Another day, another automatic response:
Ten years, and now they just can’t be sure I am who I am. They only have my address, a copy of my bills, ten years of doing business with me, a copy of my driver’s license, my bank information and numerous transfers to and from said bank with no incident, and my credit card company. Oh. And my phone numbers.
Suddenly, though, the sadists at Paypal can no longer can be sure I am who I am. I’m a fucking man of mystery and intrigue. Who is the real John Cole?
Paypal is the worst company in the world.
And again, I ask- what are they going to do with my funds at the end of the 180 days? Since they simply can not verify who I am, where are they going to send the money? They clearly don’t trust my address, my bank, or my credit card, so how are they going to return my money? Will they walk down the street with fists filled with cash screaming for the real John Cole to come forward?
mr. whipple
If Hillary was president, this would have never happened.
MikeJ
Look who signed it. You can’t get your money because West Virginia doesn’t count. It’s too republican/too black/has a caucus/something.
Rosalita
Cough up the birth certificate buddy…
Morbo
Ballgag? Harsh.
NonyNony
You really should consider making Paypal is the worst company in the world into its own category tag.
schrodinger's cat
Looks like Tunch has taken a job with PayPal to supplement his needs for noms.
You bring goggies home, I shall has revenge!!! BWAH
Crashman
Sounds like it’s time to write to Consumerist.
Catsy
You know, as completely pants-on-head retarded as this whole fail parade is, I just can’t get behind the “Paypal is the worst company in the world” stuff. I understand if it’s just frustrated hyperbole, but surely Comcast or BP might rank somewhere higher on the list?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
This probably isn’t about a lot of money, but I would think this is about time for a lawyer, or maybe one of those investigative reporters who likes hunting people down like this.
Maybe you should send the story to Jerry Brown as an example.
Midnight Marauder
The only thing that would have made that e-mail even better is if they had addressed it as:
chopper
someone needs to spraypaint ‘who is john
galtcole’ on the side of paypal’s headquarters.TR
All they need now is a blood sample and a full-body MRI.
It’s really not asking too much.
cleek
@Crashman:
i posted this one yesterday, but:
302 Paypal Phone #s.
here’s a good Consumerist PayPal horror story: “PayPal Thinks I Stole My Own Identity, Won’t Give Me My Dollar Back”
Nutella
SATSQ: They’re going to keep it. You’ll never see that money again.
August J. Pollak
Jesus, I feel for you and I totally realize how frustrating this is (I’ve had similar nightmares with unemployment offices) but good god these updates are hysterical.
Rosalita
@Crashman:
I been telling him! Time for an EECB
eemom
I’m sorry you are suffering, Mr. Cole, but it sure is making for some hilarious posts.
Srsly though, they can’t just take your money. That’s gotta be against some law. With their “account” mechanism they may even be passing themself off as a financial institution or some shit like that, in which case they’re probably in violation of about eleventy zillion federal laws and banking regulations.
What you need, sir, is a class action lawyer, to file suit with you as the named plaintiff on behalf of all other similarly-situated identity- challenged John Coles who have been fucked over by Paypal during the Class Period. One who knows how to work the press, also too. Bad pub for Paypal, a potentially large recovery for the class, a nice “representative plaintiff” award to you — and of course, a big fat contingency fee for ze lawyer.
Also three, you should contact your state AG’s office, and the FTC.
sukabi
have you filed a complaint with your state’s attny general??? get hold of their “customer relations” person and let them know that you are filing a complaint with the attorney general, and then if your local news station has a “people helper” call them and try and get them to do a story on it…
Warren Terra
I was going to make a joke about Hillary, but am obviously rather too late – it’s been done.
In place of that joke, here’s a relevant Mitchell And Webb sketch, on Identity Theft.
Peter J
Depends on when your 180 days ends. They will either be used to fund Meg Whitman’s election campaign, her reelection campaign, or her “recall Jerry Brown because I didn’t win” campaign.
BGinCHI
I want to see PayPal and Ticketmaster fight to the death.
Winner gets to kill Comcast.
Winner of that gets to choose a hedge fund manager and, you know, “do stuff to him.”
salacious crumb
ah, and we as a nation spend billions trying to document billions of individuals in the hope that we can catch the terrorists before they do something to us. Great.
slag
Who is John Cole?
eemom
@Midnight Marauder:
THAT was a “lol” — and I never use that term.
cleek
@BGinCHI:
Comcast wins that particular contest.
Pangloss
@Catsy: Paypal is owned by eBay, who also brought us Meg Whitman, so aren’t we getting close? At the very least, Paypal is part of a Russian nesting doll of bad.
