3 Nov 2008 cinamod   » (Master)

PayPal Sucks

But you already knew that...

A few weeks ago, somebody donated $5 to the AbiWord fund, which we always appreciate. A week or so later, I got an alert saying that there allegedly was fraud committed and that I need to respond via PayPal's "Resolution Center." Ok, no problem. If somebody accidentally donated $5 and wants it back, no sweat off my back.

I went to PayPal's Resolution Center and clicked on the "Resolve Claim Now" button, which took me to the always helpful "General PayPal Error" page. I tried visiting this page with a few different browsers on a few different OSes, in case the page was only tested with (eg.) IE on Windows. Indeed, the most useful message was from IE: "Stack overflow at line: 80".

I waited a few days, and tried again. Same results. In the mean time, they continue to send annoying emails saying that they need my immediate attention. My account's going to be flagged. Etc.

By now, I've been to their "Contact Us" page 3x. I've submitted bug reports each time, and was even lucky enough to get a response a week after submitting one of them (they claim 48 hour resolution times on their website). Their suggestion was to visit their "Contact Us" page, and submit a bug report. Which is what I did in the first place which caused them to send me that tardy response. Ugh...

I don't know how a company that handles this volume of money can be so cavalier with other people's money. How does a site as ubiquitous as eBay function with PayPal handling all of their financial transactions? It baffles the mind. Caveat emptor.

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