Paypal Customer Service

Designing websites for online sales? Are you using Paypal as a merchant account to receive payments for selling online?

It may well suprise you that Paypal are not an authorised credit agency, thats to say they are not covered by any of the credit or banking regulatory conditions imposed on the banking industry. That means you have absolutely no recourse through third party regulators set up in major industrial countries.

So, you get a problem, double payments debited, money not released – what do you do?Not much apart from become part of Paypal customer service experience. Whereas with a bank you get recourse through the Ombudsman to resolve any type of these situations.

Its quite worrying. I received this email from Statcounter, a company I use to gather website statistics. Read on….

We at StatCounter are having ongoing, critical problems with Paypal. In view of the complete lack of assistance from Paypal in this regard and the gravity of the problems, we have decided that we have no option but to inform you, our members, about the facts of the situation. This will allow you to make an informed decision about whether to use (or whether to continue to use) Paypal.

Please note that these problems have been ongoing since 15 May and may arise not only in relation to payments made to StatCounter but in relation to ANY Paypal payments that you make.

We hope that our communications will equip you with the information necessary to make sure that YOU do not become another victim of this ongoing Paypal saga.

The two major issues affecting StatCounter Paypal subscribers are: – Delayed issuing of invoices – Instances of double billing.

 At StatCounter we have tried phoning, emailing, posting on the Paypal forums… Many of our contacts are ignored, but even when we do get an answer all we are told is that “Upon review of your account, unfortunately we do not have a time frame for a resolution to your issue we are currently actively investigating your issue with subscriptions.”

Folks – we sincerely regret any problems you are experiencing and assure you that we are doing our best to get all of these issues resolved for you. We strive to offer a high level of customer service and pride ourselves on being responsive to the needs and suggestions of our members. To have our hands “tied” in this way as a result of Paypals inaction is frustrating to say the least. We would be very grateful for your patience at this time as we wait for Paypal to resolve these issues.

I suggest you visit Paypal Sucks and read a few of the critcisms of the Paypal system.

Here is a taster……

“According to PayPal accepting their ToS (Terms of Service) in effect means you waive your rights to credit card consumer protection laws if you want to use their service, and that you may not issue a chargeback for unauthorized use of your credit card and PayPal account, or if you do, then they have the right to limit your account. Is this legal? We don’t know. But it’s how Paypal operates`”

 
I strongly recommend that you should set up a merchant account with your bank if selling online through an ecommerce website. Else, the consequences of using Paypal could end up breaking your company cashflow.

It’s long been assumed that Microsoft has built in various “backdoors” for law enforcement to get around its own security, but now reader Kevin Stapp writes in to let us know that the company has also been literally handing out the keys to law enforcement. Apparently, they’re giving out special USB keys that simply get around Microsoft’s security, allowing the holder of the key to very quickly get forensic information (including internet surfing history), passwords and supposedly encrypted data off of a laptop. While you can understand why police like this, the very fact that the backdoor is there and that a bunch of these USB keys are out there pretty much guarantees that those with nefarious intent also have such keys. The second you build in such backdoors, no matter how noble the reason, you can rest assured that they will be used by criminals as well. No matter what, for those of you who didn’t already know it, now you have more evidence as to why trusting Microsoft’s “security” isn’t such a good idea.