When will Paypal and other companies that take this "under no circumstances say anything with substance" tack to PR learn that it's utterly counter-productive? Anyone who would be motivated to read the blog post had first read regretsy's side of the story, wherein Paypal comes across looking petty, immature, and unprofessional. None of that is addressed by this blog post, so the only takeaway for readers is that your only recourse if Paypal seizes your money is to raise a giant stink about it and cause them another PR headache?
All they had to say was,
"Our representative was enforcing our policy, but unfortunately did so in a way that we didn't intend, and without the respect and courtesy we expect. It can be easy for someone who spends their day dealing with scammers to see wrongdoing where there is none, and we're sorry that happened here. Regardless, scammer or not, we expect all of our representatives to deal with customers courteously and professionally, and will redouble our efforts to ensure that happens in the future. We sincerely apologize to regretsy and offer our commitment to improve. We would like to assure both regretsy and the community at large that customers remain our priority, and we will do everything in our power to earn your patronage."
That's it. An honest, humble, apology, and you wouldn't have people running around the Internet saying Paypal are a bunch of childish crooks.
Their statement actually isn't nearly as bad as you imply. They mention that there was a problem, that they handled it incorrectly, and that they were multiple conflicting factors associated. They even admit at the end (again) that they were wrong. It's short, sweet, and to the point. I think on the scale of 1 to horrible, this is pretty far from horrible.
i couldn't come up with those guidelines on a paypal search. so, it seems pretty horrible to me. It's fine to have rules, it's horrible to have secret rules you don't tell people about. They don't ask for documentation of non-profit status, or any of that. Just, here's a button! good luck!
It seems to me that your proposed statement isn't yet out of the question. I interpreted this statement as basically saying "Don't worry, we've got real people on this, but we've not resolved anything yet." To me, that's better than them waiting for days or weeks with no acknowledgement, then issuing a complete statement like you recommended.
You bring up an important point, which is the speed with which they've addressed the issue. That deserves commendation, and is a very smart move on their part. It nips the story in the bud, which is important.
That said, this does not read as a preliminary post. It's titled, "Regretsy Issue Resolution". It makes no promises of further updates, and just says that they're dealing with the issue privately. That's their right, but I think it's a PR mistake. There are two issues in this case: 1) regretsy being treated as a scammer, and 2) the behavior and tone of the paypal representative. This post addressed 1 but not 2, and it doesn't look like there will be a second. This is a missed opportunity on paypal's part to turn the incident into a PR win.
The way I read it, it was drafted by a lawyer (prob. not the director of communications himself) as a sort of safe statement. It doesn't admit anything, makes no promises about the future, and simply makes assertions to hopefully prevent people from further talking about it. It reads far more like what a lawyer would write than what a PR company would write.
and assuming the screenshots are not doctored, those policies do not seem to be particularly clear, nor do they say that documentation is required other than for officially registered non-profits.
So Regretsy gets a (potentially) reasonable human to look at their case only after making a media fuss? This is pretty troubling, as for every Regretsy out there, there are many more smaller fish who will continue to get quietly screwed, simply because they cannot attract the attention of the media in the same manner.
This has always been the case with PayPal. They deliberately make it as hard as possible to actually contact a real human, and then act all surprised if the victim manages to get enough publicity to get past the barriers.
It's not just PayPal. It's whole industries. Airlines. Banks. Google.
Seems like it's any industry which (i) has high startup costs so is dominated by big players and (ii) can cost you enough money in a single incident that you'd get seriously upset.
Log in to PayPal; scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Contact Us"; click "Call Us"; dial the phone number; when prompted, enter the number on the website; when asked why you want to call them, say you wish to speak with an operator; when they ask you why you want to speak to an operator, tell them you just want to speak to an operator; wait a few (maybe at most ten) minutes: congratulations, you are now speaking with an actual person; note: if this person cannot help you, they can usually find someone who can. Calling PayPal is trivial, and they do not in any way make it even remotely hard to "actually contact a real human".
> At this point, I asked to speak to a supervisor and was told that “No one above me will talk to you. No one at my level ever makes phone calls. We’re only doing this to help you.”
That entire conversation description is so over-the-top that it is difficult to take any of the details seriously... that said, I'd be very interested to know if they tried simply calling back and asking to speak to someone else.
There is, called a PR firm, if you don't want to write up your own blog post and submit it everywhere.
Perhaps a consumerized PR firm that takes contract copy editors, submission bots, and some sentiment analysis to gauge the response of a NYT writer to a potential story (two lawyers suing each other far less emotional appeal than kids' xmas gifts getting shut down), and voila. Insta-noise-machine.
