Exasperated to no end, I finally called them, and they gave me a new email to contact. So I emailed them:
I have no idea what is going on. I was told my account was limited, I asked why, they said new banking rules. Today, I logged in to resolve it, provided what they wanted (proof of utility- I uploaded a Comcast cable bill), and then, a couple hours later, received the following email:
Dear John Cole,
Since you are unable to complete the appeals process, access to your PayPal account will remain limited…
What have I done wrong? I’ve done everything you all have asked.
Three days later, this helpful response:
Dear John Cole,
Thank you for contacting PayPal with your concern. We apologize for the delay in responding to your email.
Unfortunately, we were not able to verify your identity at this time with the information we received and we cannot remove the limitation unless we can complete the verification process.
Thanks for sharing your concerns with us. We value what you have to say, and we know situations like this can be difficult. If you have more questions, visit our Help Center by clicking “Help” in the top right corner of any PayPal page.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey
PayPal Compliance Department
PayPal, an eBay Company
I think we can all agree that if Jeffrey at the Paypal Compliance Department were to set himself and Matt Drudge on fire, the world would be a better place. Seriously, California- this is what Meg Whitman wants to do to your state.
HEY DIPSHITS AT PAYPAL- WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO VERIFY MY IDENTITY? I’m this close to zeroxing my naked ass and sending it to them.
Also too- I’m not “concerned.” I’m livid.
Kristine
This:
And this:
Here’s yer blog’s identity, right here! The frustration of the Everyman, seasoned with political snark and nekkid photocopying.
morzer
Maybe you should threaten to expose them as funding Cordoba House via Megan McArdle’s Atlantic “undisclosed expenses” account?
steviez314
I believe Paypal has the Arizona S.B. 1070 ID verification contract too.
JWL
You’ve an entire Balloon Juice family at your command.
What do you think Charlie Manson would do?
Martha
This attitude is EXACTLY why I read this blog.
Sorry John. But, maybe you can appear to an anti-Meg ad in the Fall and help torpedo her campaign? I have friends who would be grateful for your help.
soonergrunt
You know, you just can’t unthink some thoughts.
[shudder]
debit
@JWL:
Have sex with all of us, natch. Oh! You meant the murders.
Steve
This post sure has a shallow and frightened tone.
Bret
“Jefferey” is an automated response email bot, John. He’s not a real person. Sorry :(
morzer
@Bret:
Could “Jeffrey” be the Goldberg bot in a new location?
Shalimar
The only thing I can think of is that they might not consider cable to be a utility. Electricity, Water, Gas, and maybe Garbage. Jeffrey is an idiot for being dumb enough to put his name on that non-responsive reply though. I know they rely of templates for everything, but at least answer the damned question that was asked somewhere in the form letter.
Shalimar
@soonergrunt: This is why Cole never posts pictures of himself, so we won’t have a face to put with the naked ass imagery.
gnomedad
@Kristine:
Synthesis win!
And mopping.
Roger Moore
@Bret:
Which just goes to show how stupid PayPal is. If you’re going to send automated messages, admit that they’re automated. If you know it’s a bot, there’s always the hope that dealing with a human being might be able to straighten things out, but if you think it’s a person who’s really that stupid and unhelpful it’s a sign that the whole company should be destroyed. Which isn’t to say that MegBay shouldn’t be destroyed anyway.
D-Chance.
LOL, the live call receiver gave you an auto-reply bot. With a three-day turnaround. Beautiful.
Karen
@John Cole
My paypal account got hacked last year and it took me several calls from me and my bank until the $1K was restored. I’ve heard many horror stories about paypal and unfortunately the only way these days to get any of these people to even attempt to solve the problem is to to get nasty. I wish it wasn’t that way but if you’ve noticed things suddenly get done when you do.
You have some notoriety in a way I never did. Inform them that if the issue isn’t fixed ASAP you’ll play hard ball: talk to your congressman or Senator, contact the local news to have them investigate or even that your blog has thousands of readers a day and you will document every day that Pay Pal hides behind the “new banking rules” to illegally hijack your money. Betcha you’ll get results.
And for all of you who think I’m going over the top, I worked for Customer Service of several banks and collections so I know lashing out at them is unfair so the first thing I do is ask for a manager. That alone often gets problems resolved sometimes.
namekarB
@Roger Moore:
This is all that needs to be said. Once upon a time PayPal was a great idea but they ruined it. I jettisoned my account last year for the very same reason. There are other alternatives out there.
jl
“I’m this close to zeroxing my naked ass and sending it to them.”
