My father uses PayPal to send me a monthly rental payment. We've used it for years with no fees charged.
Today he sent me his normal payment, but I was slapped with a $50.57 fee. When I contacted PayPal, they said it was because the funds were sent as a payment for goods and services rather than friends and families.
I checked with my father and even reviewed how he made his payment. When calling up the information to pay me, the automatic default is to make a friends and families payment. In order for the payment to have been made incorrectly, he would have had to open the dialog box and change the payment option to the wrong setting. He says he absolutely did not do this, and I believe him. He also received no notification of any kind while he was making the payment that there would charges of any kind.
I spoke with PayPal customer service to dispute the fee. They claimed there was absolutely nothing they could do. I escalated my call to a customer service manager and was told the same thing. As he put it, for them to remove the fee would "mess up PayPal's accounting."
I don't give even the tiniest bit of an iota about PayPal's accounting. This was clearly an error on their behalf, but they are demanding I pay the fee. When I suggested that we simply cancel the transaction, they said there would be an ADDITIONAL $50 for that.
This all stinks, and it's no way to treat a loyal customer. I'm preparing a complaint to the local Department of Consumer Protection, as well as looking into exposing all this through a connection that I have in TV news. I'm assuming that might prompt a better response than to whine about messed up accounting.
