneurs. A business owner literally cannot know whether they'll be caught up in PayPal's various harmful practices, and this message from an executive is the smallest Dixie cup of water given to a one of a hospital full of burn victims.

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#72

Post by rhizome »

dmbaggett wrote: post #61

From the skepticism here, it's clear Mr. Marcus has his work cut out for him. Even with far fewer people ever reporting to me (directly and indirectly) than him, I sympathize with his inability to get the unvarnished truth from his own people. "We're routinely screwing people out of hard cash" is probably a scary message to relay up. His email sounded sincere, and he's new to the job. I'd be inclined to give him the…

It's not hard to make an email sound sincere, especially when vetted by a PR agency.

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#73

Post by AJ007 »

IsaacL wrote: post #60
noonespecial wrote: post #38

This isn't special... Yet. What happened here can happen even in the most dysfunctional customer service paradigms. A promblem randomly and luckily escalated from the people who can't do anything about the problem to the people who (generally speaking) won't do anything about the problem. As a lucky break, the person/department who generally won't do anything, decided in their mercy to do something this one time. IMH…

"IMHO, what was said in the email is just marketing duck-speak, no matter how sincere it sounds until proven otherwise." I agree that this looks like a PR stunt, but it also shows some potential changes underfoot at Paypal. Here's my read of the situation: Paypal has been known for being beauracratic ever since the eBay acquisition, when all the smart people left and the bozos and middle managers remained. You know t…

PayPal's reputation is so deep in the dirt that nothing any one at the company says will bring it back above ground. If someone says "we are changing X" and the changes actually happen, then eventually, over the course of time, Paypal's goodwill may return.

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#74

Post by rhizome »

adgar wrote: post #36
wging wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But 5 months is a long time. Why only now? Surely there have been high-profile cases whose media frenzies can be capitalized on before now.

"I can run a 3 man startup and change things in a week! Why can't a public traded company worth billions with thousands of employees change things in a week?" Check your ignorance and entitlement at the door, please.

Not to mention that any changes they make have to be proven not to expose them to the banking laws that they've been assiduously avoiding, and that would provide the kinds of protections that the general population expects.

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#75

Post by protomyth »

rm999 wrote: post #39
notatoad wrote: post #10

So bloggers with enough pull to get the CEO's attention will no longer have their funds stolen by PayPal. Now how about the rest of us?

I realize you are being cynical, but the e-mail says the CEO wants to make radical changes to fix issues for all customers. I'm a bit skeptical myself, but if we take him for his word this isn't just for a subset of users.

I think notatoad is being realistic. People with large audiences get things fixed, they get the resources, and the rest of use get ignored. No one will write an article about notatoad or protomyth getting hosed.

I hope Paypal can get it together, but I live in fear of getting hosed by them without any recourse.

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#76

Post by SquareWave »

Dear Andy , After the many years of Paypal receiving stories just like yours I'm forced to take action. The traditional Paypal long term strategy of "Hahaha, where else are you going to go for online payments?" is not a viable option anymore.

It's unfortunate that your story has spread so far and so quickly. I now have to figure out how to resolve this AND try to figure out how anyone let it get this bad. Changing such entreched culture here is going to be hard.

I'm going to do my best of not letting Paypal become more of a cliche of how big businesses get their foundations kicked out from under them by smaller, scarappy startups.

P.S. Please,please, please don't google Stripe.

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#77

Post by baseh »

cpayne wrote: post #67
maratd wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ooh! Ooh! Pick me! Pick me! I had 20K removed from my account without an explanation and even hired a lawyer, all of which went absolutely nowhere. This is all a bunch of baloney. If PayPal was really serious about fixing all the pain and misery they caused, they would create a direct line of communication where those on the other end were empowered to resolve all problems ... instead of giving a curt "send us a lett…

"You now have my mobile number" How much more direct communication do you want?

Hello Mr. David,

We all want your mobile number. I have a 1000 angry friends who want to personally talk to you.

Thanks

Re: PayPal CEO writes personal response

#79

Post by apeace »

mcherm wrote: post #21

Here is what I would do... I would take him up on his offer (personal attention from the CEO? Sure!), but I would ask him whether he'd be willing to pick 3 or 4 other customers who had _NOT_ written an article which had gone viral and offer THEM the same deal. I want this to be true. I want PayPal to believe that this behavior is harmful to their business and to push (at ALL levels of the company) to change how they…

Totally agree. And make another blog post to state that PayPal has 6 months to shape up or you're done for good
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