Let us know if that works. If does, I can stay late at work and run off a few dozen for future misc. internet account problems.
Thanks.
And we can add helpful personal finance and management tips to this damn blog’s ID.
wvng
John, you need an eBay version of United Breaks Guitars (now over 9 million views).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo
Chad N Freude
Jeffrey is Meg Whitman’s lovechild. I’ve seen the birth certificate.
Yutsano
@gnomedad:
Fixteth.
arguingwithsignposts
@namekarB:
Such as? Really would be helpful info for some of us. I hate dealing with paypal, too.
arguingwithsignposts
@Karen:
I’m thinking just a threat to have Tunch come manhandle some of their office space would do the trick.
JGabriel
@Shalimar:
That’s probably correct, though the fact that John has to guess what PayPal’s bureaucracy wants, rather than being told, has all kinds of Kafkaesque overtones.
I’m always amazed at how Randians fail to realize that replacing the state with the corporation really doesn’t make bureaucracies any different – just more expensive.
.
JGabriel
@arguingwithsignposts:
Or worse, a threat to have Tunch sit on their offices and crush them under his big smelly cat butt.
.
Kiril
@arguingwithsignposts:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=paypal+alternatives
Too lazy to sift out the appropriate ones, but this seems like a place to start. Mebbe BJ can start an anti-PayPal movement with one of these.
Chad N Freude
@JGabriel:
Yes, but it’s easier for corporations to fire people for being competent.
scav
@JGabriel: pish, because it’s perfectly clear that corporate bureaucracies are magic bureaucracies rather than those evil and inherently inefficient government bureaucracies — I mean, look what happens to our overlords when they go through the revolving door? Govt. side? Feckless greedy overpaid incompetents. Goldman/Corporate side? Smartest guys in the room and must be paid still more in case they get depressed or need more fish in tanning beds.
elf
oh wow,
you got the
non-denial , denial
response
you must haz a happy
R. Porrofatto
Believe it or not, Paypal is minor league when it comes to exasperating customer service. But it’s good training for the aneurysm-inducing Big Leagues — Time-Warner, Con Ed — and one day you might even be able have your head exploded by the worst of them all: Verizon.
In my experience, of course.
xian
also, too, what the fuck is Paypal? Is it a bank? If not, why not?
Chad N Freude
@R. Porrofatto: How can you say mean things about Verizon, the company that strung fiber optic cables in my neighborhood 14 months ago and tells me every time I inquire that service is not available in my area? And won’t say why. And won’t give a projected date of availability.
Batocchio
See, that’s the sort of bipartisanship we need!
My worst experience like this was with Travelocity – they wouldn’t waive a change-your-flight-fee ($50-100) on a bereavement ticket. After ~ five months of bullshit e-mails like that (I occasionally checked in on the issue, just on principle), they finally made a decision: No. A real penny wise, pound foolish call on their part, and fucking horrible customer service. I also had an atrocious experience with U-Haul (low-balling and outright lying), but luckily I had a backup. Moving companies are pretty notorious.
Jerry Brown should make that into an ad.
J
Had a similar experience with Expedia some years ago. Purchased a round trip ticket to Berlin, with many legs on the journey. Initial email and itinerary showed all legs of journey. But in the emailed itinerary I printed out just before departure the last leg of the return had mysteriously vanished, which I discovered halfway to Berlin. Panic! All efforts by email or telephone to get someone at expedia to respond got the runaround–“see our FAQs” and the like. I went to the airport in Berlin v. early on the day of my return, and a nice man at the Lufthansa counter spent just short of an hour on the phone sorting things out. I miss the old days when one could reach human beings, quite a few of whom knew what they were doing.
You have my sympathy, John.
Left Coast Tom
Wow. Who knew that Arizona’s SB-1070 applied to bloggers from West Virginia, Senor Cole. If that’s really your name.
I’ve only encountered one prospective purchase that would require me to get a PayPal account, and that only recently. I think I don’t need that particular item.
TooManyJens
@Chad N Freude: Huh. In my neighborhood, AT&T provides that particular service. It got so bad I gave up and switched to Comcast, of all companies.
Chad N Freude
@J: I had a similar experience many years before the Intertubes existed. I booked Lufthansa from Amsterdam through Bonn to New york. The final itinerary ended in Bonn. Which I found out at the Bonn airport. This is nothing new, and it doesn’t require super-sophisticated technology. Or even telephones.
Roger Moore
@JGabriel:
Not more expensive; more profitable for the people who control them. And that’s the real problem. The government is ultimately controlled by the people it serves, so there’s no net benefit for it being inefficient. A private bureaucracy is ultimately controlled by somebody different from who it serves, so inefficiencies that let the owners profit from the suffering of the people being served will never be removed.
