Why I hate PayPal (why PayPal Sucks)
I've disliked PayPal for quite some time now, but today they really bit it. Extra hard.
Withdraw Money from PayPal - Don't Mess Up!
The other day I closed an account of mine that was the default account in PayPal. Then I went to withdraw some money. It, of course, went to my default account which doesn't exist anymore. I sent in a support request about trying to cancel the transfer which got the great response "withdrawals cannot be canceled". So, now what? Does my money just disappear? No response from PayPal.
Send money with PayPal - Just Kidding!
My wife needed to send some money. So she signed up for PayPal and added a credit card. She then went through the process to send the money and right as the last step in the process was submitted the site said "sorry, you need to be verified before we can process this". If it were going to block the transfer why not block it at the beginning? So now it wants her to do a "credit card" verification process before she can use it which will take about a month for our credit card statement to actually arrive. So, if you want to send money, be sure to sign up months before you actually need to do it.
Fortunately, I've had my paypal accounts for a long time and have been verified in various ways over the years. Mailing things to my house, small deposits to bank accounts or credit charges, etc. PayPal had me verified to a level of "three" (whatever that means). This should mean that when I go to use PayPal to, you know, send money, I should be able to do it. Of course, I forgot my password so I had to go through the password re-request process. After requesting the password I was finally able to send the money for an apartment here in Buenos Aires which is what we really needed to do. A little while later I got an email saying my account had been suspended. That then marked all of my transactions as suspect, reversed the withdrawal to the bank account that had been closed (blessing in disguise, that was), and now my landlord hates me.
PayPal Suckage Overview
The trick of course is that while PayPal sucks, it's the best thing out there. To recap the suckiness in short form:
- If they are going to block payments the UI should stop you from payments before you complete the form
- The time you most need a password change is when you need to use your account. So the "security question" process needs to be robust enough that they can trust it immediately rather than sending accounts with recent password changes to the "suspect" bin
And of course I'm not the only one that feels this way. My favorite example is stan the paypal hater. I never understood your hatred before, Stan, but I sooo do now.
Don't Dump on your Partners and then Expect them To Help
And finally from the corporate strategy that made Microsoft and RIAA loved by so many I just got an email from PayPal requesting that I help them by updating any of their logos that I may use on my sites to the new PayPal logo. Yeah, I'll be sure to cooperate on that right away. Except that PayPal's status as a partner of mine just got placed in a "Limited" status.
Comments
I feel your pain... Our
I feel your pain... Our business gets screwed pretty regularly. Personally, I haven't had a whole lot of trouble as a user, but as a developer it's a major headache. They're relying on folks like me to integrate their system w/ shopping carts so they can get more customers. However, their sandbox system is a shambles, requires all the same account authentication (no simple create me a business account link... you actually have to go through the entire process, down to giving them your SSN or a dummy SSN buried in the bowels of their forums), and logs you out for inactivity just like the customer site. Checking out through the sandbox is extremely slow, too... so a few minor updates with testing took me almost an entire work day.
I understand now why they give out the developers' bounty, but I'm beginning to feel it's not enough...
Hey now. I feel your pain. I
Hey now. I feel your pain. I am so pissed. Here's one thing amonst many. They offer us diferent account options. How ever when you say that your personal account dosen't allow credit card payments Ebay will cancel the aunction and tell you that you have to accept all pay pal options. So why don't those F'rrs just say there is one option....There's
rot in hell paypal
Having big problems with paypal at the moment.
Even though i have two sources of funding that are in credit i am unable to complete transactions. There system forces me to pay via echeque. I have spoken to paypal, emailed them as well to express my anger.They say that there security system "randomly" selects transactions it views as suspicious.
If this is so Randon why the hell has it happen twice in one month??? They also say that my card issuer(s) are blocking the transactions. Ive spoken to both of my founding banks and they say that they are not blocking anything.
got fed up, so decided to close my paypal account. guess what, cant do that either as according to paypal there are transaction outstanding. Ive payed for the transactions via postal order because it was blocking my paypal payment in the first place and i didn`t want to write another f@c:ing echeuque.
Paypal truly sucks and gags
Paypal Removes your Constitutional Rights
PAYPAL is unconstitutional. Not only do the limit or remove your right to free speech and other protections under the law, but they refuse to honor the second amendment.
You can only buy Guns and Ammunition via PAYPAL from Authorized Pre Approved Sellers.
Catch is, They will not Authorize or Pre-Approve anyone to sell these things.
They circumvent the law by claiming it is allowed when approved, but never approve anyone.
PAYPAL has a new service allowing you to create one time use credit card numbers. I think I will buy some ammo online using a credit card number created from them, and see if I get suspended, or the transaction nullified. He he he.
interesting concept of constitutional
I don't think the second ammendment said it had to be easy to bear those arms, just that the right exists...
I'm also curious how they limit "free speech" and what "other protections under the law" they are removing you from.
Paypal stinks!
