I’m sure there are many such reasons. But two are at the front of my mind right now.
Why can I do NOTHING on the fucking site without having to click through some page that is trying to get me to do something I don’t want to do? (Like put my money in a Paypal investment account, or sign up for a credit card, or whatever.) They view EVERY fucking visit to the site as an opportunity to sell me something. Paypal is NOT a free service, so they don’t need to adhere to the time-honored Internet rule of “This Is Free So You Have To Put Up With Some Bullshit.” I don’t want to put up with bullshit when you are both charging fees and earning investment income off balances that users maintain.
Let me make this one thing clear to you, Mr. Paypal: I DO NOT WANT TO USE MY CHECKING ACCOUNT TO MAKE PURCHASES. PLEASE STOP ASKING ME TO DO THAT AND TRYING TO DISSUADE ME FROM USING MY CREDIT CARD. God damn it. I know you want to save a few nickles and avoid credit card fees. I don’t care what you want. You get to sit on my money and earn investment income on it. I don’t feel bad for you. You are a bunch of pricks. Leave me alone.
One really amusing, or, some might say, INCREDIBLY FUCKING IRRITATING, thing about my second point is Paypal’s ludicrous attempt to persuade me that it is better to use my checking account. Their reasons are not reasons at all. In essence, when I try to use my credit card, Paypal says: “Are you sure? Did you know that if you use your checking account EVERYTHING WILL WORK EXACTLY THE SAME WAY AND THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO BENEFIT TO DOING SO, EXCEPT THAT IT SAVES US SOME MONEY?” They used to have a deal where if you used your checking account, you were entered into some raffle or something. I respected that. That might even be enough to get me to use my checking account. But, in the absence of any advantage, I would much rather use my cash-back credit card, which I pay in full every month anyway.
In sum, Paypal: STOP HASSLING ME with your incessant attempts to get me to change the way I want to do things. It’s such an irritating ordeal clicking through all the bullshit you put between me and and my goal.
Yes, the ever-present ads are annoying. Given that PayPal is not all that easy to navigate around, the ads just make it that much harder. (Partly because they want you to read the ad, so they make the button to click on to gat past it less obvious than it should be).
If the guy driving the Brinks truck was constantly trying to trip me with clown shoes while performing his otherwise valuable service, then, yes, I would bitch about his shoes.
I use Paypal, so I obviously believe it serves a valuable function, and that its benefits outweight its inconveniences. That, however, does not mean that I have to give it a free pass as to its annoying characteristics.
Lame pitting, my ass. I just used paypal after an ebay auction and I had the same reaction. Crappy interface, impossible to find out the information you really want to know (e.g. what credit card do I currently have linked), and they keep bugging you to become verified or some such happy horseshit which is utterly valueless to someone who just wants to occasionally pay for something. Paypal is one of those institutions that will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
They keep trying to make me feel like a deviant for not giving up my checking account information. I don’t feel like giving it to anyone, thphthph As long as I can still use it, why should I care, I’m immune to shaming by a faceless corporation. Now I’m getting PayPal receipts for the organization I work for, and one of them came through labeled “Unconfirmed Account” (their derogatory code word meaning they haven’t succeeded in tricking you out of your checking account information yet). So I guess every time I pay my name goes out with that stigma on it too. So what, if everyone recognizes it for the scam it is, the label won’t be a stigma any more.
I don’t have so much of a problem with point #1, since I’ve never seen those ads. But I’ll agree whole heartedly with point #2. The advantage to me to using my credit card is three fold:
I can get the credit card company to handle the dispute if a dispute is necessary.
I get airmiles.
I manage my budget by putting almost everything on my credit card and paying it off at the end of the month. If it’s not on the card, I don’t know what I spent it on.
But PayPal wants very much for me to not have advantage #1 since they hateses the chargebacks, so in order to use my credit card, which would be my default choice of payment method, I have to enter the payment information, change the method of payment to my credit card, confirm that I want to use the credit card despite their lies about why it’s a bad idea, confirm the credit card details.
