Category Archives: paypal sucks

paypal sucks

i knew it was going to happen eventually…

16 years ago, in 2003, hybrid elephant requested, and was granted a paypal “business” account.

i never trusted paypal to do what they claimed to be so good at, so i didn’t keep any balance in my account. i had it there so that people — even people without paypal accounts — could pay me with a credit card, and i didn’t have to worry about checking whether they actually, you know… had a credit card, and that sort of thing.

i had the paypal account as a convenience, and, at first, because there wasn’t anything else like it available for “small” businesses like hybrid elephant.

a few years ago, when i had my web site “professionally” re-designed (my skills with HTML went out the window once i had my brain injury), i switched from using paypal for payments to me, to using stripe for payments, primarily because i hated paypal so much. stripe is only slightly better than paypal, but, significantly, they’re not paypal, which, for me, made all the difference.

since then, i’ve only used my business paypal account for payments to host providers, registrars and web designers, and for a few purchases of tools and materials… and nothing else.

—–

this morning, i woke up to email that said “Your account has been limited”.

immediately, i figured it was spam, but then i looked at it. the last time paypal posted such things online, they posted a few pointers for distinguishing real paypal email from fake paypal email. they included things like “real paypal email will address you by your full name, and not by “member” or something like that”. this email addressed me by my full name, and informed me that i had violated their acceptable use policy, and because of that, they were permanently closing my account.

😒

i contacted my current web designer, who was of the opinion that it was spam/phishing, and recommended that i log in to my paypal account and call them. i logged in to my paypal account, and was immediately transported to a new page that said

You can’t use PayPal anymore

At PayPal, we value a safe community for our customers to do business. We noticed activity in your account that’s inconsistent with our User Agreement and we no longer offer you PayPal services.

Any bank or credit card information linked to your PayPal account cannot be removed nor can it be used to create a new account. You can still log in and see your account information but you can’t send or receive money. Any money in your balance will be held for 180 days, after which we’ll send you an email with instructions about transferring your money.

😒

so, i called them, and, after waiting on hold FOR TWO FUCKING HOURS an “agent” told me that i had been found guilty of violating paypal’s appropriate use policy and there was nothing i could do to change their decision to ban me from their service. the “agent” also informed me that i would be unable to use that credit card number, or email address, to establish a new account in the future. when i asked them to give me some idea of what i had done to deserve such a punishment, they told me that in order to find out what i did, i would have to “seek legal counsel, and file a subpoena.”

at that point, i yelled “FUCK YOU” and hung up.

😠

they said they’ll send me any balance after 180 days (because they want to get all the money they can from your account before they close it), but, because my account had zero balance, the next thing i did was to contact my bank, have them put a hold on any further money going from my account to paypal, disconnect the card that paypal hasd, and issue a new card, with a different number.

at this point, i feel like i deserve this: i only yelled “fuck you” one time, and it was appropriately directed… and i handled the rest of it a lot better than i would have 15 or 20 years ago…

adulting award
adulting award

html-formatted email, paypal sucks

WTELF

which stands for “What The Ever Loving Fuck”…

it’s a good acronym. i’m going to use it more frequently.

in the mean time…

—–
RE: payment?
From: Sales <[email protected]>
To: salamandir <[email protected]>
Date: 180806 08:13 am

We do not accept payment over the website.

Once your order is processed we will contact you with any questions, your total, and to collect payment.

We do not utilize PayPal, however we can do your Master Card.

Please let me know if you have any further questions or concerns.
—–

they don’t accept payment over the web site, AND they don’t accept paypal?

it takes a little longer to fulfill my order — which i made on sunday, they haven’t “processed” it yet, although they have “confirmed” it…

but this seems to be my kind of business! 😉 👍

hybrid elephant, paypal sucks

oh… crap.

i had to refund someone’s money the other day. they had ordered one box of incense, but, because of the fact that they ordered it from bizarre-istan, paypal neglected to figure shipping correctly, and as a result, they had only paid $1.50 for something that would cost me $35 to mail to them. i wrote and told them of my dilemma and said that if i didn’t hear anything from them, i would refund their money. i didn’t hear anything from them, so i refunded their money.

there would be nothing unusual about this transaction, except for the fact that it is exactly this type of transaction that is referred to in a previous interaction that i had with paypal, which wasn’t so cordial…

just what i needed… another reason to wish that i could afford to cancel my paypal account… 😐

paypal sucks

oh. my. GAWD!

i have never liked paypal, and i have been trying for quite a while, to find a way to get around having to use their services for ANYTHING… and this is exactly the reason why:

PayPal Requires Destruction Of Antique Violin

I sold an old French violin to a buyer in Canada, and the buyer disputed the label.

