I've had a :mad: Bad experience with Pay pal Customer Service.

I just want to know if it was just me or does this happen always??

Here's the detail;

I registered a new paypal account..
I then added my American Express Card to the account.
They charged the $1.95US test fee to my amex card
the activation code did not appear on the statement.
I thought, hmmm okay, just a small mistake on their part, I can live with it, so I went to their support pages.
What a big web of pages they use to try and prevent any emails or phone calls. It's as bad as the menu you get on the phone when you ring your phone company.

I finally found the web form to send in a help request explaining the situation.
( KMM16486096V62676L0KM & KMM16250638V24015L0KM
for those paypal people reading this)
I kept getting replies from them saying that I haven't activated my card, I should wait for my statement to get the code.
But I already said that I have the statement and it has no code!

I got just stupid template type responses and no result, until the final email asked me for a photocopy of some Photo ID, a covering letter and the front and back of the Card and they will process it in 10 days.

Now after this process took me almost three weeks to get this far, do you think that I should bother dealing with these people after this Crap??

Revecom here I come.

Brian

You're not talking about your bank statement, are you? There's nothing on the letter that PayPal sent you?

Originally posted by adland
You're not talking about your bank statement, are you? There's nothing on the letter that PayPal sent you?

No I'm talking about my American Express Card Statement, Both online and on the paper version I received in the post and also when I rang amex they confirmed the same thing over the phone.

(I'm in Australia, so I can't register a bank account with them)

You're trying to get "verified", right? I think PayPal sends you a statement with an activation code.

nah they put it on your card statement

I registered and activated my card no problems with paypal.

The code e.t.c all showed up no problems.

When I set up my PayPal account they made two small deposits to my bank account, and asked me to enter the amounts of these deposits as the code. May be different in your case...

Neofree

Originally posted by neofree
When I set up my PayPal account they made two small deposits to my bank account, and asked me to enter the amounts of these deposits as the code. May be different in your case...

Neofree

same here...

It sounds like the card issuer may not have the code, or it has not appeared on a statement yet. The only way we can override this is through the documentation requested.

My apologies for any inconvenience this has caused you, but we the measures are in place for anti-fraud reasons.

Im in Australia too!

i registerd using my Visa Card and there was no problems at all, this was like 2 years ago now, but i dont see why the service would change...

I have heard of this problem before! What bank is your Amex card with? I have been told before by others that some banks that amex goes through or is connected to via debit accounts etc etc do not support paypal at all!

I dont see why amex would not support it being american at all, even though when i was in america i saw only two places that accepted it in three states...

I used visa and om St George bank, and next to the charges it had the name of the company were it came from PAYPAL then (45435u) A code, thats not the code it was a quick hit of the keyboard!

If you have any more questions mate you can pm me thanks good luck!

Support sucks in paypal, until you have problems! Another of my mates in spain just told me he has the same problem!

Kind regards

Originally posted by paypaldamon
It sounds like the card issuer may not have the code, or it has not appeared on a statement yet. The only way we can override this is through the documentation requested.

My apologies for any inconvenience this has caused you, but we the measures are in place for anti-fraud reasons.

I understand the anti-fraud measures taken by paypal and I aplaud them for it.

My complaint is really with the support.

I was going to use paypal as my payment gateway fo my services, but my experience here showed that I can't rely on my customers being able to sign-up in a timely manner.

I have resolved that I am not going to use Paypal, but my aim in posting the complaint here, was to get Paypal's attention (like I did) and hopefully they can resolve their problems incase I need them in the future.

Thanks for your response Paypaldamon, but that's the statement I should have got at the start, and not stuffed around.

Cheers

I have had very bad experiences with PayPal as well. The registration took a month, as they had to verify etc., which was fine, but when somebody tried to send me funds I was left in a quandry, as there is no way to get the funds unless you have a bank account in the UK or US (I'm in Ireland). Thank you paypal!
Of course, to make matters worse their customer service is next to non-existent. It took them over a week to answer my query!

The web site does show the list of countries that allow for withdrawals at this time.

http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/approved_countries-outside

Users do need to check this before they want to use the service for withdrawing payments.

Hi zarth,

Thank you for the feedback. International users have to undergo a different verification process than domestic (US) users because the verification methods are different. The majority of international cards do not have AVS (address verification) available, so we have to use the other method to confirm the credit card belongs to the party registering it. This does reduce the possibility of a chargeback occurring to a merchant.

I will pass along the concerns over the time that it can take to show on a statement.

With all due respect, why would an Irish customer want to open a business account if they can't withdraw the money?
You have updated the conditions and rules on your site so many times in the last few months it's impossible to keep track of them.
Besides, even if some things are clear or not, for an online company your customer service record is terrible.

My point was that the web site specifically shows we do not allow withdrawals to Ireland (at this time). This information is there so users don't mistakenly assume that there is a two-way functionality to that country. I do know that the International team is looking at the withdrawal option, but users are only allowed to send money at the moment.