God I hate PayPal (1 Viewer)

[Rob Gillespie]

Rant on:

Despite making it VERY CLEAR on my auctions that I can't accept PayPal credit card payments, I got some bozo send me one tonight.

No problem, I thought. Just refuse the payment (AGAIN because they don't offer a way of automatically refusing them in the hopes that you'll get bored by the nagging to upgrade) and send them an email (i.e. open your eyes and read). So I click on Refuse and bang! I've successfully upgraded my account!

WTF?

You know, I'm pretty damn sure I clicked on Refuse, not Accept. I'm using Firebird so perhaps there was an issue there.

Either way, the site didn't confirm that's what I wanted to do and just upgraded me anyway. No are-you-sure prompts, no warning about what I was about to do. Say hello to fees for every incoming payment!

So I then go through the help pages looking for a way to downgrade the account. Nothing so obvious to be found. One link talking about downgrading more than once with another link that was supposed to bring up a contact form where I could request the downgrade. OK, let's click on this. Bang! Page not found. Click again - still Page not found.

OK PayPal, enough's enough. You suck, I'm outta here.

Account closed, funds withdrawn. What a total piece of crap they are.

Rant off.

(smile, I'm out of PayPal)

 

[brentl]

C'mon Rob It's so much more convenient, everybodies doin it. Paypal did you the honour of upgrading you seeing that you kept forgetting to yourself.

HE HE

Brent
"So you wanted a medium Cola"
"Yes, thank you"
"OK here you go, we upraded that to a large, you owe us 50 cents"
"Sorry I didn't ask for that!"
"Thank you, come again!"

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Exactly!

Not only did they give me a big coke but I now have to pay a surcharge fow whatever size drinks I have in the future!

Oops - I forgot! I closed the account! SOD OFF PAYPAL!

 

[John_Berger]

Oh, well. I've never had a problem with them. I've made over 100 transactions, both sending and receiving, and can't say that I've ever experienced a problem.

Am I in the minority on this?

 

[Craig S]

Yeah, I love PayPal. So they charge me for auction payments. It's worth it to avoid having to wait for checks & MOs, depositing them, and then waiting for checks to clear. The transaction fee is worth the hassle avoided.

That said, what they did to Rob wasn't right.

 

[MikeAlletto]

Paypal in its current state is pretty wrong. They are acting like a bank but don't provide its customers the protection a bank does. I'm waiting for the day that paypal closes up shop and all the money people have stored just disappears because its not insured by the gov't because they aren't a "bank" and don't have to play by bank rules.

 

[larry mac]

I won't bid on an auction unless they accept paypal, or are a big enough outfit to safely use a credit card.

I did have a frustating situation once though, before I had ever tried to sell on ebay and was only a buyer. I won an item from some Russian guy that had an eBay store. I failed to notice, and in fact wasn't even aware there was such a thing, the fact that he only accepted "confirmed" paypal accounts. So I was forced to become "confirmed", as he threatened to post negative feedback on me if I tried to back out.

I didn't like the idea of giving me checking accound info to paypal/eBay (eBay owns paypal). Of course, I would have had to later anyway when I started selling. Checks and money orders are BS. I want to pay immediately after the auction ends and get my item shipped the next day.

 

[Craig S]

And that's exactly why I don't leave any money in my PayPal account. It comes in - I transfer it to checking. I basically use them as a convenient, easy way to send & receive money. Using them to store money is, as you imply, not a good idea.

 

[John Thomas]

For some reason, I can't locate the fees section on Paypal. What's the costs for accepting payments through them by selling something in an auction on Ebay?

 

[alan halvorson]

John: For a Premier account, the fee is 2.9% of the amount plus either 30 or 35 cents. That's on all transactions, not just those for auctions. A Business account is slightly less.

Although this doesn't apply to you, Rob (maybe I'm wrong), but has anyone used the Western Union website to send money? You can send a money order up to $2,000 (first time user restricted to $999.99) and the buyer has to pay the fees (I'm not certain what the fee is for a money order. Bidpay, which sends money via Western Union money order, used to charge $5 per transaction). This method should satisfy the fee-hating among us, and gives the buyer about the same convenience of PAYPAL. As a buyer, though, I'd be pretty pissed having fees fobbed off on me and wouldn't bid on a auction for that reason.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

I've used Western Union in the past for international orders and it's worked OK. Of course it requires both the buyer and seller to go out to one of the agents outlets, but it's OK.

To be honest I only opened the PP account because I was selling my last bunch of LDs, including Titanic DTS and I wanted to for them to be open to non-UK buyers. Now that they're gone I've got no need to do that.

Most of the stuff I sell is small - CDs and DVDs. People can pay me by NoChex (a UK scheme similar to PayPal but that doesn't whack you with fees in the same way and that seems to have slightly better ethics), cheque, PO, bank transfer, cash. For cheques as small as I deal with I don't even bother waiting for clearance - and the buyers appreciate that (and I've never had a bounce in over 300 transactions).

I don't need PayPal and I certainly don't need the hassle it gives (gave) me. ALL of the higher-priced items I've sold have been paid for either by bank transfer or cheque and I object to paying a 60p transaction charge on a £5 payment.


I take the opposite view. I don't see why I should have to pay for the convience of the buyer using a credit card when there are free (or virtualy free) ways of getting the money to me).

 

[Charlie B. Ch.]

My buddy has his account "frozen" by Paypal apparently for no reason. About $3,000 is in his account. Please read this site - www.paypalsucks.org - before professing your love for Paypal.

 

[Vincent_S]

quote:
-------------------------------------------------------
And that's exactly why I don't leave any money in my PayPal account. It comes in - I transfer it to checking. I basically use them as a convenient, easy way to send & receive money. Using them to store money is, as you imply, not a good idea.
-------------------------------------------------------

Exactly what I do, I transfer within minutes or maybe a couple of hours at the most. Also, I will not bid on anything that only uses Bidpay just for the fact that it tacks on another $5 to the end price. It's worth the 3% charge to me to get a quick and easy payment from someone via Paypal. Just my .02

 

[Citizen87645]

I haven't had such a bad experience with PayPal, but at one time I did put in a request to downgrade and of course never got a reply. Ultimately (after selling some fairly large ticket items) I got tired of the fees, cancelled my existing account and shortly after opened another with different info.

I think my frustration lately has been people failing to read thoroughly and sending me credit-funded payments despite clear statements I will not accept them. It's actually been revealing how informed people are about services they sign up with. The majority didn't even know about the funding process or how money gets pulled from their accounts. Kind of scary.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Cameron, that's exactly the problem I had. No matter how many times and how clearly you state it, people just don't understand the concepts and I don't think PayPal themselves go out of their way to explain things properly.

It turns out, last night's buyer was using a UK Delta card. This is a debit card, not credit and so there's no charges. But PP don't see it like that. They really are a bunch of cads.

Despite the reading-impaired bidders though, I blame PayPal. If Personal accounts are desgined not to accept CC payments then CC payment should not be able to be sent the account - period. But no, in they come in the hopes that you'll wear down and upgrade, incurring the fees. And as I found out last night, the site itself is most unhelpful in the event of an accident click in the wrong place (though I'm still pretty sure I didn't).

You know when you go into McDs and they offer a 'large' or 'super size' for a few pennies more? This is how PayPal works. But instead of offering you the extra they cook it up, serve it and then go deaf when you say you only wanted medium size.

I'm glad now that I'm done with them. I don't want to support a company that acts like this when I use their services.