This is not uncommon. In the violin market, labels often mean little and there is often disagreement over them. Some of the most expensive violins in the world have disputed labels, but they are works of art nonetheless.

nevertheless, PayPal, in their “infinite wisdom”, apparently decided the violin was a “counterfeit” and instructed the buyer to destroy it (search for the word “destroy”) rather than sending it back to the seller to get his money back… which the buyer did.

i’m sorry, but this is inexcusable. at this point, i still don’t have a reliable alternative to paypal, but it’s coming VERY soon… the less of my money these PIRATES take, the more i will like it. 😛

paypal sucks, rants

this is why paypal SUCKS!

so – naturally – i haven’t heard anything about whether or not the email that i received from "[email protected]" really was from paypal or not, and the person i talked to last week said that i would hear from the fraud department in two to three days, so i decided to call and see if they knew anything…

why do i always decide to torture myself early in the week… 😐

i talked to one person who had a very strong accent of some kind or another (to the point where i had to ask them to repeat their greeting, because i didn’t understand what they had said AT ALL). when i had confirmed that i had, indeed, called paypal, and not some place in madagascar, i explained my problem, and was promptly put on hold to wait for the fraud department.

half an hour later, i was greeted by an american girl who couldn’t have been much older than 20, who assured me that if i hadn’t heard anything, that my email was probably fraudulent. i then explained that the email had two parts, one of which matched the guidelines for a “real” email, and the other of which matched the guidelines for a fraudulent email, whereupon she changed her tune, and said that the email was real. i proceded to tell her about the fact that i traced it to a uu.net account, whereupon she changed her tune again and said that it was clearly fraudulent, which, she said, was made obvious by the fact that i hadn’t heard anything…

at that point, i politely ended the conversation, and proceded to hit myself in the face with my keyboard, because it is more comfortable… 😛

THAT is why i don’t keep a balance in my paypal accounts… it’s just not worth the risk. 😐

miscellaneous, paypal sucks

붺

paypal’s response was to have me send the spam message to spoof at paypal dot com, which, if my previous experiences are anything to go by, is the last thing i will ever hear about this message… 😐

oh well…

my car stereo experienced an electronic hiccough yesterday, but taking out the suspect fuse to determine if it was bad or not (it wasn’t) fixed everything.

yesterday had a phil rehearsal in preparation for trolloween. today has a BSSB rehearsal in preparation for the sousa bash.

we have a number of houseguests starting thursday and ending sunday.

paypal sucks

THIS is the way to start the week… 8)

i got another email, purportedly from “service at paypal dot com”…

this time, the subject line was “Notification of PayPal Account Transaction”…

usually, if paypal sends me a “Notification of PayPal Account Transaction” i get another email (from myself) with details from my web site about the transaction that just occurred. this time, i just got the notification, and nothing else.

this time, instead of addressing me as %%FIRST%% %%LAST%%, they had my full name, although they didn’t say how much the transaction was… so i logged into my paypal account and looked.

no big red number at the top of the page… my account is balanced. i don’t owe anything… as it SHOULD BE 8)

i’m still not sure where the spam message i got from uu.net came from – and i’m still going to call them (bleh, ecchth, ptui) and see if i can find out, because it’s still a major concern – and i STILL want to cancel my paypal account, but those things are less of an immediate event at this point, and i’m willing to let them try to explain themselves (especially about the message from uu.net) before i leap to a decision.

