Neat idea, but they don't seem to like me....
Written: Jun 22 '00 (Updated Jun 04 '02)
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Pros: A clever idea, if only they let me use it.
Cons: Inscrutable rejection criteria.
The Bottom Line: It would be a good concept if the people who ran it actually gave a darn about serving their customers.
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| dtobias's Full Review: PayPal |
I think PayPal is a really great idea. Unfortunately, they don't seem to feel the same about the idea of me using their service. I recently tried to sign up, and when I attempted to enter my Visa credit card, they rejected it as "not matching my registered address." That's strange, because the billing address of that card is exactly the same as the address I used at PayPal. Then I tried another credit card and it was also rejected. (I've never had any problem using these cards anywhere else.)
After these attempts, my user record at PayPal was flagged as "restricted", meaning that they detected possible fraud and weren't going to let me use the account until this was cleared up. The only way to remove this restriction is to e-mail their "appeals" address and wait for them to respond. Calling their phone number is useless, because their operators say they can't do anything about lifting such restrictions. This was frustrating because I had a recently-concluded ebay auction I wanted to pay for with PayPal, but had to send a check in the mail instead.
Finally, they e-mailed me back saying that once I verified the mailing address (using an ID number they're sending me by paper mail) they might (or might not?) lift the restriction, but they still wouldn't let me use my credit card because it failed to meet some (unspecified) criteria of theirs. I can only make wild guesses as to what's wrong; maybe it's the fact that I use a P.O. box as my mailing address instead of a "real" street address. (I did this for convenience when I moved a few months ago and had to stay at a temporary apartment for a month until my "real" apartment was ready.)
I've never been involved in any sort of credit card fraud, bad charges, bounced checks, or anything else of that sort. My credit rating is very favorable. I resent the fact that PayPal apparently doesn't think I'm good enough for them.
Update, 7/21/2000: Once my address and bank account were verified, they did finally lift the restricted status, but they still won't let me use a credit card. To use PayPal to make payments, I'd have to transfer money into it from my bank account (or receive payments from others). I still don't know why they don't think my credit is worthy. Everybody else is eager to give me credit (I get new credit card offers in the mail all the time), so I don't know why PayPal thinks I'm a deadbeat.
Added notes: Somebody at PayPal did contact me in response to this review and investigated some more as to what reasons they had for treating me this way. They still weren't that specific, but it seemed that the reasons were largely tied to my being a "power user", not the normal dumb consumer they're used to dealing with. For one thing, my e-mail address was in my own domain name, which they seem to regard as somehow less trustworthy than a "normal" e-mail address like at "aol.com" or something. Also, my credit cards had some transaction reversals on them, probably as a result of the fact that my job involves development of e-commerce sites and I sometimes do test transactions using my own card and then refund them. So, basically, because I do complex, intelligent things instead of being an idiotic "normal guy," I'm not the sort of person PayPal wants to deal with. Their loss.
More commentary: While I ended the last comment with "Their loss," it could still end up being my loss too... things seem to be rapidly evolving to a state where anyone who can't or won't use PayPal is effectively disenfranchised from online auctioning. Increasingly, buyers and sellers alike are specifying PayPal as their primary payment method of choice, and only grudgingly accepting anything else. Any buyer who pays by check in the mail, or any seller who wants buyers to do this, is treated as a relic from the stone age. It probably won't be long before a majority of Ebayers flat-out refuse to accept or make payments any other way. As no viable competition for PayPal has emerged (what with their service being free and paying signup and referral bonuses to boot), anyone who gets caught up in their inscrutable rejection criteria gets shut out in the cold and might eventually be unable to participate in online auctions at all. This is a dangerous degree of power handed to a company that acts so arbitrarily and capriciously.
While the vast majority of people have found PayPal to be excellent for their needs, and have had no problem with them, the few like me who do have problems seem to have no recourse, and even get snubbed (and low-rated on Epinions) by people who have nothing but positive thoughts about PayPal (and who might also have potential referral bonuses in mind if they keep everybody else thinking positively about them). Thus, I feel an important need to make people aware of the problems some have had with the service -- and I know I'm not the only one to have such problems, as there are a few other similar reviews on Epinions. There are also some really bad horror stories about parent company X.com's banking operations (which have been run with similar capriciousness, but are dealing with real money there; people have had accounts of thousands of dollars frozen for no good reason because X.com suspected fraud by some inscrutable criterion).
Update, 6/04/2002: Since I no longer have any desire to use PayPal, I don't know if my credit card would work if I tried it now, but I've continued to find horror stories from other customers about this service, on Epinions and elsewhere. Meanwhile, the x.com online bank has ceased operations a long time ago, finding that people wouldn't put up with a bank run as poorly as they were. For more anti-PayPal info, go to:
http://paypal.haters.info/
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
dtobias
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 - Top 1000 |
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Member: Daniel Tobias
Location: Boca Raton, FL
Reviews written: 167
Trusted by: 94 members
About Me:
A programmer and Internet developer who's been a "computer geek" for over 20 years now.
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