Great, it was resolved once it was picked up by some media and someone high up at PayPal realized it was an issue. Nothing about the bad customer service, nothing admitting to any kind of wrong-doing - just "we are truly sorry that it happened"
Being sorry it happened and working towards preventing it from happening in the future are two very separate things, and PayPal is only saying the first. Can someone take these guys out already (Stripe?)
I've used stripe and it's definitely a breath of fresh air, but as I understand it, most people won't bother switching away from paypal to something without international support. Stripe's working on that: https://stripe.com/global but otherwise there isn't a good international alternative to paypal at the moment.
Why, on the blog, does the Director of Communications at paypal use a headshot that looks like he's trying to stare you down before killing you? Oh wait.
It really isn't that bad, under the circumstances. They did some things right:
1) Acknowledge a problem in a timely manner (assuming the really did only get escalation one day ago)
2) Provide specific information on what is being done to fix the problem (working w/account holder, making a donation as a mea culpa)
3) Explain limitations on resolution (legitimate constraints on public comment for privacy-protected matter)
What wasn't done well was:
a) letting it get this far to begin with
b) failing to explain how future problems will be prevented by policy changes
I'm really only seeing damage control as Paypal's motivation behind this statement on their blog.
I wonder how many other folks have had the same problems with Paypal's inconsistent application of their policy (when not just outright obstruction), who don't have the same resources to make noise as the woman running Regresty. And whether they will get similar resolution.
They've already released Regretsy's money (says the tone-deaf, possibly inaccurate response). So solving matters is just to convince them that they will have more trouble getting away with this in the future.
This is almost as disturbing to me as the original announcement—make a prominent post saying that you're working on the problem, let it get lots of attention, and then (apparently) ignore the issue. Well, it didn't work very well for AirBnB (http://ejroundtheworld.blogspot.com/2011/07/airbnb-nightmare...), and hopefully it won't work for Paypal, either.
Paypal would have been better off without this message.
I read the Regretsy story yesterday, didn't think much of it - typical Paypal customer service, I've read those stories 1000 times. Now that I know it got someone's attention at Paypal that is "important" and could have done "right" in one way or another but they blew it.
At very least they could have refunded them their transactions fees! Paypal now looks worse in my mind than if they would have said nothing.
Here's a suggestion to their Director of Communications: communicate with a smiling face. Perma-frowns only work on people purchasing stock trading bots or MiGs.
wow, unbelievable. I posted a comment to thepaypalblog.com and I've had two total strangers tell me that my email address is appearing in the comment input fields when they go to comment! They've both said that other people's details are also appearing.
At the very least, regretsy gets a donation to help their cause. Which, despite all the problems paypal caused, is one good thing to come out of all this.
Unfortunately for them, I closed my PayPal account last night. One too many stories like this for me, thankyouverymuch. If I ever need them again to buy something I'll purchase without logging in, anonymously, like most people do, manually entering my credit card info. I'll pay that price.
Unless you're someone who's using PayPal to collect money, there's remarkably little reason for them to care if you're logging into an account to pay by credit card, or paying 'anonymously' by credit card without logging in.
If you want any change from PayPal then you need to persuade people to stop accepting money through it, since that's the only way you impact their ability to collect fees.
lol, so which big media company contacted y'all for an interview?
I guess this is going to be the future of getting PayPal to do the right thing - you have to make it to the top of a social network somehow to embarrass them.
PayPal has promoted tipjars for over a decade now, this was just stupid.
You know, that is exactly the point here, isn't it? Why wasn't PayPal already aware of it? Clearly, the answer is simple: why should they be? Until somebody important gets in touch with somebody important, nothing has happened.
Paypal was aware of it, as they claim its written into their policy.
They should stop worrying about the 'important people' and just simply 'do the right thing'. Start with retraining the customer service people to not be belligerent jerks. Next if you're going to stand behind some regulation to monitor accounts, staff it appropriately so innocent people don't get randomly locked out of access to their own money for 6 months.
No, no, I mean this guy claims that PayPal was not aware that Regretsy was having troubles with PayPal. Think about that. Think about the utter failure of management and customer service that that concept implies.
I really like this from PayPal. They have nipped the issue in the bud. They are making a donation to boot.
It seems to me that both Regretsy and PayPal are at fault. Regretsy for using a button with implications they didn't realise. Paypal for not making these issues clear and what looks like some shocking customer support. I hope PayPal look into the customer support issue but that aside the issue is resolved. PayPal have publically admitted fault and are taking steps to correct it. Good on them.
PayPal gets a lot of bad press. I do feel though if you look at the quantity of transactions they deal with and the amount of rules and regulations they have to work with they are doing an alright job. The could improve in areas but lets face it.. what big company couldn't.
Regretsy for using a button with implications they didn't realise.
I think that's a little bit of a stretch, along the lines of "Facebook users complaining of privacy violations are at fault for using a service whose implications they didn't realize" - I mean it's true, in both cases, but assigning equal levels of fault is a little bit much.
