Serious Failure by PayPal with Virtual Terminal

[remesq]

I signed up for Web Pro a few months back again after a hiatus.  While I work out setting up a shopping cart, i started using Virtual Terminal.  This was a great feature for my business (law), allowing me to capture transactions that I might otherwise not have been able to.

All was going well through November 2010 right before Thanksgiving when I captured my last transaction.

In December 2010, after being away for about 2 weeks, I came back and started advertising heavily, particularly my new ability to accept credit card payments.

About two days after my first ad, I started getting calls.  Great!  No, not really....

My first transaction in December 2010, for $1,500, I logged onto PayPal to use VT and . . . it was gone.  The link was not where it used to be.  I lost that transaction immediately.

Within minutes of losing that transaction, I called tech support.  They created a ticket.  I called again a day later and was told to wait.  I called back the following Monday, again was told to wait.

I called a fourth time about 5 days after and submitted a NEW ticket.  Still no response from anyone.  And no one can help because supposedly the ticket is with an engineer being worked on (after waiting in a queue).

Throughout these 5 days, I kept getting calls from my ads, many of which would only pay with credit card.  All lost transactions.

I called again about 10 days after the first incident, and still no resolution.  Again, throughout this time I am getting more and more calls from ads, and again many want to use credit cards but I cannot process them because the VT link is not showing up.  I wound up getting some of the advertisers to agree to put a hold -- they were already paid for print advertising (I do online advertising separately, and that was easy to stop quickly).

This does not even account for the existing clients I have that wanted to pay with credit cards but at first couldn't.  I figured out on my own that I could use the Invoicing feature to request money from clients (by the way, could this have been suggested to me by PayPal).  However, I like to present a modicum of professionalism with my clients.  I was not at all comfortable with asking them if I could send them a PayPal invoice.

Also, during this 10 day period I got 2 strange e-mails. One acknowledging that I cancelled the account for billing purposes, and another saying "Welcome".  I surmised that the engineer turned my account off and then on to see if whatever he/she was thinking would work.  This is tantamount to calling up Dell Tech Support and after almost 2 weeks the support person turning off and on your computer.

With the holidays I wound up not being able to follow-up with PayPal, but did so when I returned last Monday (January 3).  Again, I was told tickets were being generated and that an engineer was going to look at the problem.  The rep finally gave me some clue as to what was going on: there was a system change and it messed up some people.  WOW!

Several phone calls to PayPal later, several other transactions lost because I could not process credit cards later, and spending time ON MY OWN trying to get something to work (I know, that was silly), I still cannot use Virtual Terminal.

I noticed recently that I was switched back to Website STANDARD and tried switching it to PRO to see if that would work, but it did not.

I am a small business.  I want PRO because I do plan on capturing website transactions in the future.  I don't like to invoice clients.  I still want to capture credit card transactions with VT for those clients that don't use the internet and find me through traditional advertising.  And because of the fact that I am busy, and the holidays, I haven't had time to set up an account with someone else MORE reliable.

Let this be a cautionary tale.  If I were the only one with the problem, then why do I keep getting told that I am in a queue for a fix?

Do I have to create a site about this?  Do I have to blog about this?  Does this need to go further PayPal, or am I under the mistaken belief that you should be on top of your CORE business.

I will credit the last rep I spoke to: she was kind enough to credit me the $30 for January's usage and lifted a hold on two transactions I used Invoicing for, which was a definite help for a small and struggling business.

-REM