Pangloss
@cleek: No, in a fight to the death, we all win.
Martin
You’re up to page 29 on results for ‘Paypal’ (from 32 yesterday).
licensed to kill time
But really, who is John Cole? No one has ever seen his face, let alone his raised seal PayPal certificate. I think he may have led this blog down the wrong path. He probably hates this blog in his secret heart of hearts.
We must Unite to Restore PayPal to this blog! Rally, anyone?
General Stuck
This is certainly bizarre
Comcast is tea with the frickin queen compared to Qwest, the most evil company on earth.
NonyNony
@Pangloss: Only if after the fight to the death the ultimate winner is fed to the lions.
Of course, then the lions lose – because who could stomach Comcast?
mr. whipple
I always just knew Dick Armey blew goats.
TooManyJens
@Midnight Marauder:
Honestly, I think it’s funnier the way it is. “Sorry, John Cole, we can’t verify that you’re John Cole.”
Mary G
It’s all your fault for moving.
John Cole
I’ve been very happy with comcast, overall. I’ve had moments when I bitch about them, but really, they have been a very good company.
And now I know my cable is about to go out for six months.
MikeJ
@General Stuck: Qwest told the NSA to piss up a rope. They’ve done plenty of evil things, but that brings them way up in my estimation.
Linda Featheringill
It might be time to consult a lawyer. A letter from your attorney might be powerful enough without going to court.
Mattski
I see morbo already beat me to the punch
funluvn
John, you’ve missed the point here. Paypal is your pal; they just don’t want to pay you.
Think about it for a minute. They have all your info, but they don’t want to pay you. They know who you are, where you live, your birthday, your catz name, who you had lunch with yesterday and how many times you flossed in the last year. They just don’t want to follow through on the Pay part of being your Pal.
Corporate America Shines Again!
MattR
@General Stuck: Wasn’t Qwest the one telecom who did not immediately capitulate to the Bush administration after 9/11? That’s gotta count for something.
(EDIT: And MikeJ confirms my memories)
General Stuck
On another note, my 10 year old Zenith crt teevee finally died. Not so much died, as went a little psycho and cuts off and on at will. So when watching it, it will suddenly turn itself off for no reason, so time for the dumpster.
Listening to Ratigan show on XM and some young turk firebagger is raising my BP with O fail.
jeffreyw
Thread needs another Tunch
Ana Gama
Maybe someone could write a catchy little song about this, videotape it, and then post it on youtube….kinda like that “United breaks guitars” thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo
burnspbesq
@General Stuck:
You mean Qwest the only company that didn’t cooperate with the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping, and whose CEO got indicted for insider trading as a result?
Lara
I have a similar problem with Paypal. I have been locked out of the Paypal account that corresponds to the email address I’ve used for the past 15 years. I am instead forced to use a now invalid AOL email. I too went through all levels of verification, up to and including faxing a copy of my birth certificate. In the end, like you, I ended up exactly where I started. Even though I had done business with Paypal for 10 years, they could not verify that the email address really belonged to me.
bkny
it’s hysterical that they’re relying on fucking EMAIL to notify you on how to retrieve the funds.
how many other people are they doing this to i wonder.
Martin
@Linda Featheringill: You do realize that Paypal is nothing but an automated website that periodically emails out computer-generated form letters. It’s the SkyNet of corporations. There’s no meatware there to read the lawyers letter.
MikeJ
@Lara: Was it a vault copy with a raised seal?
Rommie
Maybe you need to send them a picture of Tunch. There’s only one Tunch, and only one JC owned by Tunch.
If they still deny you exist, then you know for sure it’s just them hanging on to your money because they can.
MattR
@jeffreyw: Mini-Tunch (of course any other version of Tunch has to be mini compared to the original)
glynor
By the way, I helped with your Google bomb mission. It just took me an extra day.
PS. Trackback comments are apparently disabled on Balloon Juice now?
schrodinger's cat
@jeffreyw: What a cutie! A bit too skinny for being Tunchette, though. I wonder what Tunch was like when he was a kitten?
We can has Tunch’s bebbeh photos plz…
eemom
It’s true that Qwest was the only one of the big telecoms to say no to the Bush admin, but I doubt it is evidence of any kind of constitutional heroism on its part. More likely, it was more risk-averse than the others wrt the potential liability to the spied-upon, back in the days before telecom immunity was invented.
BGinCHI
@mr. whipple:
That you READ an interview with goat blower Dick Armey is what amazes me.
Man, that guy is a huge asshole.
