bkmunroe
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posted on February 2, 2002 11:46:28 AM new
There's going to be a segment about PayPal on next Tuesday's episode of Cybercrime on TechTV.
Here's a link.
http://www.techtv.com/cybercrime/shownotes/story/0,23008,3368412,00.html
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andrew123s
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posted on February 5, 2002 08:38:11 PM new
I just watched it. It was very interesting. It talks about how PayPal's security is good (with the verification system, etc.) but it also acknowledges their horrible customer service. At one point PayPal had around 100,000 unanswerd complaints that were backlogged! Tech TV even talked to the Silicon Valley BBB. The BBB said they had so many complaints and PayPal's rating changed to unsatisfactory, but then it was changed back again so PayPal got the seal of approval when PayPal changed their ways. (They went from 3 customer service employees to 500. 3 CUSTOMER SERVICE EMPLOYEES? How a company that deals with user's money could ever have only 3 customer service employees is beyond me.) However, when the BBB was asked about complaints about restricted accounts (Stoney/club1man's case in particular), the BBB said they would not comment on that.
They also had stories of users. There was one user who bought a computer and the seller never delivered. This is a standard buyer complaint issue where PayPal is once again refusing to help the customer (according to the user). While PayPal says it does not insure transactions (unless its extra insurance on ebay up to 200) Then they explained Stoney/club1man's problem (about how they restricted his account and let money continue to pour in, and PayPal is claiming that they are owed somewhere around $20,000 when in reality PayPal owes the customer even more than that. They talked about how there was now a lawsuit between Stoney and PayPal).
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andrew123s
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posted on February 5, 2002 08:39:27 PM new
In addition, the report mentioned the hold time for a customer service representative can be as low as 1 minute, but they also mention how PayPal's phone number is nowhere on their website (at least Tech TV can't find it).
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paypaldamon
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posted on February 6, 2002 02:38:26 PM new
Hi andrew123s,
"They also had stories of users. There was one user who bought a computer and the seller never delivered"
Does PayPal control the listing of items at other sites?
No.
Does PayPal sell the items that the person is buying?
No.
Can PayPal control the activity of the an individual?
No
PayPal is a payment service. We can't guarantee that a party will come through on a transaction you initiate. This is entirely up to the individual selling the item.
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dealerjim
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posted on February 6, 2002 02:57:40 PM new
Doe's PayPal Suck? YES!!
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blairwitch
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posted on February 6, 2002 05:41:36 PM new
Wow that was unbelievable. I guess they still dont have FDIC insurance either? If they had 100,000 complaints then the problem was much worse than we thought. If they had 10 million users, 10% had problems.....
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GU1HToM
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posted on February 7, 2002 06:32:32 AM new
Quoting Damon here....
>>Can PayPal control the activity of the an individual?
No
PayPal is a payment service. We can't guarantee that a party will come through on a transaction you initiate. This is entirely up to the individual selling the item.<<
Correct me if I am wrong here but isn't restricting someones account controlling their activity?
So what is it?
Who is getting protected?
Customer or Seller?
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andrew123s
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posted on February 7, 2002 08:12:19 AM new
Damon, the point is this user (from what I watched) was given the complete runaround. He wasn't helped and couldn't connect to a live person from what I remember. From what I saw this was more of a customer service issue than a get money back issue. Newsflash: getting canned e-mails is not customer service.
In addition, you didn't respond to the rest of my post. 100,000 complaints! For a company that deals with people's money! And at one point you had 3 customer service employees! And what about Stoney/club1man's situation? Is Tech TV lying about that too?
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muscle96ss
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posted on February 7, 2002 08:37:07 AM new
Let me point out that I actually agree with Damon on the point that Paypal is strictly a payment service and cannot guarantee the seller is legit.
However here is where the problem lies Damon. Once Paypal is informed that this seller is doing illegal activity and using their system to collect its payments then Paypals responsibility changes. To elaborate, if Paypal has been made aware that their service is being used to conduct illegal activity; Paypal then has an obligation to cease service with the seller. If they continue to do business with this seller being aware that illegal activity is going on then they are then 100% responsible for the entire loss and are actually criminally liable to an extent.
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dealerjim
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posted on February 7, 2002 09:06:49 AM new
You are speakin way, way, way over Damons head. You could've put that 25 different ways and he still wouldn't get it. PayPal will continue to let fraudulent users go free. They will continue to lose customers over this. They don't care. Their total lack of attention to these problems has proven that they absolutely do not care about their members.
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muscle96ss
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posted on February 7, 2002 09:31:24 AM new
Let me use an example to better explain this. Suppose you own a car rental business and one of your customers is using your cars to transport and sell illegal drugs. Once you the owner become aware of this and still allow them use of your vehicles you are then criminally liable.