Chad N Freude
@TooManyJens: I’m really glad that we’re about to get tiered internet service. If you live in LA, you will appreciate that while people I know in Venice and Santa Monica have Verizon FIOS, if you live too close to UCLA, NO FIOS FOR YOU!
Chad N Freude
@Roger Moore:
And you live in what country?
cdmarine
Never rely on any sort of online communication for a Paypal problem. You have to call them on the phone. Seriously. All the online stuff is automated, and you have about a 5% chance of getting a response that is actually relevant to the question you asked. When you call them, you talk to a human. I’ve done it. The humans were actually really helpful.
Left Coast Tom
@Chad N Freude: In summer 2002 I had booked a R/T Alaska Airlines flight from SFO to King Salmon, AK, on points. The return from King Salmon to Anchorage was via a partner commuter airline…which I found out the night before my return was no longer a partner. The phone conversation didn’t start well (“So I see you’re in ‘AKN’. [long pause] OK, where are you?”), but she worked through it and fixed the problem, and I had no problem boarding.
I’ve had experiences with Air France in Paris where the first person I talked to couldn’t do anything useful, but then I walked through the airport, found another desk, and asked there, and got my problem resolved.
Being able to get through to a real person, something phone systems are designed to prevent, is vital.
gmknobl
My first thought is this isn’t really paypal at all but a scammer. Triple check everything on this. You’ve probably already done this though bu those are my thoughts. After all, if they keep on asking your for more personal identifying details you could be giving some unscrupulous person the keys to your life.
The next to last samurai
I seem to have a touch of summer virus. I voluteer to go barf all over their motherbleeping motherboard. You and i will both feel better.
trollhattan
Megs will finish everything Arnie started. We’ll at last live in paradise and everybody will want to move her. I’ll have equity again. Cue the angelic choir.
Megs is having some identity issues. She’s pro Prop 8
http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2010/08/meg-whitman-says-she-would-def.html
But insufficiently anti-Mexican.
http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2010/08/cra-warns.html
She’s got skin in the game over $100 mil now. November seems a looooong way away.
Maybe if she loses she can fix Paypal? The way Carly fixed HP?
R. Porrofatto
@Chad N Freude: Your mileage may vary, but all I can say is that if you’re thinking of falling for one of their FIOS bundles, think again. I have a disabled friend who’s been charged hundreds of dollars for stuff she never ordered (like a Games Package — this is someone who’s never played a computer game in her life), and an extra $35/month charged to her old “pre-FIOS” account for Internet services that were included in the FIOS package. When I called them for her, one awful woman actually argued with me (“well MY mother is disabled and she plays games!”). It’s been months, charges have still not been removed and keep accumulating, and she owes hundreds more dollars to the vultures.
Oh, and the TV part of the package is abysmal, when it works that is.
Console
Hey, let me get 4 dime bags
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR9ZPSeDTH8
bfr
If my memory is correct, the faxes/scans are auto scanned and attached to the case if that link can be made.
You may want to try reattaching the bill again or use a different bill.
If they are concerned about unauthorized access, they will not likely be very clear to you about whats going as they won’t be sure that you are you.
Rock
PayPal was co-founded by Peter Thiel (Stanford libertarian and current hedge fund manager I believe), and one of the stated goals was to remove control of currency from governments (who infringe on your property rights by inflating away the value of your money). So, there you go, libertarianism in action.
Chad N Freude
@R. Porrofatto: Hmmm. My friends are really happy with Verizon FIOS service, and they haven’t had your friend’s fake billing issues. I don’t doubt that Verizon’s customer antiservice has behaved this way, but you can claw your way up the may-I-speak-to-your-manager chain and get something done. Usually.
Fraud Guy
Is this why every time I get an open jobs listing from them (during my last hunt, I enrolled on the eBay job search site and get weekly mail) that there are literally at least a dozen openings for their various fraud and risk positions.
It reminds me of the immediate post-housing crash period (from my job hunt before that)–there were dozens of listings at Citi, Chase, Wells Fargo, and BofA for Risk Analysts, Sr. Risk Analysts, Risk Managers, Director of Risk Management, VP Risk Management, etc. for mortgage products.
But no listings for CEO/CFO/COO/CRO positions…I wonder why?
Anne Laurie
@The next to last samurai: Eaten any eggs recently? Or eaten something made with eggs at a restaurant?