Comrade Mary
@jeffreyw: Tiny Tunch! Tiny Tunch! (I can’t believe those two words can actually go together.)
Comrade Dread
This is all the fault of regulators because something, something, something, also freedom and grizzly bears and crap.
dmsilev
My current “Worst company in the world” is AT&T. You’d think that getting a landline and DSL on the same set of wires would be a fairly normal thing for them to handle. Apparently not. The landline started working a week ago. As of right now, the DSL doesn’t (and the line itself is fine, per the technician who visited a couple of days ago). After endless calls to tech support, including three different “Tier 2” departments, I’m told “We have to cancel your DSL account and open a new one that is set up to share with the phone line. It’ll take three days, minimum.” I’m not holding my breath.
How sad is it that of all the utilities I had to transfer as part of a move, Comcast gave the best service?
dms
RareSanity
@John Cole:
Strangely enough, I would have to agree.
Although that opinion is going to change pretty quickly if they don’t fix the pixelation that happens every 5-7 minutes since the whole “all digital” change over.
General Stuck
@MattR: It did at one point, but then my dsl went haywire and it cost me a bundle having them come out numerous times to figure out why, and hours on the phone to their tech services that cost more cause I don’t have a land line. This went on for two months, and turned out their signal was degraded because of too many people hooked up and me being near the 15,000 foot limit from their dsl generator. They charged me a 100 bucks a couple of times for tech visits claiming the problem was my wiring inside, and I had to contract an outside company to check it to confirm my wiring was fine. Finally, they admitted it was a their signal strength problem and I recouped most of what they had charged, but not the cell phone minutes I used and not the second dsl modem they recommended I buy which didn’t fix the problem.
I have had a couple of Comcast outages, but dealing with them is 100 times better than the dufous Qwest, that has a business office here, where Qwest doesn’t and everything had to be done by phone, So all the points gained from bucking Bush went south for me on Qwest.
Comrade Mary
@schrodinger’s cat: There used to be a bebbeh photo, but the link is dead. However, the acquisition announcement is here.
(And he hasn’t moved since. I kid, I kid.)
BGinCHI
It’s not that Comcast is necessarily a bad purveyor of cable programming, it’s that they are owned by a right wing jackbag.
Oh, plus it’s worth adding that ALL cable companies are shameless monopolizers of markets and are extorting their customers.
What are we going to do, not have cable? It’s a human rights issue.
Tsulagi
Isn’t it obvious? At the end of the 180 days you’ll get an email saying they will now release the funds to you…wait for it…as soon as you can prove who you are. Do the identity verification process all over again. A perpetual Catch 22 loop. Well played, PayPal.
djheru
Who is John Cole?
Jamie
Ah, John, if that is your real name, I say enjoy it. Nay, work it. You need to find a longwinded writer to memorialize your retreat from digital money transfers, that way we can all start talking about Going Cole.
Maybe you could interest Greenwald in the project.
eemom
all kidding aside, you really do need to contact the FTC and the AG. And I haven’t researched it, but this definitely smells of a class action lawsuit — and I used to do ’em, so I know the smell well.
mr. whipple
@BGinCHI:
I skimmed through to get to the goat parts.
steve
Although I’ve never had any trouble with Paypal, I have friends who have had experiences similar to yours. It’s the same pattern: everything is peachy for a long time, but then the moment they perceive something vaguely “off” about your account, they lock it down tighter than Fort Knox and refuse to budge. The lesson, according to them, is to never keep more than a few bucks in a Paypal account; if you have more than that, pull it out pronto, because you could lose it anytime for any reason (or no reason at all).
FFrank
MattR
@General Stuck: Yikes. Understandable.
For John: Someone at the “paypal thinks I stole my identity and wont give me back my dollar” post at the consumerist left this comment:
Tax Analyst
Dear “John Cole”, if that’s who you really are…
Admit it, John, these people just get up too early in the morning to fall for your commie/sosh/DFH tricks.
Yes, you’ve been fingered by Pay-Pal.
This would have gone on your Permanent Record, except it appears that has been erased.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@licensed to kill time: So John Cole is really Sandra Bullock?
BGinCHI
@mr. whipple:
Goat skimmer.
eemom
more info here:
http://www.paypalsucks.com/links.shtml
according to this site there’s already been at least one lawsuit settled.
Doesn’t mean there can’t be more.
Comrade Mary
More Tunch nostalgia. Awwwww.
glynor
@glynor: Ahh, nevermind. There’s the trackback. I didn’t see it at first (or it took a while to come through).