Here's something from a developer's point of view:
I'm a professional web developer (since 1995). I've implemented hundreds of payment gateway solutions, using technologies ranging from PHP, ASP to J2EE and custom 3rd party products. I have NEVER encountered a system as unreliable, slow, and hideous when it comes to user guidance, as PayPal. The sandbox is by now so slow that I only work on weekends with it. This is old news to Paypal. It's been like this for years. Their own dev forum is full of complaints. My theory is that they encourage live system testing - this way they get a cut of the 'test' money. I acutally do this, too. It is still cheaper than waiting if you're hourly rate is high enough.
The PayPal interface on a regular basis presents me with missing images or classics like: "Our search feature isn't working. Please try again later." or JS errors "error on page" in the browser info bar. Not very reassuring to the users considering you('re supposed to) trust this system with your (and your client's) money.
Trying to set up online payments systems using the PayPal account tabs is - at best of times- tideous, often illogical and always extremenly time-consuming. Even on the production system. Why can't they implement a JS menu that allows access to all functions from all pages? Such functionality is common place in almost any other (payment) system. And it's not that they don't use JS because of X-browser compatibility issues. JS is every where (not always working, but it's there). If you have to wait minutes for a page to load it is extremely annoying if you know beforehand that you don't even want the content of that page apart from the link that is on it to get your where you need to go. What you can get from (almost) every page on PayPal however is a link to download PayPal logos to put on your site which, personally, I wouldn't print on my toilet paper!
Then there is the missing attention to detail. The email-address that is passed to the window from within the sandbox is simply ignored. This has been reported many time by many people, myself included; - Not changed/fixed for at least 14 month.
Or if you miss writing down the cryptic passwords that get issued automatically upon creating a sand-box account you're screwed, too, as there is no way to retrieve them at a later stage. The "hints" it's requesting can't work because you've never actually being promted to enter one. (yet you're promted when you try to receive the password) The issued fake-card numbers return a "no matching account" message. Bear in mind that all these hurdles are set up in a DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT to which you only gain access when logged in in the first place.
Even the simplest of all things, the lenght of input fields are not set up according to their proposed content. Setting up IPN for example. This input field is about ~200px long, not long enough to hold a fully qualified URL. Made a typo? Good luck in finding. You'll need to click the input-field and drag the cursor to the right to see the end. You can never actually see the entire content at once. I mean, how hard is it to do stuff like this? That takes me about 15 secs! Mediocre, annoying, lame, lazy and simply unacceptable! Is there any QA management at PayPal I wonder?
But there are also (even) more serious issues with PayPal. Example VAT settings: It might be common practise in the US to present prices excluding VAT on web-sites and add VAT at the check-out - I honestly don't know. I DO know however that this is NOT common practise in Europe or e.g. Australia. I have changed approx. 8 systems to display different prices on their site than what they post to PayPal to counter balance this. A simple tickbox "passed prices include VAT" in the PayPal interface would save thousands of users and developers a lot of hassle. And this can hardly be news to PayPal...
I could go on like this for a very (veeery!) long time, but I have none (time, that is). It's Saturday and I need to launch a site on Monday. I only used this to blow off some steam while waiting for the PayPal sandbox (again). And no, I doubt this will make a difference. Sad, but true :(
Listen to me well
While I'm sure PayPal is just fine for occasionally sending money or if you're selling "here and there" on Ebay and the cost of the transactions is very low this a warning; do not use them as your "bank" and to not use them for a regular merchant account for credit card or check procession.
If you are a legitimate business owner doing any type of volume it's not IF you'll have a chargeback it's WHEN.
Now, simply having a chargeback is not the issue. They reverse the funds and life goes on. However, they will blackmail you if you choose to fight the chargeback.
This just happened to me. A customer filed for a chargeback for which he was not due a refund. I called PayPal and they emailed me a bunch of paperwork. I filed it out, faxed it back.
Then BOOM - account limited! Now - I'm not a clown - I'm very well aware of PayPal's reputation so I always made daily bank transfers out of my account and made sure I kept next to nothing in my PayPal account (BEST advice you'll ever get by the way - do NOT keep any type of large balance in our account!!!)
So although my account was limited they were only holding a few hundred. However, my ability to process transactions was gone. I called to find out the scoop and I won't bore you with a 30 minute conversation; the bottom line was if I "chose" not to dispute the chargeback my account would return to normal.
If, however, I decided to continue with the complaint to fight the chargebacks they would limit my account "for my protection pending their investigation" - which of course, can take up to 90 days.
So I simply bit the bullet, did not dispute the chargeback and they returned my account while on the phone.
Nice tactic - nice way for paypal to blackmail you into not fighting chargebacks.
Again, I was at least diligent and didn't have a bunch of money tied up. I will, however give Paypal credit due; they answered the phone quickly, were very courteous and helpful and did indeed restore my account.
thank you paypal
i hate paypal as i believe it to be the worst ,unfair ,idiotic ,badly made ,poorly monitored site on the internet all of this is acceptable as it is owned by ebay. i have just had £31 .oo refunded from my account to a thieving bastard in australia ,why because he claims he has not recived the goods the cheapskate wanted the item sent the cheapest way which is surface mail and cannot be signed for. even so i had a proof of postage from my local post office dated and stamped .i have had a negative and been forced to give a full refund for my troubles . the thank you paypal is now i can rob other sellers by having goods sent normal post with no signing ,use paypal to pay them then put in a claim for goods not recieved so as paypal always err on the buyers side simple.also why should the seller have to use paypal then deduct 5% charge from your postage and selling price .lets hope richard branson decides to set up another ebay type site
Paypal is unfair to sellers! They are greedy thieves!
