121–130 of 163 posts
Why now? Why with this story? I've been reading similar complaints to that for years. Some of which were far worse in my view (i.e. taking money out of banks to repay people who weren't even seeking a refund because PayPal changed its mind about someone's product or service). Why does PayPal suddenly care? Is it because there is viable competition now?
Posting screenshots of text instead of text make me sad. It excludes visually-challenged people from this discussion, makes old people get out their glasses and squint, and makes cutting and pasting impossible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are forgetting one thing that was previously stated in the comments: this isn't Paypal responding through their normal support channels. This is a fire-fighting attempt from the CEO of a company that snubbed the people they should live off of, prompted by a bigger than average shitstorm created by their persistent crappy handling of accounts. Think of it this way: suppose Mercedes went around, burning the cars it…
He (the CEO) didn't have to respond at all. But he did. How 'bout we all give him the benefit of the doubt.
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…
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…
I doubt the CEO will learn much he didn't already know by a "direct line" case study, but humbling himself in this way might give him the lever he needs to really move company culture.
PayPal can keep most of its anti-fraud effectiveness while improving customer service for those innocents who want to recover from misclassification. Either being more trusting, or spending more effort discerning who can be trusted, will cost them money short term. But if they don't do it, they'll lose some of their customers to competitors who will.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are forgetting one thing that was previously stated in the comments: this isn't Paypal responding through their normal support channels. This is a fire-fighting attempt from the CEO of a company that snubbed the people they should live off of, prompted by a bigger than average shitstorm created by their persistent crappy handling of accounts. Think of it this way: suppose Mercedes went around, burning the cars it…
A CEO is a pretty busy person ... when one responds (no matter how it was escalated) it says something about his/her viewpoint. Many CEOs would hand this off to their customer experience personnel (if they have some still) or maybe marketing department. This was not a manager's or director's reply though. The wording indicates someone (relatively new to this president's post) who appears to see that change is necessa…
PayPal has a notoriously bad customer service reputation. It's going to take more than a typical CEO apology letter to really fix the issues that are embedded within how PayPal operates. The fact that a CEO has to issue such a letter indicates there are problems that probably aren't going to be easy to fix.
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…
>> This isn't special... Yet. Respectfully disagree. CEOs of multi-billion dollar publicly traded companies do not routinely reach out to disgruntled customers, no matter how public the PR disasters. Twitter has been very effectively leveraged in the past with various underperforming companies, however IIRC all of those cases were delegated to customer service / marketing personnel. While you are correct that this in…
CEOs, like anyone, can lose interest in anything, due to lack of commitment or competing priorities. And no CEO lasts forever; the next CEO might not care as much as PayPal in the large currently doesn't care.
And an incoming CEO is not superman, it takes cooperation from below.
Good luck, hope it works out for them.