Just saw a news report about someone exploding a bomb in front of PayPal HQ. Now, I’ve seen several posts recently criticizing PayPal (one even refers to it as “Satan”), but are they really that bad? I’ve just set up an account on eBay, but haven’t bought anything yet, so I’d appreciate any input the Teeming Millions can provide, along with cites if possible.
A link in case anyone is interested. Other than that, I am no help.
PayPal by and large works fine for 99% of people.
But in the 1% of cases where they screw up, it’s completely impossible to get anything fixed, and money disappears into thin air.
Personally, I’ve never had a problem with them.
I would concur with friedo, never had any problem with Paypal.
I’ve never had a problem but my girlfriend sold on eBay last summer and they did some stupid stuff. They charged her twice for shipping on an item, then told her it would take at least 30 days to rectify the mistake after she filed the complaint. It was $8.50 and it probably would’ve taken a minute or two to fix. This was not a huge problem, but you can see how it could’ve been, for someone who uses it on larger scale items, or a lot more often.
I have a feeling a very small chunk of that 15% services fee is devoted to customer service. That is basically what’s wrong with paypal. When it runs, it’s perfect, but when it breaks, it’s stupid.
I bought something rather expensive in an eBay auction (a Motorola Razr cellphone) where the seller, previously with a spotless and sterling feedback rating, disappeared after 2-3 weeks of no email replies, leaving me and at least 10 other bidders on similar cell phones in the lurch. Probably a case of an ID hijacked by a scammer.
I reported it to eBay (who owns and runs PayPal now), and within 3 days the seller’s account was locked. Two days later my PayPal funds were refunded under the “Buyer Protection” policy.
So my only potential bad experience with eBay/PayPal (after using both services since 1998) turned out to be nothing but positive.
I hate Paypal with a passion, although it’s probably dated now. Their business practices (pre-Ebay) were infamously bad: they could lock your account for no particular reason, seize assets for no particular reason, and they had the ethics of a two-year-old. In particular, I used them a couple times to make credit card payments to folks that wouldn’t take other forms of payment, and in both cases they asked if I wanted to create a PayPal account and tie my credit card to it: I said “no,” they did it anyway, wouldn’t undo it when I asked them to, and even once tried to charge a fee to my card for running the account I asked them not to make.
They’re almost certainly better now, as part of EBay, but I won’t do business with them again, ever.
But to answer the OP, no, their business practices aren’t so bad that they deserved to be bombed.
I have made hundreds of transactions through PayPal, mostly as a seller, with no problems.
I have not had a problem but don’t trust them since they started requesting a bank acount number, which I will not give them. I have also only gave them a CC# that I set the limit on and I can change it at any time. Right now all they can take is about $2.50 if they tried. If I need to use it I will log into my CC site and raise that limit to cover the expense. Which works for buyers, for the few times I sold items, they have always been low cost stuff and I just hang onto the credit a bit till I use it.
I’ve used it a bunch, no problems here.
Same here. No complaints.
Pretty much. I sold on eBay and never had problems, but as has been stated, if you had problems, you were SOL. Sites that collected funds by PayPal and were determined to not meet PayPal’s requirements were closed, and funds held for minimum of 180 days for “investigation”. Many funds were never delivered, or required a huge amount of hassle to get done. Many suspicions were leveled that accounts with large PayPal balances were targeted, so the wisdom was to withdraw money out of PayPal ASAP. Even in those cases, they would reverse transactions, lock accounts, and generally seize funds with no reasons. When they did so, there was no appeals or complaint process. Several “PayPal employees” (who knows if that’s what they really were) appeared on the forums. One said that pretty much they were being trained to give any excuse in so long as PayPal kept the money.
Nowadays, PayPal has been bought out and largely changed its act. The people who were screwed over naturally still hate it. There are still some horror stories, and ultimately PayPal reserves the right to tell customers to screw off and not to serve them. Sadly, because of a lack of competition, this really hurts some online sellers; if you’re accused of not delivering, as a seller, you have little recourse than to pay the item. PayPal doesn’t seem to accept tracking in some cases. Really no different than dealing with a huge bank or credit card company… just that the eBay/PayPal connection is so tight, it’s hard for people who don’t want to use it.
