Has PayPal Lost The Plot ?

RANT ALERT… RANT ALERT…

I’m about to have a rather lengthy rant about PayPal. If you’d rather see a picture of a cute puppy instead of hear me complaning please click here.

Still here? Okay I shall rant away…

I’m not usually one to complain but recent events in dealing with PayPal have me concerned. Be prepared for a grim tale of phishing, phantom subscriptions and customer support so bad it nearly made a grown man weep…

I have been dealing with PayPal for quite a long time and most of that time it’s been a pleasant relationship. I’ve experienced the occasional problem here and there but nothing that really made me mad or think twice about using them. I was happy with PayPal…

However, recently there have been a number of warning signs which I simply can’t ignore any longer.

My first issue is an increasing number of fraudulent transactions taking place on PayPal. I’ve been selling a mix of physical and downloadable products for a number of years now. In the past six months I’ve been hit with more fraudulent transactions than I can remember. Most of which appear to have been the result of phished accounts.

If this isn’t bad enough, PayPal seem to be having some prolonged technical problems. I recently started getting a large number of e-mails telling me that my bank account has been added successfully. The problem is that I haven’t added a bank account for well over six months.

Calling PayPal to tell them of the problem was a frustrating experience. I was eventually told that they were aware of the problem and that it was being dealt with. Six days later I’m still getting the same e-mails.

And all this brings me to the latest and final straw…

I occasionally sign up for a free trial with a particular merchant. They regularly offer their products and services on a free trial basis. I like to see what I’m getting before I shell out $97 a month, so the free trial is a good idea.

Most of the time I cancel before the free trial ends and therefore don’t get billed. If I like the product or service I keep the subscription active, if not I cancel. This is usually a simple matter in PayPal of finding the subscription and cancelling it.

However, about a week ago I signed up for a free trial but something went wrong. I got the usual e-mail from PayPal telling me I had successfully subscribed. I happily went off to check out the new product on offer as I normally do. Everything was fine until I checked my PayPal later that evening.

For some reason there was no record of the transaction. For every previous free trial there had always been a transaction of $0.00 and a subscription created. I checked my subscriptions and there was no subscription either. So it looked like there had been no transaction and no subscription created.

The problem is that I had been redirected to the merchant and was able to access the product in question and I also got a confirmation e-mail from PayPal. There was just no record of this in my PayPal account.

After making more than a dozen phone calls to PayPal over the period of a week I’m really still no wiser about exactly what is going on. At first I was told there was no transaction or subscription because it was a free trial with a $0.00 value and that I would have to cancel with the company instead.

I then pointed out that the previous trials had shown up on my account and so that could not be true. I however agreed to contact the company and try to cancel at that end.

I went to the merchant’s website, logged in and clicked on the cancel button. I was immediately taken to PayPal from the cancel link to log in and cancel from within my PayPal account!

Needless to say that didn’t work. So I then submitted a support ticket to the merchant and after a few days was told…

“PayPal is having some temporary technical problem and merchants do not have a cancellation button so we cannot cancel from our side.”

Essentially they were having the same problem as me and recommended I cancel the subscription from my end!!!

So apparently nobody can cancel the subscription. I can’t because I can’t see the transaction or subscription on my PayPal account. The merchant can’t cancel for the same reason. And PayPal say they can’t cancel it either! To quote PayPal…

“The subscriptions are just hanging there”

And this is not an isolated incident. I’ve been told by PayPal that this has affected a whole group of subscriptions. I’ve been assured by PayPal that I won’t be charged and that the subscriptions aren’t active, but if that is true then why did I get an e-mail stating that the subscription was successful and that I would be billed if I didn’t cancel?

I’m about to remove all my credit cards and bank information from PayPal because to be quite honest. I think they’ve lost the plot!

It’s hardly reassuring to know that there are subscriptions floating around in PayPal’s system somewhere that nobody, PayPal included, have any control over.

Just remember if you have to deal with PayPal that the following applies…