Omnes Omnibus
@BGinCHI: How does one skim a goat? Never mind, I am sure that this is one of those things that would scar me for life.
Florida Cynic
Calling the AG’s office is good, letter with history on this to the AG is better, letter to the AG and copies to the state agency regulating money transfers, FTC, and the legal department at eBay via registered mail is best. Unfortunately, there is no Federal level financial regulator covering ebay, except for money laundering and terrorism issues.
Anoniminous
After doing the proper stretching and warm-up routines I exercised my Googlefu and found:
Pay Pal Sucks
showing the problems you’re having is a Feature, not a Bug.
El Cid
@Warren Terra: When someone skimmed my checkcard (a vehicle I no longer use) and I was being robbed from a foreign website, I used the logic of that skit to stop my bank from saying how it was ‘their policy’ to let the funds clear out first — they contacted me when a long list of suspicious transactions were pending — and then work on getting my money back.
And I just kept reminding them that they gave my money away — I don’t care what their ‘policy’ was. They gave my money away to unauthorized parties without my permission, so they needed to immediately halt these transactions and deduct not one more dime from my account.
Needless to say, this confused them, but I think it did help.
licensed to kill time
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Well, PayPal did Blind Side him, for more than 28 Days now which is a rather Infamous Crash. He may have to do some Practical Magic because even While You Were Sleeping I think Hope Floats, on The Net anyway.
He has never been known as Miss Congeniality, however.
(I know, groan…)
AnnaN
Close down the account now. Make sure they don’t levy any charges or “fees” when this happens. I concur with Florida Cynic – let them know you will be contacting your state AG and forwarding all correspondence. It may or may not work – PayPal really has turned into a behemoth of assholiness.
BGinCHI
Maybe Paypal really IS trying to tell Cole something: take the red pill, John.
Face
I, too, have heard this from many a peeps. Since their lockdown is so tight, pretty much consider that money gone. No more than $5 in your account at any time, I’m told.
db
Today, I just saw a freeway billboard in the Arizona suburbs advertising that Paypal is hiring out here. Perhaps, John Cole can get his money back by moving out to Arizona and do some time as an indentured servant.
schrodinger's cat
@Comrade Mary: Thanks Comrade, that is a heartwarming story. Cole was quite a wingnut back then, also too.
schrodinger's cat
To play the devil’s advocate, has anyone of us really seen John Cole? How do we know he exists, for all we know ( I have advanced this theory before), John Cole is really Jane Cole the crazy cat (and dog) lady.
cfaller96
I’m confused as to why John Cole is confused about what PayPal is going to do with the money. They’re going to keep it.
There will be some innocuous description for what they do with it (e.g. “transferred to ‘Questionable Accounts Escrow’ fund”), but the end result will be that PayPal will keep the money.
I never “got” what was so great about eBay and PayPal anyway. To me it was always either a pain in the ass (PayPal) or not a good deal (eBay). It seems like the user experience has gotten worse.
catclub
I think we are figuring out what the ?????
in internet business models is for paypal.
1. Open internet business
2. ?????
3. Profit!
It is: never return funds of customers.
Barbara
What are they going to do with your funds? Well, let me give you a preview of coming attractions. I wrote before of my travails with ING, wherein, I gave them $1000 and they can’t verify that I am who I am even though I have pleaded with them to allow me to use alternative means — it’s all my fault, I readily admit, I was pregnant and stupid and my bank was bought by someone else and on and on — but my cash is now on an escheat list, and so, every year or two, I get a call from an ING at the phone number that was on the account who assures me that the call itself constitutes activity, so the money won’t be expropriated by the state at this point.
They don’t get to keep the money, but PayPal will eventually hand the money over to the state, which isn’t necessarily the worst thing that can happen, because at that point, the state will allow you to prove that you are you, which, usually, you can do by showing your driver’s license and making an attestation. The next time ING calls me, I am going to let it go to the state, which will give me a better chance to get the money back than they will.
So now you know.
SiubhanDuinne
John, I think your mouseover message may be your Best. One. EVAH.
Eric S.
@eemom:
At the company I work for in Illinois, when we have money that belongs to someone we cannot identify we have to send it to the state. Escheatment is the term. We have to do this for all money that remains unidentified after 7 years. Assuming the WV laws are the same John should have his money a few months into Sarah’s second term.
planetjanet
So I just googled “paypal is the worst company in the world” and clicked on every link I found. Will that help?
Blogreeder
John,
Are you sure they don’t still have you down as the REPUBLICAN John Cole? You did change sides within the last 10 years. Maybe they’re looking for THAT John Cole.
notmuch
Just googled “worst company in the world”… congrats! #2 link.