I’ve personaly never had a problem with them. My freind who manages ebay business’s has and was able to resolve them. It is a very time consuming process and they really don’t have any simpathy for you. More then a couple times she has had thousands of dollars of hers locked away while they take their time trying to resolve the issue. I can deffinatly see how they can piss people off. That said she has always gotten her money issues with them resolved eventualy and doesn’t see dealing with paypal as risky just a major anoyance when the screw up.
So no not really bad enough to go bombing them in my opinion.
Moved to IMHO.
-xash
General Questions Moderator
Well, it could be an employee/former employee, too. PayPal has a big office here, and they are notoriously horrid to work for.
Paypal problems come from people not reading their massive terms of service.
First of all paypal isn’t a bank but people use it like one.
There are many ways to fund payments people don’t get this.
Let’s say you buy and sell with paypal. You sell and have $100.00 in your paypal account. You buy something with paypal and use your credit card to fund Paypal. You buy it for $125.00 Then the transaction goes south.
What Paypal does is use your $100.00 FIRST then it uses the credit card to charge the additonal $25. So now you file a dispute and Paypal isn’t helpful so you chargeback the credit card. Well you only get $25.00
People don’t realize this. Now they are out $100.00
You can accumulate large sums of money by selling, in your paypal account, but you can only removed so much money per day. A smart seller sweeps money out of their paypal account and into their bank account. A smart seller also gets with his bank and sets it up so that account can’t do any electronic transfers unless SPECIFICALLY authorized. Not all banks will do this.
To buy online with anything but a credit card or a fully funded credit card Paypal transaction is simply foolish. But people don’t realize this.
Everyday in my job I deal with people who can’t understand that their DEBIT card isn’t a credit card regarless of the VISA logo on it.
Another example of how Paypal fails is this. Suppose you buy something for $100.00 and you don’t fund your transaction with a credit card. Remember a debit card ISN’T a credit card in this case. The seller is a crook you complain and Paypal agrees so they reverse the carge. BUT the seller has done a sweep of his account and only has $3.00 in his account. All Paypal will give you back is $3.00. Of course Paypal freezes the seller’s money if that seller puts any more money into it Paypal will give it to you. But face it the seller’s not stupid and you’re most likely not the only one ripped off. So there may be A LONG line of people to get refunds and your probably at the end of it, should the seller put any more money in it.
It also works both ways. Paypal only guarantees to an address that is confirmed by them. So you sell something for $100.00. The buyer says, can you send it to my work address. But it is his home address which is confirmed. Then the buyer puts in a claim with Paypal. You shipped to an unconfirmed address, you the seller lose in this case.
Yet another example, Paypal requires proof of delivery. So if you just mail and don’t have a mailing receipt, (These are free IF you print them from your computer, but the post office charges if you have them do it)you the seller lose if the buyer files a complaint.
BUT suppose you don’t do this, and the buyer files a complaint. You, the seller, didn’t buy the mailing confirmation and don’t want to lose. You, the seller, simply send the buyer a rock get the receipt and now you have PROOF that you mailed. Remember Paypal only require mailing PROOF not proof the actual item was mailed.
Paypal is an internet company NOT A BANK. Thus it doesn’t have to deal with customers as a bank. So their customer service is almost exclusively via email. As most of us who deal with email know, people often don’t describe situations clearly.
With billions of transactions Paypal overall is safe, but if you learn one thing by reading my post learn this.
NEVER buy anything anywhere unless you use a CREDIT CARD or Paypal FUNDED CREDIT CARD TRANSACTION. It is foolish to not use a credit card. Because even if Paypal doesn’t help you, your credit card company will.
How much did she sell for? I’m thinking about putting mine on the market too.
My husband had a similar issue recently with a disappearing seller. My husband filed a complaint, then agreed to retract it when the seller contacted him after the complaint had been filed and said he’d send the item (my husband’s too nice when it comes to this stuff). When the seller disappeared again PayPal reopened the complaint even though they’re not supposed to do that. He found their customer service to be excellent and felt they really went the extra step for him. I also use PayPal quite often and have not had any problems to date. It was a tiny bit of a hassle to get the restrictions taken off my account after my credit card number was stolen (not because of PayPal) but that’s certainly to be expected.