Be careful with PayPal payment system

by Sapphire (July 2, 2006)

Just a quick alert here. If you’re purchasing something online and they have a system that automatically sends you to Ebay’s PayPal to pay and then back to their site to confirm your order, be very, very careful about backing out at the last minute.

I recently went to purchase hosting, and realized at the last minute there was something in the TOS I didn’t like. Fortunately, I hadn’t clicked “confirm” on PayPal’s payment screen, so I closed that tab in my browser and thought all was well. A few minutes later, I got an email from PayPal confirming the purchase, despite the fact that I never clicked “Confirm”. I’ve been a buyer and seller and PayPal for quite a few years now; longer than they’ve been an eBay company. I know how their system is supposed to work.

I contacted the vendor, who returned most of my payment but kept an administration fee. I really can’t blame her; it wasn’t her fault PayPal’s technology didn’t behave like it’s designed to. So I asked PayPal for the rest of it back. Their response? That they don’t make mistakes. They’re perfect. Their system couldn’t possibly screw up. When I wrote back to say they should either take responsibility or openly accuse me of lying, they sent back a sarcastic response with instructions on how to make a payment.

Convenient, isn’t it, how if you’re a big juicy business, the customer is always wrong.

Posted in The BS Files
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