Paypal Can Bite Me: An Unofficial Review

I had quite the run in with Paypal today and I feel the need to share my frustration with the whole world so take a good swig of that vino you're holding and prepare to get angry for me!

Two weeks ago I had arranged for 2 transactions to be billed to my Paypal account.  I have Paypal linked to an old checking account that I keep a low balance in for emergencies so when I make ANY purchase with Paypal I ALWAYS select for the payment to be billed to the debit card on the account for a different bank account.  Make sense?  I'm sure everybody does this from time to time.

Anyway, so I selected for both transactions, $65 each, to be billed to the debit card for my other account.  A few days later, I get a notice from the bank (the one with the low balance) saying that my account had gone NSF (insufficient for those of you who don't know bank terms, FYI: Ryan and I were both bankers once upon a time).  I was charged $35 for each $65 transaction.  I was mad and confused.  I e-mailed Paypal right away.  No response despite the automatic reply indicating that I would get a response within 24 hours.  I e-mailed again, 2 days later, no response.

Last night, I check the mail and see another notice from the bank stating that they are charging me $3 per day that the account is insufficient!  This $130 transaction has my bank account $220 in the hole!!!

Today, I'm telling Ryan and he says I have to CALL Paypal.  Okay, a company that makes everything electronic and I have to CALL them?  Whatever...

I call.  I explain what happened and ask what they can do.  I'm told that the debit card that I've been using for YEARS has never been "confirmed" and that they could no longer charge items to it so they used the bank account instead.  I looked at my account online and saw nothing indicating that there was any problem with the debit card.  I asked where the notification was indicating that they had to change the method of payment from what I requested and was told that "Paypal has hundreds of thousands of customers, we cannot notify everyone of these things when they come up".  I was also told that, "this happens all the time".  Really?  Really?

So, I ask politely if Paypal could please "confirm" this debit card that I've been using for years, reverse the transactions to the overdrawn bank account, and debit them properly to the card.  I'm told that Paypal can't do that.  I have to call the vendor that charged me in the first place, ask for a refund, and then pay a different way.

I politely inform the woman that the vendor doesn't give a shit about how Paypal messed up (because this is Paypal's fault) and will have no incentive to fix this on Paypal's behalf.  I was then told that "vendors can be more sympathetic than you think" and "I hear of people all the time who are successful at getting this resolved this way".  I tell the woman that I don't want it resolved this way.  I want Paypal to fix their fucking mistake!

To give the woman credit, she remained calm and polite with me.  I've worked in customer service so I'm usually as polite and patient as can be with representatives.  After all, it's not her fault that Paypal screwed me over.  Anyway, so she's nice...  then she puts me on hold for 15 minutes.  Thank goodness Emma and I got into a tickle fight and she put me in a better mood while I was on hold because I was seriously going to hurt this woman in a bad way.

She comes back and says that she's checked with 3 supervisors and they all agree that there is nothing Paypal can do that the vendor must reverse the transaction and redo it however I want it done.  Right...

So, I say thanks for the help and I really hope that Paypal can communicate with its customers better in the future so that this whole situation (that apparently happens all the time???!!!) could have been avoided.  Then, I hang up the phone and curse a bit...  snuggle with Emma...  and decide to put it off until tomorrow.  I've been through enough bullshit for one day.

The end.  Thanks for reading.