Oh someone posts an unbiased comment against PayPal.. must be working for them! It is the 'in thing' to bash PayPal at the moment. Just because you take a sensible view doesn't make you an employee.
If they're going to make a fuss about it, PayPal shouldn't even make the "donate" button available without getting explicit agreement from the customer to clear, unambiguous rules. And no, sticking it in their giant ToS doesn't cut it.
I am somewhat mystified by the level of paypal hate going on here. The major issue here was bad customer service (something that google, and even say Mojang, for example, seem to get away with quite easily).
A big problem here is people acting with good intentions and believing that somehow that should be a shield to the world. Unfortunately, even the best intentions can't shield you from having to comply with business, taxation, and financial regulations. Make no mistake, regretsy was in the wrong here. Paypal was in the wrong here too, but mostly because they were rude and unhelpful in enforcing a legitimate policy enacting legal and regulatory requirements.
The backlash here is comparable to EA's banning of users from their single-player games, I would say. Shitty customer service is crappy, but the backlash is greater in proportion to the criticality of the asset in question. In Paypal's case, the asset is cash, which naturally flips the "fuck you guys" toggle in people in general a bit faster than, say, not being able to log into the Minecraft forums.
Certainly. But any business will have issues with cash and institutions. With banks, with customers, with the government, everyone. If you want there to be no friction ever for monetary transactions then be prepared to live in that world and make sure to express that opinion at the polls, there's not a ton banks and/or paypal can do on their own to make that world a reality without simply going rogue and abandoning all pretense of legality.
Also, re: minecraft it hasn't gotten much press but some people have had problems actually getting the game after they've paid, and in most examples the customer service they've gotten has been atrocious to non-existent. This doesn't just prevent people from logging into forums, it prevents anyone from playing on any public server and makes it a lot harder to even install the game or get updates (basically forcing people to pirate the game). Not that I'm saying Mojang should be raked over the coals for that, but it's not such a dissimilar situation.
Google is starting to make me very uncomfortable. Not only are they the world's largest adware company, but they are growing into other things as well. I am in the process of looking at how to reduce my own exposure to corporate antics on their part. However, I haven't had too much trouble with them yet.
Paypal is different. I have had an account frozen (fortunately with very little money in it and no urgent need to accept more) for reasons which were plain stupid (something about someone another account holder at the same IP address I logged in under at least once did business with). I have a Paypal account I use to make payments only, and only when there is no other choice and I keep a $0 balance there.
So what makes Paypal different is the fact that I have had a bad experience with them so that I will not trust them with anything important (f. ex. money).
PayPal seems to make a habit of screwing over their customers and generally being assholes whenever possible. Mojang and google have a lot more good will to burn through before people start getting angry.
"Once is an accident. Twice is coincidence. Three times is an enemy action."
Paypal has had a number of these gaffes reach a high level of public interest in the last year. Whether the customer was "in the wrong" is not a material issue -- the consumer perception is more significant. If the customers feel cheated, they are going to draw attention to the issue.
Companies make a deliberate choice about how much they want to invest in customer relationships. Paypal has assigned a very low value, here, in the name of keeping customer service costs low. The results are specific instances of customer outrage which have an interesting network effect -- the irritation propagates quicker, and further, because of the increasing connectivity of the social graph.
The end-result is either Paypal reconsidering their customer investment, or a widening opportunity for another service capturing market share.
The problem with this analysis is that we're only seeing a tiny fragment of the whole. All of the work that paypal does to combat fraud and illegal activity is largely kept secret, sometimes for legal reasons. A fraudster, moneylaunderer, or a fence isn't going to blog or tweet about paypal shutting them down, and paypal isn't going to make a fuss about it either. The tragedy is that such things happen routinely, almost certainly more often than paypal screwing over an otherwise legitimate business transaction. The latter tends to happen when there are unusual aspects in play (people operating without a business or non-profit license or using paypal incorrectly but not intentionally fraudulently).
That said, clearly paypal needs to improve the way it handles customer service and probably introduce a better way of disputing holds on funds.
All they had to say was,
"Our representative was enforcing our policy, but unfortunately did so in a way that we didn't intend, and without the respect and courtesy we expect. It can be easy for someone who spends their day dealing with scammers to see wrongdoing where there is none, and we're sorry that happened here. Regardless, scammer or not, we expect all of our representatives to deal with customers courteously and professionally, and will redouble our efforts to ensure that happens in the future. We sincerely apologize to regretsy and offer our commitment to improve. We would like to assure both regretsy and the community at large that customers remain our priority, and we will do everything in our power to earn your patronage."
That's it. An honest, humble, apology, and you wouldn't have people running around the Internet saying Paypal are a bunch of childish crooks.