I tried to find out how I could unlink my bank account to my paypal account so that I could go back to one click funding from my credit card, but despite repeated attempts to get that question answered by customer service, all I could get was form letters on how to switch an individual transaction to credit card payment and stonewalling about deverifying my chequing account.
PayPal hates me. The one time I used them to pay for something, I never received delivery, so I reported it and asked for a refund. PayPal does not give refunds to people living in Thailand, only credits on future payments, or at least it was that way then, which was three years ago. I said to heck with that and simply had my credit-card company cancel the payment to them.
I’d have to look at my history, but I think I’ve been signed up with PayPal for more than 5 years…
And recently I had a bit of a sucker punch from them (my overall experience has been fine, no complaints in hundreds of transactions). A vendor sent me a PayPal invoice. This particular payment I wanted to be on a credit card for the consumer protection angle, 99.9% of all my other transactions are from an account.
Anyway, I hit “Pay This Invoice” or whatever the prompt was, expecting to be taken to the “How do you want to pay” screen, but BOOM! Right out of my account without so much as a prompt at all. Several hundred dollars. I had the funds to cover it, but dang it I wanted it to be on a CC. Luckily I called the vendor and explained (without telling them the reason I wanted to use the CC was I really didn’t trust them) and got the payment refunded so I could send it over regularly. Worked out fine, just a little more hassle than I needed.
And then UPS lost it, but that’s another mini-rant…
How much do you pay Paypal to use their service? Since for most buyers it is NOTHING, then their ads and such *are *what you pay to use. Annoying yes, but far less annoying than $5 per use.
I have paid Paypal about $12 in the last month. (I have accepted several payments for eBay sales.) Plus, they get the use of the money I receive while it sits in the account.
It’s not like I’m on some crusade against Internet advertising. Every time I go to my bank’s website, I see ads for various investment products. But they are just ads on the page, not pages I have to click through in order to get to where I want. With Paypal, I have to click through them. And when I try to handle a transaction a certain way with my bank, I am not subjected to a ridiculous “Are you sure?” whose sole purpose is to try to get me to change the structure of my transaction to a structure that is more beneficial to the bank. Paypal makes me do that.
It’s not about whether Paypal is entitled to try to make money. It’s about the interface to which it subjects me in that effort. Plenty of sites, some free, some not, manage not to annoy me in their efforts to promote themselves and their own interests. Paypal isn’t one of them.
The seller (receiver of funds) always gets stuck with the fees. Now that you’ve accepted a CC payment (if you hadn’t before) you’ll get stuck with a higher fee structure I think. I don’t keep up with the different account types since I have the “accept any type of payment and pay out the ass in fees” account, Premier I think it is. I’ve even brokered payments for buddies who didn’t want to take CC payments from guys who wanted to pay with CC (I would not recommend this if you don’t know the people).
It’s a racket, but it makes doing business online quick and easy. I’ve been annoyed at having to click theu the “Sign Up For PayPal VISA Now!” evey time, but not enough to pit it.
I have the same problem. I couldn’t even set up a new account because my credit card was already associated with another paypal account. So it looks like I need to either close my bank account or get a new credit card number in order to de-verify. :smack:
I m using paypal with http://www.fetchflow.com/Signup/PayPal and I am not hating it. I have no idea what happen with you that you are saying this but according to me, use fetchflow and forget everything.
As long as I can still use it, why should I care, I’m immune to shaming by a faceless corporation. Now I’m getting PayPal receipts for the organization I work for, and one of them came through labeled “Unconfirmed Account” (their derogatory code word meaning they haven’t succeeded in tricking you out of your checking account information yet). So I guess every time I pay my name goes out with that stigma on it too. So what, if everyone recognizes it for the scam it is, the label won’t be a stigma any more.