PayPal or PaySucks? Why people hate PayPal?

Some people worship this payment system, the others hate it. Somebody cannot imagine his or her life without this payment processor and another person curse the day he/she opened its website. This year this payment gateway has celebrated its 10th anniversary. And the name of it is PayPal. All of us read and heard about the successes of this system however the negative information usually remains offscreen. So, why did society polarize? What are the reasons? And why does PayPal sucks???

To find the answers to these questions we go to forums where people are not restricted to speak their mind, where all the truth is bare and all the secrets come out. Forums are the sacred places where people tell everything without fear to be punished, the places where people become wiser… We decided to go to that sacred place and to find why people damn PayPal and its parent company eBay.

We went to Google page and have typed “PayPal sucks.” The search engine has immediately found several thousands of the similar pages, namely 214,000. The number impresses, huh? Just for comparison we have entered the same query for e-gold and the system has found 29,900 pages, 7 times less! For Moneybookers - 14,100 results, AlertPay - 7,940 results, e-bullion - 2,650 results, LibertyReserve - 1,600 results… As we see PayPal is a real leader. So, we decided to find the most common reasons that made people think so and to refuse this payment processor.

The most common reason why people put PayPal to the blacklist is the chargeback system. According to the PayPal Buyer Protection Policy the customers may file a buyer complaint within 45 days if they did not receive an item or if the item they purchased was significantly not as described. If the buyer used a credit card, they might get a refund via chargeback from their credit card company. Actually not a bad option at all if used properly… However, very often it is used in dark purposes, hence the victims appear. Here is just one of the numerous stories:

I sell on both ebay and Gunbroker.com. I sold an item to a person who lived in Germany. He wrote in his notes on the Paypal payment that he wanted the item shipped to his friend in the US. He wrote the address in the notes of his payment. I sent his item to him USPS priority mail with tracking as I always do, a week later my tracking number confirmed receipt of the package.

3 weeks later he files a complaint with paypal and they freeze my money saying that they must investigate his claim of non reciept. Paypal asked me to send them a tracking number (Which they have access to already if you use Paypal to ship your packages) proving that I sent him the item and he recieved it. Two weeks later (after having my money on hold the whole time),Paypal gives this guy back his payment in full leaving me without the product or the payment.

When I call to complain and ask why they sent his money to him after I gave them the Tracking number showing he recieved it, they said because the item was not shipped to a address Confirmed with paypal he was eligible for a refund. Even though this guy asked in his payment "Please ship item to this address, not this address" I should have not done what the customer asked me to, and shipped to his confirmed address.

I asked the Paypal representive if he could see where the guy told me in the notes to ship the product, He said "yes he could and it is obvious that the guy is commiting fruad, I guess you learned a valuable lesson, Don't ship to an address that is not confirmed with paypal" In any case I lost the money and the product, and because of paypals policies this guy ripped me off legally.

And there are hundreds of the similar ones. As we wee the reps of PayPal know about this problem however we do nothing to solve it. Very embarrassing situation indeed, which makes people think hard before making any decision. Every day we learn about new and new frauds however PayPal doesn’t care for them and continue its policy. And chargeback option which was intended to stop fraud became a real gold-mine for fraudsters.

What do we do if something wrong with your account? Surely we contact customer support service. Any good and self-respecting company has some live customer support. We failed to find any mentioning of the customer support on the home page and went to the section “Help” where we found the following:

Chat with Sarah
Sarah, your PayPal virtual help assistant, is available to chat with you at any time. Start your chat
Help by Email

Our Customer Service team is specially trained to address all account inquiries. Send us an email and we will reply promptly. Contact Customer Service
Help by Phone

If you have an issue of immediate concern and cannot find your answer in the Help Center, call our Service Center

Nice you may say BUT! Look here:

Paypal sucks so bad. No customer service to speak of. Their system is broken.. won’t let me finish resolution and email inqueries to them come back with form letters saying to complete the process. IT’S BROKEN!!! Duh!!!

Any HUMANS working at Paypal anymore? The vagaries of monopolies!!!!

Round the clock support is not available any time they say. And it is natural as Sarah cannot work 24 hours a day. Unless she is a robot. Phone is another problem as it is almost impossible to reach the customer support by phone. Choose e-mails you may say. Usually e-mails are the best form and the majority use it. Though again complains:

The automaited messages you receive for a reply are worthless, because they do not answer any of the question (s) in the email you sent to them.

May be it’s time to start thinking of your customers? And the best way is to start with customer support service. Otherwise, again sucks!

By the way we had some problems with opening Help page. We tried to open it on 7 and only on 2 of them we succeeded.

Another feature of PayPal that pisses everybody off is a passion for investigation due to which the system blocks accounts and freezes the funds. Lots of systems block the accounts when suspect them however PayPal makes it with the alarming frequency. Actually it happens due to the use of PayPal as a main settlement option on eBay, the parent company of PayPal.

Paypal has limited my account and frozen my $600 because they "linked" me to a suspended account. Even though I had nothing to do with this account, my money is stuck for at least 6 months. The customer service people hand me off to the next department and finally direct me to sending email to appeals@paypal.com. I followed instructions but my response was an instant automated form email. Warning! Warning! They will not direct you to the policies you've violated and will not even respond to your appeal. They may go bankrupt at any time, so even if you're not having problems with paypal, GET OUT NOW!!! Erase all personal information and close your account. They are not responsible for your money nor do they care. This is not a legit buisness. BOYCOT!!! and Tell everyone you know to do the same. Keep ecommerce pure by not including paypal.

And there are hundreds of such letters. There is no need to list them all. Though we can hardly do this, the number is too great. PayPal doesn’t want to investigate, its principle is very simple: to lock the account for 6 months. May be PayPal thinks that it is the best way to fight against the scammers? However, it is known that usually not fraudsters but ordinary people suffer from such measures. Everyday we hear new and new complaints, and no reaction of PayPal management. May be it’s high time to stop such restrictions? People want to be free and not bound. The fear of being blocked doesn’t let them fee free.

Especially since the aggressive policy of eBay that thrusts the use of PayPal on eBay users. Everybody knows what happened in Australia. Evidently, eBay decided to try this PayPal-only policy there because Australians are not as spoilt as the Americans who would probably to cry about the violation of their rights. However, the Australians “rebelled” against such policy.

Also, looking trough the posts on the forums we found that lots of people complain about week security system of PayPal and eBay. Lots of them say that eBay and PayPal allow fraud and that their Buyer and Seller protection is worthless. However, today it became known that eBay has improved its protection policy. Who knows may be it will help somehow. Though we don’t think so. In order to remove all those complaints PayPal should completely reconsider its policies and principles. It’s too imperfect and old to comply with the modern requirements. And it seems that not only we think so.

The recent acquisition of eBay and new payment options may say for this idea. So, may be in very close future we will be another eBay, without PayPal.

And what PayPal? As we have already said they need to change everything. Without eBay PayPal is nothing, nobody will use it. The increasing number of posts blaming PayPal in their miseries leaves no chances to PayPal become a leader on the e-payment market. It became an obedient tool in the hands of scammers, fraudsters and a scourge of common people that can do nothing but to join those who warn us that PayPal Sucks.

Time is merciless and it doesn’t forgive, so PayPal should hurry up before becoming PaySucks forever.

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