As a seller, if you ship Internationally through the Postal service, even Priority Mail, all the buyer has to say is that they never received the item and Paypal will extort the funds out of the seller's account and give the money back to the buyer. Even if all the proof is shown to Paypal that the the item was shipped out, they will still screw the seller. Now you are out your item, all the fees etc. The sad thing about it is Paypal offers Priority Mail International as a shipping option to sellers through Paypal shipping, yet sellers are not protected if they ship using this method. According to Paypal's rules, insurance is the sellers responsibilaty & not the buyers. If a seller offers a buyer insurance and the buyer does not purchase it and the buyer claims they didn't receive the item or it gets damaged, PayPal will always side with the buyer and reverse the funds back to them from the seller's account. Paypal wants every seller to insure because they also make approx 3 to 4% on all the shipping fees. The more money it costs the seller to ship, the more money Paypal makes. So sad they have become so evil and greedy! After January 15th 2009, every Ebay seller should get rid of Paypal and open a merchant credit card account since sellers are no longer allowed to accept checks and money orders. Paypal and Ebay want total control of all the funds, every dollar they can make. All Ebay sellers should get rid of PayPal. Let's see them become an unecessary evil!
I agree~~~~ PayPal sucks!!
I agree~~~~
PayPal sucks!!
yeah paypal sucks
yeah some wanker got a nice pre-loved guitar signed by two aussie icons and now pp are trying to rip me for 2k i simply dont have , they come knocking at my door , i hope they are wearing a bullet proof vest..
get my drift..
Oh It sucks ,<<< IT REALLY REALLY REALLY SUCKS>>>
as a ebay seller, you can easily (no joke, no exageration - real easy) ended up in loosing your merchandize AND money through paypal. That happened to me twice.
Because a buyer can raise a dispute, claim, or charge back through paypal anytime, no evidence or document of anykind is required, all he has to do is raise his hand !!!!. Once that's initiated, paypal will immediately lockup your money in your paypal account, if you don't have any they'll withdraw that from your bank account. And if you already have dispatched your merchandize - well GOOD LUCK !!! So now you have your merchandize already dispatched to your customer, and the money for that merchandize locked up by paypal. Of course what follows is that long lengthy investigation bla bla bla ..... .
And you'll think that, well you've honestly dispatched your merchandize and you can prove that the customer has received it, so you should be pretty save that you'll get your money back from paypal eventually - WRONG !!!!! Paypal CAN rule in buyer's favour, and THEN it's up to YOU to negotiate with the buyer for the return of the merchandize !!!!!
Unbelievable - it's true and it happened. I'm over 50 years old, and in my entire life, I would never believe that one can loose a merchandize AND the money for it. It happened to me 3 times, one was an experience doing business in China, twice was through PAYPAL.
Now I've stopped selling in ebay and using paypal. Go to hell - PAYPAL.
Paypal sucks big time
They have imposed a limitation on one of my paypal accounts just because it has a word "Foundation" or "Fund" in it,
requiring us to sent them a handful of documents (which is even impossible to get, not to mention spending our time - like who are they anyway?) - this account now also have my personal credit card assigned on it which I can't use anymore because of the limitation. WTF? FU PP!
count me in, paypal froze my
count me in, paypal froze my received money, so i can't use it, and buy new stuff to sell, my bussiness is down. paypal is a thief. i wonder why can't anyone sue it to it's knees.
ebay and paypal can rot in hell
i have been a member of ebay and paypal since 2002. I sell a few computer parts and car stuff from time to time on ebay. mostly on forums. tonight i sell a apple isight for $109. shipped. i get a email stating that they are going to hold the payment for 21 days. i have sold 51 items with 100% feedback on ebay and 151 transactions on paypal. I have a paypal debit card as well as back up funding from my checking account. i called them up and they state that the poilicy is listed on ebay before i submit the ad. i never saw it. i quickly deleted the other items i was selling. paypal has made a decent amount of money from me over the years and this is the way i am repaid? i hate to say it but paypal was much better before ebay bought them.
Sarah vs. PayPal - My (Ongoing) Small Claims Lawsuit with PayPal
Hi, I have filed a small claims case against PayPal - the first court hearing was yesterday, November 24th. They did not appear but filed a motion to dismiss and sent a copy of the user agreement - an adjournment was given and the next court date hearing is set on January 6th. I think they have to be there then.
I've created a website documenting the case. Please help me to spread the word about the website!! :)
I've decided to make this website into a blog documenting my problems with PayPal rather than just this one case.
www.sarahvspaypal.com
paypal and the word hate
i hate paypal.
why?
it takes weeks to get PAIDDDDD.
i've said my peice.
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