paypal sucks

this isn’t really the way to end the week, either…

1 Comment

i got an email message, purportedly from “paypal at paypal dot com” with a subject line that read “Keeping Your Account in Good Standing”…

if you’ve ever had the displeasure of actually calling paypal, you’ll probably recognise their “security pointers” that they broadcast over the telephone while you’re on hold, which say things like “an authentic email message from paypal will address you by your first and last name”, while a bogus message will address you as “paypal user, or paypal member”…

the message i received addressed me as “%%FIRST%% %%LAST%%”…

i often receive email that has obviously been designed as html, and rendered as text because i don’t let my email client render html, for security reasons. the message is usually flagged, and if i want to allow it to render the html, i click on a button and it renders all of the non-executable, local bits of the html it can find, and if it has left anything else out (like scripts, calls to external web sites, images, and that sort of thing), i get the opportunity to click yet another button to get the full effect (hint: i very rarely click the first button and i have a policy of NEVER clicking the second button. if i want to see it that bad, i’ll usually go to my browser instead of my email client).

when i looked at the source of the message (as text only), i found that it had a malformed html section which didn’t trigger the first flag. in the html section, it actually had my first and last name, instead of “%%FIRST%% %%LAST%%”

the message said that they had noticed that i had a negative balance, and since it was only $0.30 – which was listed as “$%%NEG. BAL. AMOUNT%%” in the text version of the message – the account had been brought to balance, as their way of saying “thanks for using paypal”…

“cool,” i thought. “they have finally seen the light, and have taken steps to resolve a very, very frustrated customer”…

WRONG!!

when i logged into my paypal account, there was the big, red -$0.30 at the top of my account.

furthermore, when messages come from paypal, they have specific IP addresses referenced in their message headers, which this message did not have. this message referenced IP addresses which are associated with uu.net – a NOTORIOUS, OLD SCHOOL source of spam.

what i read in this situation is the following: some spammer has access to my paypal account.

what i’m supposed to do (according to paypal) is report it to their spam control department. unfortunately i know, from past reports to paypal’s spam control department, that they won’t accept reports from me, and even if they did, they won’t do anything to solve the problem.

now i REALLY want to cancel my paypal account… 😐

frustration, hybrid elephant, paypal sucks, rants

this is definitely NOT the way to start the week…

2 Comments

hybrid elephant had $0.00 in its paypal account (which is normal, i HATE paypal, and you’ll see why in a minute).

on 10th february, 2011, after someone made a $22.00 payment for something that they decided they didn’t want, i refunded $22.00 to that person, and had a $0.00 balance when i was finished. i consider this to be normal.

on 4th september, 2011 (the last time i had to refund any money), i had $0.00 balance, a person made a payment of $33.00, i refunded $33.00, and had a $0.00 balance when i finished. it was a nice, normal transaction.

today, i had a $0.00 balance, a person ordered $7.00 but didn’t include the extra $30.00 for shipping (they’re located outside the US), and so i refunded their $7.00 order… but now i have a -$0.30 balance: NOT a “nice, normal” transaction at all… but that’s not the part that makes it really bizarre.

i called them up, to find out what’s their problem. after 45 minutes of wangling around with an automated anti-service drone that wouldn’t let me talk to a real person and only wanted to give me my account details, i finally got a real person, who put me on hold for another 15 minutes while he got a “specialist” to help me.

the “specialist” told me that when a person’s money is refunded, there is a transaction fee of $0.30, and if i had never had to pay it in the past, that i was “lucky”. she said if she put my account on hold while they “investigated” it, that there is a good possibility that i will owe substantially more than $0.30, for previous refunded transactions that haven’t been charged the $0.30 transaction fee.

the only options i have are NOT paying the fee, and having my account put on hold, cancelling the account all together, or biting the bullet and paying the $0.30 transaction fee (which i have NEVER had to pay in the past).

if she had said that they didn’t charge a transaction fee for refunded transactions in the past, but that, as of some recent date, they decided to add a transaction fee for refunded transactions, i would very likely sigh and pay the $0.30, but because of the fact that she said they had ALWAYS charged a transaction fee for refunded transactions, i am livid.

i have been a paypal member for 7 years, and 7 years worth of $0.30 “forgotten” transaction fees, regardless of how few of them there have been, could potentially add up to substantially more than i am willing to pay, and my only other option is to close down the hybrid elephant paypal account and move to a “cash only” plan which wouldn’t be anything close to satisfactory for anyone.

at this point, i might as well just shut down the entire business. 😛