YellowJournalism
@AnnaN: Are you on Speed?
Maude
They are using contract law. The user agreement prolly says they don’t have to return money if the paypalee ID isn’t verified.
This would set me off like a rocket.
I’d call the FBI. It’s out of state.
AnnaN
Yellow Journalism
@AnnaN: Are you on Speed?
I…uh…
no?
Mister Colorful Analogy
@BGinCHI:
Don’t tease me with your visions of what would be the best PPV event EVAR. Seriously, I’d pay $100 to watch this.
No, seriously, I would.
freeulysses
I’d recommend filing suit immediately. A small claims court action will probably cost you ~$100, but the satisfaction of making the assholes show up in your local court to explain why they can’t give your money to you, might be worth it.
WV may have consumer protection statutes that provide for court costs (filing fee, service of process, etc) and/or 2x or 3x recovery. MA does.
Make the bastards respond. Otherwise that $ might as well be used to light a campfire.
bago
So Paypal used to be a cool little startup that used the power of teh tubes to make money move quickly. Since ebay was a happening company that was also all about moving money over the internet, they bought paypal and did some business.
Again, good on them. Moving money around at the speed of light to get shit done.
Enter: The Fed. They thought money could be laundered too easily through this internet device, and required exchanges to be cleared through the fed. Instead of “click you have money”, it became “click and we’ll apply for the funds transfer through a central entity that takes 3 days and doesn’t work weekends”.
This is an area where the kids at Reason are absolutely correct. If the fed wants auditing power, they can just ask for the transaction logs. They can be uploaded real-time.
There is no goddamned reason it should take 3-5 business days to move a few grand.
NONE. It’s motherfucking 2010 and I can watch keyboard cat on my phone in seconds. Gimme my money!
Of course, faced with these restrictions, anyone talented left the company, and management went into a holding pattern, typical of banks. Welcome to the holding pattern.
SiubhanDuinne
I’m looking at this a little bit differently. I think John will, if he perseveres, eventually get his money back. I think PayPal is delaying and deferring and stalling and procrastinating and stonewalling because they want to extract maximum interest on his money wherever they have it invested. Nothing wrong with that, in principle. That’s how banks make their profit, after all — well, they did, back in the day. But banks allow you to withdraw your own money and PayPal isn’t doing that. I’d be willing to bet that when they do finally “sort out” John Cole’s account, it will take place soon after quarter-day or whatever it’s called, on a date that ensures they have sucked all possible marrow out of dem bones. Do that with tens or hundreds of thousands of small-to-middling accounts, piss em off for a few months, eventually make it right, and pocket the interest.
I hope John *does* go forward with a class action suit and contacts the WV AG and every Senator and Member of Congress and state legislator he can find. But I also hope he goes one additional step and demands lost interest as well as the actual sum PP is holding.
Would LOVE to see Tunch as kotteb. Please dig out the photo and post it for us. Kthxbai.
Comrade Darkness
Sorry, this all my fault. Paypal called and said: So, this John Cole guy, man of mystery, or what? To which I replied: well, sorta. And Paypal asked: What do you know about the guy anyway? I and said: Well, he has some dogs and a cat. And they muttered something about: Well, that totally narrows it down . . .
Nutella
@bago:
Here’s an interesting site that says that PayPal claims to be subject or not subject to the Federal Reserve rules depending on whether the claim is advantageous to them that day.
Whether that’s true or not, PayPal holding John’s money for 6 months cannot be blamed on any Fed rule that delays clearance for a few days.
The site is entertaining but it does claim to have specific info for states and doesn’t really for WVa. It claims PayPal is licensed by WVa, though, which is interesting.
Fraud Guy
Double check your T&C’s; they may try to impose a fee for holding on to your money, and if they still can’t verify your identity after a few years, they may turn the funds over to the state of their incorporation.
scarshapedstar
Honestly, I suspect that no human being has been involved with this process.
Which is kinda the problem, to be sure…
asiangrrlMN
Tunchie bebeh pics, please! The posts of how you acquired him and defended his honor are hilarious, Cole. Bebeh Tunchie! Or, adult Tunchie would be OK, too.
Sorry your travails with PayPal have been so trying.
@jeffreyw: Who’s a cute little Tunchette? Aw, she’s precious!
blogreeder
@AnnaN: LOL!
SciVo
And once again, no one has suggested an alternative. So what are we supposed to do instead? Mail each other checks? Come on, someone out there has to have figured this out already.