Chad N Freude
@Anne Laurie: Judging from what I’ve been reading lately about the US food supply, we have almost nothing to eat that hasn’t been modified in some way, usually to our detriment, from what Nature intended.
hilzoy
Hah. Once upon a time, MCI let my telephone account get hacked into six times in six consecutive months. The last time, the bill was 92 pages long, and had thousands of dollars’ worth of international calls made after I had discontinued service. They kept haggling over bits and pieces of these calls for over a year, asking (among other things) that we send them not just one, but several copies of the 92 page bill. They also let my allegedly unpaid bills affect my credit rating, even though every single time, I sent them detailed lists of which calls I contested, and why, and they never explained which ones they were not refunding, or why.
And, of course, after I switched back to ATT, I kept getting all these plaintive letters from MCI imploring me to switch back. Hah.
No wonder they went bankrupt.
Comrade Kevin
@Batocchio:
Oh, there already is one, that goes something like “Meg Whitman wants to run California the same way she did her company”.
Jebediah
@Chad N Freude:
AT&T is doing the same thing to me, but in my case it isn’t my neighborhood, it is just my address. And they can’t tell me why, and apparently didn’t know this when they sent AT&T U-verse salesman to my door.
Barbara
I have given up on getting ING to verify my identity. I started the account in early 2005, and I was supposed to tell them the amount of the deposit made by my bank — and then my bank was taken over and I got pregnant and had to go out of town for work for a while. They won’t help me. They say there is no alternative but for me to somehow figure out how much that nonexistent bank transferred from a savings account more than five years ago. My husband keeps promising to look for the statements, but never gets around to it. I realize this is technically my fault but I don’t really care. I will NEVER fully commit to an online bank, including PayPal.
Ron Beasley
@JGabriel:
Brilliant – so true!
Chad N Freude
@efgoldman: The issue seems to be the industrialization (read “factory farming”) of agriculture. Nothing is produced naturally any more.
Zuzu's Petals
I am having a similar make-you-wanna-scream moment with Amazon.
After a ten minute wait on the customer service line, I had the following exchange with Rahul S. :
Me: I have several unused gift cards going back several years in my account; they weren’t for me, I bought them for other people. They are unexpired, just not used. I need to re-send them to new e-mail addresses. I entered all the right info, with no luck.
Rahul S. : I’ll have someone in the gift card department send you an e-mail.
——————————
Today I get this e-mail from Preethi R. in the gift card department:
If you’re following this, you know it has NOTHING to do with my question. I’m trying to re-send several different gift cards I bought for other people.
Now I’m stuck with trying to explain this in one of their stupid “feedback” boxes. Arrrrrgggghhh.
Steeplejack
@Cole at top:
Fax the credenza.
Chad N Freude
@Zuzu’s Petals: Can you redeem the gift cards in question yourself to buy new gift cards that you can then send to the intended recipients?
And are you aware that Internet commerce was designed by Lewis Carroll?
arguingwithsignposts
@Steeplejack: The helicopters will… not … laugh. We promise.
(still a classic thread, btw) Ah, Michael Gass, you left us too early.
Zuzu's Petals
@Chad N Freude:
No, I can’t redeem them myself because they weren’t sent to me. I can only re-send.
If I need to re-send to a different e-mail address (like my own so I can redeem the card myself), I have to enter some extra info. Fair enough, I did that…but no luck.
But the main problem is the customer service guy who got this information sent me a completely irrelevant response. What the hell?
(Carroll? I was going to say Escher, but yeah that works.)
Chad N Freude
@arguingwithsignposts: See what happens when you’re mean to someone who makes a fool of him/herself? They stop posting and there isn’t anything more to ridicule.
Chad N Freude
@Zuzu’s Petals: Think about how awful situations like this were before we had automation.
Zuzu's Petals
@Chad N Freude:
You actually made me snort.
arguingwithsignposts
@Chad N Freude: So why doesn’t that work on m_c, phil, makeweewee or pancake?
Chad N Freude
@arguingwithsignposts: Pointing out their stupidity and the idiocy of their hostility is not being mean. You have to say things like “That’s what you are, what am I?” or “I’m rubber, you’re glue … “
Chad N Freude
@Zuzu’s Petals: A girlfriend said that to me once, but that was a long time ago.
Batocchio
@Comrade Kevin:
True! There is one along those lines. But there needs to be a stronger one – one that makes voters John-Cole-at-Paypal mad. (An honest ad, of course, but slamming e-Meg honestly ain’t that hard.)
