PayPal is seriously misnamed. Pal? You’ve got to be kidding. There is nothing friendly, helpful or even remotely useful about their customer service. So if you’ve got a problem, or have questions about an error in the transaction, then kiss your money goodbye. Sorry, “pal”, you’re on your own.

They’re impossible to reach

Before, Paypal wouldn’t even list a customer service phone number.  Or they’d do a very good job of hiding it, in very small type at the end of a long form, where it would take a lot of searching to actually get a hold of it.

This wasn’t just an oversight or an example of very bad graphic design (you would think, however, that with the amount of money they make a day, they could afford to get a good layout artist). It was a blatant, conscious move that reveals exactly how cold and selfish this company can be.

Sollitto himself, a Paypal representative, admitted that the company would  make the phone number very difficult to find in order to save costs.

Save on costs? Costs? They’re one of the most successful Internet companies, earning millions from online transactions, and they can’t spare a minute percentage of those profits to help someone whose life investment may have been frozen in a Paypal account?

Fortunately the Electronic Funds Transaction Act (EFTA) forced Paypal to post their contact information where normal people could actually find them—but the fact that it took legislation to make them do this is a clear indication of how important their customers are.

They give you the run around

Posting a few contact numbers is a far step beyond actually doing something about the complaints received—especially when their entire service policy allows them to keep small customers at bay, stringing them on to a long process that seems designed to wear you down and force you to give up in frustration.

For example, owners of a free personal account are required to contact the customer’s service center through a Web-based email form.  The problem is that the email form is a template that doesn’t always let you explain your concerns, or give the important details. Then—because they need additional information—they take longer to process your complaint, and then blame their delay on you because you weren’t concrete enough. Well, duh! Whose idea was it to use an email template, anyway? If they had actually hired people to work the phone lines, then they would’ve gotten all the data they wanted in minutes.

Oh wait. That assumes that once you have the phone number, you actually get connected to a Paypal Customer Service representative. In truth, the system is so inefficient that you’d have to wait a very long time before you actually get to talk to somebody. You’ll be put on hold, transferred, and forced into making multiple calls. Then when you’re actually speaking to a live person, a lot of them are rude and combative, sometimes hanging up in the middle of the call, or just being generally unhelpful. 

Their system invites problems

It wouldn’t be so bad if the problems you encountered in PayPal weren’t their fault—but a good deal of customer complaints are actually a result of the company’s inefficiency. For example, PayPal’s security system is supposed to clamp down on fraud, but in the process, it will freeze accounts for the rather hazy reason of “suspicious activity”. Often, this hits regular, law-abiding citizens who haven’t made any criminal offenses and desperately need the money that’s rightfully theirs, but can’t get it until PayPal decides it’s good and ready to look into their account. A famous example of this is what happened to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, who received donations through PayPal and had to wait for months for funds that they obviously needed. Clearly, something is wrong, and while they have every right to follow whatever security measures they want, they should at least have a system in place to correct the weaknesses within that.

They only help when they feel like it

And then there’s the problem of charge backs. PayPal won’t pursue a case—even if there’s strong evidence of an error in transaction—because they feel it has no chance of winning. They don’t want to deal with the problem because it’s bad for their business. But what about the customer that trusted them, even paid them, to provide a secure and convenient way of transferring money? They’ll charge for this service, and then decide that they’d “rather not” go through the trouble?

They don’t care about the buyers

PayPal takes care of its sellers, because they earn from them: charging transaction fees, getting a percentage of the profits, and generally getting their business from the large volume that merchants can bring in. But they don’t earn from the buyers, and that’s why very few of their customer service measures are available for their complaints. If you’re charged too much, or if you get a faulty product and can’t get a refund, or never received the product at all, then you’re on your own. They will, in fact, tell you (in so many words) that it was your fault for deciding to purchase through the Internet, and that they can’t do anything about it. (Or more accurately, won’t  do anything about it).

An example: 11 disgruntled customers filed a class action suit against PayPal when they were denied refunds on Essex products that weren’t delivered as promised. Apparently, they had complained to PayPal, but the company simply washed its hands of the matter, saying that charge back disputes were at their discretion. In fact, despite a standing complaint about faulty products, they allowed Essex to continue selling (they must’ve been making a lot of money on the transactions being made).

If PayPal were a responsible company that cared about the satisfaction of the buyers, they would’ve either pursued the complaint or at least suspended or made appropriate consumer warnings about Essex. Instead, they chose to protect their profits through the merchants, even if it meant cheating honest citizens of their money and turning a blind eye on blatant fraud (so much for “security” measures).

The case was brought to the New York Attorney General who forced the company to disclose the rights of customers whenever a seller fails to deliver merchandise. Can you believe that? The judge had to make them do it. And yet they make glowing promises of “buyer and seller protection” on their site.

Despite all this, PayPal has the audacity to claim that it has very good customer service relations with “most” people being perfectly happy with the way they do things.  Sorry to burst your bubble, “pal”, but your customer service sucks.