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The Annoyance That Is Paypal
I’ve been using Paypal for 10+ years now and I can’t say I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. They have ridiculous rules, they charge outrageous fees, and their customer service is atrocious.
Let me explain…
They’ve imposed limits on my account, my wife’s account, and my work account multiple times for absolutely no reason. For example, when I registered my account with a Paypal Here reader they decided it would be a good idea to hold 20% of all my money for 60 days. Their reasoning for this was to ensure the buyer was satisfied with their purchases. Okay, that’s somewhat understandable. But, the fact is I’ve had my Paypal account open for 5 years with no problems. Why do they need to impose such a limit? The most annoying part about it was, they held 20% of all the money that came into my account. So when my friends, wife, family members, ect. send me money via Paypal as a gift or reimbursement, 20% was held. Also, 60 days? Most stores DO NOT have 60 day return policies.
The fees are just as bad as having your own money held. They charge 2.9% + $0.30 when you send money with a credit card, or you sell something on eBay. Since eBay already charges an outrageous fee of 8%-15% and Paypal is owned by eBay, it’s ridiculous that Paypal charges an extra fee on top of that. But wait, their customer service is bad also!
When I had that 20% of my money held, I called Paypal to see why money being sent to me was held. I was on hold for about 5 minutes, before someone answered. When they did they did their polite talking and removed the 20% hold, so they said. I went back to my account, saw it was still held and called back. Yay, another 5-10 minute wait! Apparently, 6:00PM is their busy hour. Who knew? Again, they told me they removed the hold. This time I checked Paypal, while the CSR was still on the line. Again, the hold was still there. I found out that both times the customer service reps “removed the hold” they only released one fund that was held (I had quite a few being held). So, they went through this big process of contacting technical support, removing the hold, blah blah blah. It was a long process, but eventually got fixed so that’s something.
This rant may come off as very negative, which it sort of is, but hold the phones – Paypal is still a great resource!
Reasons I Love Paypal
My Thoughts
Paypal is a necessary evil. If you do a lot of manufactured spending, sell on eBay, or want an extra layer of protection on your purchases, Paypal is a must. However, all good things come with a cost and Paypal has plenty of less-than-satisfactory rules, and regulations that you need to be aware of when using it.