PayPal–I’ve Learned My Lesson

Posted in Making Money - 3 Comments »

I’ve learned a lesson sometime throughout the past 3 weeks. It was one of those lessons that just sucks–but it happens.

Here’s the story.

About 3 weeks ago I signed up for a PayPal business account. Before I only had 1 PayPal account, but now that I was incorporating my business and getting official–I felt the need to open up another account to keep my records straight. Also, I’d like to note that it is completely acceptable to have 1 personal and 1 business (or premier) account with PayPal.

I signed up and everything was going good. I was getting the business payments switched over to my business account. The only problem was, it was a new account–and I really didn’t have a quick way of withdrawing money. With my personal account, I have a debit card–meaning I can drop by any ATM and take money directly out of my PayPal account.

So, I transfered some money over to my personal account–where I would be able to withdraw it instantly.

A few days go by, and everything is good. Then, I get an e-mail from PayPal.

Dear Brad Jasper,

As part of our security measures, we regularly screen activity in the
PayPal system. We recently identified some unusual activity on your
account:<removed_for_spammers>

For your protection, we have limited access to your account until
additional security measures can be completed. We apologize for any
inconvenience this may cause.

Excellent.

To make an extremely long story short–I called PayPal at least 10 times, sent numerous faxes and e-mails–and finally, 2 weeks later, my account has been re-activated.

So what’s the lesson?

Don’t keep money in PayPal. This would have never happened with a real bank. I’ll still use PayPal–but I’ll never keep more than a small amount of money in my accounts.

(Speaking to PayPal now…)

I’ve never had a (major) problem with you before this PayPal. You’ve just turned a mildly happy customer of over 3/4 years into a customer who will gladly take his business elsewhere. I understand you need to protect your business. But you need to understand that I must protect mine. It shouldn’t take 2 weeks to get a customer’s account unfrozen. I should be able to call once and talk to somebody that can help me.

When I called for the first time, I asked if there was a way to talk to someone about exactly what happened–so I could explain everything. The guy told me no. I asked him if I was screwed. He said yes. I had nothing to hide. I provided you with plethora’s of information.

Credit cards. Bank accounts. Social security numbers. Tax ID numbers. Home addresses. School addresses. Home phone numbers. School phone numbers. Mobile phone numbers. Transaction descriptions. Credit card statements. Driving licenses. Military ID cards.

You would think that somewhere along the line, that would have been enough.

But then your support staff told me there was nothing else I could do besides wait for the “right department” to get back to me. There was no way I could speak with them over the phone. Multiple e-mails had bounced back. The most effective way to get a hold of the “right department” was via fax. In this day and age–that’s sad. And shitty customer service. Towards the end of the whole ordeal I stopped calling. I stopped e-mailing. I started faxing–because that got noticed.

I understand PayPal. I run websites for a living. I know how hard it can be living up to customers’ expectations. But here’s my hope.

I hope you’re run into the ground by a competitor. I know you have no serious threats right now–but give it time. You’ve been collecting interest off of too many people’s money for too long. I can’t wait for the day when I can say–I don’t have to use PayPal anymore, because there’s a better alternative.

Good luck. I hope you change PayPal, I really do.

I’m a little bitter, but I learned my lesson. :)

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