The bottom line is you are clear and free until you are made aware of the illegal activity. Once you are made aware then you are required to take actions that any normal prudent person would.
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andrew123s
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posted on February 7, 2002 09:53:58 AM new
I am not talking about the issue of whether PayPal is a payment service or not and whether they should compensate buyers. I am talking about their need to have customer service! This user on tv bought a laptop and got canned e-mails and was basically ignored by PayPal. In addition, if a seller had many complaints filed against them (in dealerjim's case), PayPal should have investigated and reported them to the authorities. Damon keeps saying that buyers who get ripped off by sellers (and don't use credit cards) need to take action against the seller, not PayPal. Well how can you take action against someone when you DON'T EVEN KNOW who the person is! Damon will respond saying you need a subpeona. Let's think here. How many people are you going to pay upwards of 2000 for a subpeona over lets say a 500 dollar item? Damon will respond saying that buyers should follow their guidelines to prevent fraud. While that might help, it doesn't completely prevent fraud and PayPal knows it, therefore there are going to be fraud cases and they can't always be blamed on the buyer not following the guidelines.
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mrfoxy76
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posted on February 7, 2002 11:36:13 AM new
i read these boards all the time i see reference to stoney/club1man case with paypal where can i read about it?
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andrew123s
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posted on February 7, 2002 04:47:15 PM new
MrFoxy76, here's a page which has a lot of information on PayPal that you might find interesting: http://www.ygoodman.com/paypal.html
Here is an excerpt from that page about Stoney's case:
Here is the original case: There is a well known Internet businessman who calls himself Stoney. He lives in Texas and he invests in precious metals. Since these investments require minimum amounts that the average person can't manage, he is the middleman, investing in large blocks and selling smaller blocks to smaller investors. Bear in mind that no merchandise actually changes hands. His investors send him money to create E-gold accounts for them. He has the reputation of being extremely honest and has built up an investor list of over 5,000 clients. He did approximately $200,000 a month via Paypal. PP restricted his account and told him that over $20,000 of payments were fraudulent. This is rather strange because the payers do not take possession of merchandise, the investment just sits in their account.
He called Paypal but reports he was given the runaround for weeks. He got in touch with the police department and the FBI and PP has finally given him the list of fraudulent payments. He started calling and emailing his way down the list and discovered that quite a few of these "fraudulent" payments are not! The other parties claim they used their credit card, never made a charge back and have no idea why PP is claiming there is fraud. Stoney also says he begged PP to block his account so that people would stop paying into it. It took 6 weeks of angry phone calls and threats before they finally did so. In the meantime, tens of thousands have been accepted (well in excess of the claimed fraud) and are being held by Paypal, hurting not only him but his (and paypal's) innocent customers. And Paypal claims that some of these new payments, which he asked them not to accept are fraudulent and are charging him for those. And he was charged fees by Paypal for accepting this money which he asked them not to accept!
His case against them was recently heard in California. Details will be released when a decision is handed down. So I guess even if you do a few hundred thousand in business with Paypal, they still won't try to work things out. How much business does it take to get customer service? A million? Two million?
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fnewbrough
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posted on February 18, 2002 06:00:46 PM new
Paypal should also inform all of its users via email that it could be ordered to suspend services. It advised its investors of this via a SEC filing but it hasn't informed the thousands of sellers and millions of users which could be ruined if the service was unexpectently shut down. This is just plain irresponsible.
-Fred
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stopwhining
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posted on February 19, 2002 03:20:02 PM new
i read somewhere some of these payments could be from questionable source.
the reason why they keep accepting payment into his account is to make sure when chargebacks hit paypal,they have some of his funds .
it can take months before chargebacks are presented .
why does he use paypal,why not merchant account?paypal buyer and seller protection is really not good for large transaction.
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club1man
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posted on February 20, 2002 10:33:56 AM new
My advise stopwhinning is that you not comment on something you know nothing about because your foot gets bigger everytime you stick it in your mouth. And I presume it is your mouth your sticking it in.
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stopwhining
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posted on February 20, 2002 06:03:58 PM new
CLUB1MAN,
it is just too bad you dont own this board.
your advice has been flushed down the toilet.
i can say anything i want on this board as long as i adhere to aw rules.
i read this incident in an article someone posted and i dont need to put anything anywhere to say i read this from a published article.
if i were you,i would not go around and make threats like that,you never know who you are up against.
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club1man
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posted on February 20, 2002 06:36:35 PM new
Like I said "GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT" and as far as the threat I'm an old man that's just shhhhaakkiiinng in my boots. But there again there on the ground.
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