Anne Laurie
@Chad N Freude: True, but right now there’s an everywhere-west-of-the-Eastern-shore recall of salmonella-tainted eggs. Several factory farms owned by one company in Iowa shipped “product” to at least 28 states, including some wholesalers who re-sold the eggs to restauranteurs. This seems to be a case where the hens’ ovaries are infected with salmonella, not just the usual ratshit-in-the-factory-machinery problem, so washing the shells with bleach doesn’t help.
Anybody gets a ‘stomach virus’ in the next couple weeks, don’t dismiss salmonella poisoning as a possible cause.
Also, stepped-up inspection and a swiftly legislated end to the worst excesses of factory farming FTW!
Chad N Freude
@Batocchio: Meg W is a Goddess, and she has the money to prove it. If we just elect her, all of our budget problems will be solved.
Chad N Freude
@Anne Laurie: I stopped eating eggs and egg products as soon as the story broke.
Protein, give me protein …
Jebediah
@Chad N Freude:
Perhaps all her spending will be a mini stimulus and I can stop being cranky and stressed at my spotty employment, which I know makes you all wonder if you can even call me an American.
Chad N Freude
@Jebediah: Mini stimulus . . . Try micro stimulus . . . Or how about “If you work for 14 cents an hour, the economy will thrive.”
If Whitman (W Hitman) can be a billionaire, we can all be billionaires, realizing the American Dream.
maus
@JGabriel:
I doubt that the Randian supermen give a fuck what we think. They’re either captains of industry, or gamestop employees that call themselves captains of industry on the internet.
Jebediah
@Chad N Freude:
Micro stimulus, but since a lot of that spending is media related, and my work is media related…. still, fuck Whitman. With, as some clever one said, with a porcupine.
Jebediah
@maus:
Anyone got an estimate of the percentage of poltroons claiming “I employ dozens of people and earn hundreds of thousands so suck it libtard” on the internets are exaggerating their Galtiness?
Nately's Whore's Kid Sister
@Jebediah: When you can ID yourself to the nice police officer by dangling your office swipe card because you lost your driver’s license, it’s time to worry about your citizenship. Unless you’re brown, and driving in AZ.
Jebediah
@Nately’s Whore’s Kid Sister:
More than the Arizona thing, I was referring to Glen Beck’s comments about the long-term unemployed.
And anyway, where I am now, I am not permanent, so no swipey badge for me. As of a few hours from now, I am back to looking for work/hoping this place calls me back in.
arguingwithsignposts
@Jebediah:
I’d say 100 percent. But I’m just spitballing here.
The Other Chuck
Huh, I always buy eggs that are at least cage-free if not organic free range. Always figured it was nicer to the chickens, and the eggs are slightly better quality (harder shells for one). Guess there’s some other benefits too.
asiangrrlMN
Lenovo (used to be IBM) fucking sucks. They weaseled out of fixing my computer under warranty with claims of liquid substance damage. They said my keyboard needed to be fixed–though it works. My brother pointed out to me that I have a water-proof keyboard–which is one reason I bought the laptop. And, I use Dvorak, so maybe that’s why they thought the keyboard was broken. I tried to point this out to the center people, but no. “The keyboard has to be fixed” was their mantra. My brother also said there was no liquid substance damage. They suck, big-time. Funny, they have switched back to calling themselves IBM because their name is shit now.
P.S. Original problem: Faulty graphic card. Other companies fixed it without a murmur–Lenovo/IBM? Not so much. Fuckers.
@arguingwithsignposts: A McEstimation, if you will.
Cliff
I’m this close to zeroxing my naked ass and sending it to them.
DO IT.
Starfish
Sometimes Comcast is not considered a real utility, and they want an electricity bill or a water bill; but if that is what they want, they should tell you.
Other options for collecting money include Google Checkout and Amazon. They are all becoming more of a pain in the butt due to the combination of banking laws and their own customer disservice departments.
morzer
@asiangrrlMN:
I have to say that Lenovo have always been fine with me, even when the motherboard went. Fingers crossed for next time, I suppose.
asiangrrlMN
@morzer: I’m guessing it depends which response center you get because on the Lenovo forum, there were a wide mixture of responses ranging from “No warranty, no problem” to “Warranty? What warranty?” I will never buy from them again, that’s for sure.
The Raven
PayPal is an unregulated bank, under a consent decree from attorneys general of 26 states for deceptive business practices.
I suppose, to be proper about this, I might make some remark about corvids and food. But I like you, John. My suggestion is a certified letter to their main office in San Jose, California–you can get that from Consumerist’s page on them. If that draws no useful response, go to the San Jose BBB’s company page–there may be some traction there.
After that, it’s the FTC and the law.